Entertainment
This Stellar 2-Part Horror Series Is the Perfect Weekend Binge
Mixing horror with comedy is a fine line. Throw in too many laughs, and the scares can be stripped away. Make the plot too dark, and there’s no joke funny enough. Movies like An American Werewolf in London, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Scream, and so many others have pulled it off by delivering on the comedy while also keeping the antagonists terrifying. Then there’s Joe Dante‘s Gremlins and Gremlins 2: The New Batch. The original is filled with plenty of Christmastime horror as hundreds of pint-sized little creatures descend on a town and start killing the residents. Despite being PG, it gave plenty of kids, including this writer, countless nightmares.
However, the gremlins and their wild antics are also a source of laughs. This is done to great effect in the first film, then turned up to eleven in Gremlins 2: The New Batch. In the sequel, Dante throws everything at the wall, and most of it sticks in a zany, meta comedy that feels like a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon. Considered a disappointment when it was released, the sequel is now a cult classic. Together, Gremlins and Gremlins 2 show the passion of a talented filmmaker let loose.
‘Gremlins’ Was Made More Family Friendly by Producer Steven Spielberg
Before he directed Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, and multiple Harry Potter movies, Chris Columbus was a struggling writer when he came up with the idea for Gremlins. His original screenplay was a vicious, R-rated monster movie, with the creatures killing everyone in their path, including the family dog. But then executive producer Steven Spielberg saw the script, and before it went into production with Joe Dante, he suggested several changes. He wanted Gremlins to be a boy-and-his-dog type movie, so he made Gizmo, who was originally supposed to turn into an evil gremlin too, the protagonist alongside Billy (Zach Galligan), and cut down on a lot of the death scenes.
Families went into the theater in 1984 not knowing what to expect. The PG rating alluded to a cute little movie, perhaps with some slightly scary creatures thrown in. What they got was scene after scene of gremlin carnage, with creatures exploding in microwaves and humans chomped on and launched out of windows. Gremlins is tame compared to today’s levels of violence, but in the mid 80s, the outrage was enough that Spielberg helped create the PG-13 rating in response.
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Gremlins perfectly blends genres. It is a boy-and-his-dog type movie reminiscent of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, as Billy forms a bond with the impossibly adorable and wide-eyed Gizmo, a happy creature who is nothing like the vicious spawn that comes from him. Billy is given a sweet romance with Kate (Phoebe Cates), but none of it works without the creatures themselves. The gremlins were created by Chris Walas, who would later go on to win a Best Makeup Academy Award for The Fly. In an era before CGI, and better than CGI could ever do, Walas brought the gremlins to life in a three-dimensional space. They felt like they truly existed, which only heightens both the laughs and the terror.
Warner Bros. Gave Director Joe Dante Creative Control for ‘Gremlins 2: The New Batch’
It’s no surprise that Joe Dante would make such a good horror comedy. He’d already done it before with Piranha and The Howling. However, when Warner Bros. came to him hoping for Gremlins 2, he had no interest in repeating himself. But then the studio made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: complete creative control. Dante would be allowed to do whatever he wanted with zero studio interference. How could he say no to that?
Written by Charles S. Haas, Dante took Warner Bros. up on their offer and went for it. Gremlins 2: The New Batch is similar to the first film, with Billy, Kate, and Gizmo returning, but this time the suburbs of Kingston Falls are traded in for a New York City skyscraper run by the Donald Trump-like Daniel Clamp (John Glover). This becomes the setting for all types of havoc where everything you can think of is tried. The mogwai are a little sillier this time around. When they transform, the building’s advancements, including an in-house science lab, leads to the most cartoony monster movie you’ll ever see. One gremlin turns into a spider, another a bat. Tony Randall voices one who puts on glasses and talks. Gremlins 2 is the pub scene in Gremlins if it lasted for two whole acts. Its meta approach, which includes the gremlins shutting the real movie down until Hulk Hogan intervenes, works because, although how the gremlins are created has those three famous rules, the creatures themselves have no rules to their behavior. They are born chaos with zero limitations. Destruction and wild behavior are their entire reason for existing, allowing Dante to push the envelope without ever risking jumping the shark. It was done so well that Key & Peele would parody it brilliantly a few decades later.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch was a dud when it came out in 1990, only making $41 million at the box office compared to the original’s $148 million. Audiences wanted a repeat of the first film and got the exact opposite. It’s the definition of a movie made before it’s time. Today, it’s celebrated as a stellar meta horror comedy, and the type of movie they don’t make anymore. Combined, they’re perfect to watch together to see how a two-film franchise can evolve. Whenever Gremlins 3 is made, it’s going to have a very hard act to follow.
Gremlins and Gremlins 2: The New Batch are available to rent or buy on VOD services in the U.S.
- Release Date
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June 8, 1984
- Runtime
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106 minutes
- Director
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Joe Dante
- Writers
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Chris Columbus
- Producers
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Michael Finnell
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Zach Galligan
Billy Peltzer
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Phoebe Cates
Kate Beringer
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