Cynical, cleverly-made horror parody, marred by occasional mean spiritedness.

Rating: 6/10 (22 August 2007)

The master of parody Joe Dante and the master of popular entertainment Steven Spielberg combine their talents (Dante as director, Spielberg as one of the executive producers) for this cleverly assembled comedy-horror. Gremlins is a fun movie that delights in anarchic scenes of destruction and mayhem. But while some films think that destruction and mayhem on their own are automatically funny (e.g It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and 1941), this one remembers that things like characterisation and a build-up are also important. Gremlins still has its share of flaws, including unevenness in the narrative and occasional sequences that boil over into nastiness, but on the whole it is an enjoyable movie. The film's box office success certainly indicates that it caught the public mood at the time of its release.
Wacky inventor Rand Pelzer (Hoyt Axton) searches for a Christmas gift for his son Billy (Zach Galligan) in a dingy curiosity shop in Chinatown. He eventually chooses a cuddly creature called a mogwai, with a severe warning from the shop-keeper's grandson that there are three golden rules any mogwai owner must obey. Never expose them to bright lights, never get them wet and, most importantly of all, never feed them after midnight. To begin with Billy is very careful with his new pet - named Gizmo - but one day one of the neighbourhood kids accidentally spills water on Gizmo. The water makes the mogwai multiply, giving birth to a whole bunch of babies.... but the babies are more malicious and devious than their parent and fool around with Billy's clock so that he unwittingly feeds them AFTER midnight. Their late night snack causes them to turn into vicious, nasty monsters bent on the destruction of the town. Wholesale devastation follows as the dangerous gremlins go on their rampage. Billy and his girlfriend Kate (Phoebe Cates) are the only ones with the courage and the know-how to fight back, but when one gremlin manages to make it to the local swimming pool - where it throws itself into the pool and gives birth to literally hundreds of little monsters - the town seems doomed.
Gremlins is primarily a monster movie parody, but in a subtler way it also parodies feel-good Christmas movies. The old James Stewart classic It's A Wonderful Life is seen playing in the background on several occasions, but here there's no goodwill and seasonal cheer on display as the titular gremlins start demolishing the town. Even Cates' character has a tragic Christmas story to tell, involving the death of her father whilst trying to "play" Santa Claus. It is always reassuring when parodies know where they're coming from, and Gremlins contains many in-jokes for film buffs to enjoy. In particular there are a number of telling cameo roles, among them exploitation director Roger Corman, while Dick Miller (star of several early Corman horror quickies) gets a chance to send himself up delightfully as the grouchy Mr Futterman. The monsters are designed by Chris Walas who successfully creates creatures that simultaneously come across as funny, nasty and fairly real-looking. Rounding things off neatly is Jerry Goldsmith's macabre funhouse-style score. Gremlins doesn't have a great deal of plot, which allows things things to crack along at a brisk pace but afterwards leaves one reflecting how slight the whole film is. Also, the black comedy inherent in the story is soured by touches that are just a little too nasty and mean-spirited. But, generally-speaking, this is a gripping piece of entertainment, worth a look if you're a monster movie buff or a connoisseur of the cynical.