Movie Review – Gremlins (1984)
For the longest of times gremlins have been known as little monsters that like to destroy mechanical and electrical devices.
Is your car broken? Blame it on a gremlin. Did an appliance recently break? It was a gremlin. The more that you believed in the creatures, then the more likely they would arrive and cause chaos.
In 1984, Gremlins brought those mischievous little creatures to life in a full-length film.
Directed by Joe Dante, produced by Steven Spielberg, written by Chris Columbus, and with music provided by Jerry Goldsmith, Gremlins tells the tale of the wicked little creatures wrecking havoc on a small town during Christmas. The evil creatures are accidentally created from a mogwai when the rules required to take care of it are broken. It’s up to two teenagers to stop the gremlins from completely destroying their town.
Gremlins begins as Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton), an inventor with good concepts but bad mechanics, is browsing through Chinatown when he meets the grandson of an antique shop owner. Inside the antique shop, Randall tries to sell his latest invention, something called the Bathroom Buddy, to Mr. Wing (Keye Luke), the owner of a Chinese antique shop. His sales spiel is interrupted by some strange noises. When he investigates he discovers a little furry creature called a mogwai (voiced by Howie Mandel).
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
The mogwai is a cute little creature and Randall thinks that it’ll make the perfect gift for his teenage son. Unfortunately, Mr. Wing will not sell him the mogwai, even when Randall offers $200. Mr. Wing claims that it takes a great amount of responsibility to keep a creature, and the mogwai is not for sale. However, Mr. Wing’s grandson has a different attitude about the deal. He has Randall meet him outside of the shop. Outside, the grandson sells the mogwai for $200. He claims that his grandfather is crazy. Besides, the family could really use the money.
Before Randall leaves, the grandson tells him the three rules when caring for a mogwai.
1) Keep him in dark areas. He hates light and sunshine will kill him.
2) Do not get him wet. No drinking water and definitely no baths.
3) Most important of all, do NOT feed him after midnight.
It seems simple. What could go wrong?
Back home in the small town of Kingston Falls, snow covers the ground and Christmas is only a few days away. Most of the town has plenty of holiday spirit.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
William “Billy” Peltzer (Zach Galligan) is a young adult who works as a bank teller. He’s attracted to his fellow bank teller Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates), and she looks out for him and helps keep him out of trouble. Speaking of trouble, for the residents of Kingston Falls, trouble answers to the name of Mrs. Ruby Deagle (Polly Holliday), a realtor and property owner who rules the town with an iron fist. Right now she has her eyes set on Billy and his pet dog, Barney. One day she arrives at the bank and accuses Billy’s dog of breaking her prized ceramic snowman. When she threatens physical harm to his dog, Barney, who was sleeping under Billy’s teller station, jumps over the counter and attacks Mrs. Deagle. She’s not harmed by the dog but it creates a scene and almost costs Billy his job. Gerald Hopkins (Judge Reinhold), a junior vice president at the bank, wants Billy to be fired, but the bank’s manager allows Billy to stay after giving him a stern warning.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
That night, Randall Peltzer returns home after being out for several days selling his inventions. He presents his son with an early Christmas gift. Billy is both shocked and surprised to see the mogwai, a creature that his father has named Gizmo. Gizmo is an instant hit with the family, but when Billy’s mother tries to take a flash picture, we see the panic and become terrified of the bright light. At that point Randall repeats the instructions given to him by the grandson of the antique shop’s owner.
No problem. The rules are simple to remember.
Billy and Gizmo instantly bond to one another, and even Barney doesn’t seem to mind the new creature.
The following morning, a local kid named Pete Fontaine (Corey Feldman) arrives to deliver the Peltzer family’s Christmas tree. Pete’s father owns a Christmas tree lot, and one of Pete’s jobs is to dress as a Christmas tree and help deliver them to the customers, whether it’s placing one on top of a car or personally delivering it to somebody’s house.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
Pete follows Billy upstairs to his room, and up there he discovers Gizmo. The kid is curious about the creature and wants Billy to sell it to him, which Billy refuses. At one point during Pete’s visit a glass of water is accidentally spilled onto Gizmo, and we see five new mogwai pop off of his body. Now we see why it’s important to keep water away from Gizmo. What’s interesting is that the new mogwai all have different personalities, and one of them (named Stripe because of his white stripe of hair on his head) is their leader.
These new mogwai are a bit mischievous around the house. When Billy shows his father all of the new creatures, Randall is amazed. He thinks that he could market them as a new type of family pet, perhaps even replacing the dog.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
Wanting to know more about the mogwai, Billy takes one of the new mogwai to his high school science teacher, Mr. Roy Hanson (Glynn Turman). Billy uses an eyedropper to place one drop of water onto the mogwai, showing his teacher how they reproduce. Mr. Hanson is amazed and wants to keep the newest mogwai at the school for further testing.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
Later that night, Kate Beringer is working as a bartender at her father’s bar and helping close the place for the night. She helps Murray Futterman (Dick Miller) to his vehicle, but later advises him to walk home as he’s too drunk to drive his heavy machinery (he drives farm equipment on the streets instead of a car). Billy is also there and he walks Kate back to her home. Along the way they talk about Christmas, and Kate tells Billy how it’s a depressing time of year for many people, herself included. Kate won’t tell Billy why she doesn’t celebrate Christmas. When they finally arrive at her place, Billy asks her out on a date, and she accepts his offer.
Back at his parents’ house, Billy is up late working when the five new mogwai are being very hyper and crazy. They’re telling Billy that they’re hungry. He checks the clock and sees that it’s still before midnight, so Billy feeds them a plate of chicken. Gizmo is sickened the way that his fellow mogwai disgustingly scarf down the food.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
Billy is shocked the next morning when he discovers that the five mogwai have now become cocoons. He shows them to his mom, and she’s also puzzled about how it happened to them and not Gizmo. That’s when Billy notices that his clock is still showing the same time as when he fed them last night. When he checks the cable, he notices that the power cable has been chewed apart. The clock’s hands were frozen in place about twenty minutes before midnight. But why did it happen?
At the high school, the sixth new mogwai is also in a cocoon. In this case the creature ate the leftover part of Mr. Hanson’s sandwich after midnight. He’s in a cocoon now and the teacher is anxious to see what new creature is being developed.
The cocoons finally open that day.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
Mr. Hanson notices the open cocoon after his class leaves the room. He excitedly calls Billy and lets him know about the recent development. Mr. Hanson then uses a candy bar to entice the creature out into the open, but it doesn’t work. The teacher figures out where the creature is hiding. He sticks the candy bar into the hiding place, but the creature eats more than the candy bar. It bites into Mr. Hanson’s hand, injuring him.
Billy arrives at the school and checks on Mr. Hanson, but his science teacher is dead. The creature violently killed him. Billy tries to reach for a phone, but the creature reaches up and scratches his hand. The creature then escapes into an air duct and runs to a new part of the school. Billy heads to the clinic to treat his hand. Inside the medical office he’s surprised again by the creature, but it flees the room before further injuring him.
Back at his parents’ house, Billy’s mother, Lynn Peltzer (Frances Lee McCain), hears a bunch of noise upstairs in Billy’s room. It sounds like the creatures are out of their cocoons. But what sort of creatures are they? They sound dangerous. She takes a large kitchen knife to go investigate. It’s quiet again when she goes upstairs, and the rest of the house is eerily quiet as well. It’s not until Lynn returns to the kitchen when she finally sees a creature, a gremlin.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
The nasty little gremlin is making a mess in her kitchen. It quickly becomes violent when Lynn approaches it. She’s able to force the small creature into a blender and kill it in there. Suddenly another gremlin in the kitchen attacks her, and she stabs it to death with her knife. Lynn then kills a third gremlin by trapping (and cooking) it inside of her microwave.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
When Lynn enters the living room she’s ambushed by a gremlin attacking from the Christmas tree. She struggles with the creature as Billy arrives home and sees what’s happening. Billy uses a decorative sword on the wall to chop off the gremlin’s head. Stripe is also there in the living room, but he breaks through a window and escapes outside.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
After taking his mother to a doctor and then returning home to find Gizmo, Billy heads out in search of Stripe. He follows the gremlin’s footprints in the snow to the local Y.M.C.A. Inside the building, Billy is ambushed and attacked by Stripe. Before he can get back to his feet and catch the gremlin, the little creature jumps into the Y.M.C.A.’s swimming pool. The pool’s water suddenly churns as the gremlins begin to reproduce like crazy.
Knowing the danger that’s about to happen, Billy goes to the sheriff’s office to try to warn them about the gremlins. Naturally, the sheriff (Scott Brady) and his deputy (Jonathan Banks) don’t believe Billy’s story. They’re impressed when Billy shows them Gizmo, but they don’t see how such a cute little creature can spawn deadly little monsters.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
Meanwhile, night has fallen on the town of Kingston Falls, and Stripe and his small army of gremlins start wrecking havoc. Their first stop is the home of Murray Futterman. Some of the gremlins climb onto his roof and play with his TV antenna, while other gremlins start Futterman’s snow plow and drive it straight through his house, terrifying him and his wife. Elsewhere in town the gremlins hide in postal boxes and attack people, and other monsters disrupt traffic lights to cause accidents.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
The gremlins then find their way to Mrs. Deagle’s house. Some of the monsters stand outside posing as Christmas carollers. When Mrs. Deagle sees the little monsters she becomes terrified. She believes that the monsters have arrived to finally take her away, wherever that may be. Some gremlins have sneaked their way into her home and taken control of Mrs. Deagle’s motorized chair lift. As Mrs. Deagle tries to ride the chair upstairs, the gremlins accelerate it so that it flies off the stairs, through the window, and sends the mean old woman crashing to the street below, killing her. Naturally, the gremlins laugh and think that it’s funny as hell.
The sheriff and deputy are patrolling the streets and see gremlins attacking people. As they’re thinking about what to do next, one of the gremlins sneaks underneath the patrol car and rips out the brake cable. The police car drives away, but the sheriff later crashes when he loses control of the brakes.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
Later the gremlins find their way to the bar where Kate Beringer is working. She’s the only person there and has to keep finding ways to amuse the monsters. They drink, smoke, play cards, and find ways to wreck and damage the bar. When one of the gremlins wants Kate to light his cigarettes, Kate notices that the gremlin is terrified of the flame from the match. She sees this and grabs a camera. Kate uses the camera’s flash to scare away most of the gremlins. One of the gremlins has a pistol and holds Kate at gunpoint, but he’s scared away when Billy drives up in his car and uses the high beams. Kate then escapes from the car and joins Billy and Gizmo.
Suddenly Billy’s car stops working. He and Kate have to go on foot and find a way past the gremlins. By now the monsters are everywhere in Kingston Falls, attacking people and wrecking havoc. The two of them manage to get into a damaged building where it’s safe from the gremlins. Inside the building, Kate tells Billy why she no longer celebrates Christmas. It turns out that a few years ago her dad disappeared on Christmas Eve. What her dad did was dress as Santa Claus and try to climb down their chimney while delivering presents. Kate or her mother didn’t know of his plan. Her dad slipped and fell down the chimney, lodging himself and breaking his neck. He wasn’t discovered until a little while later when Kate tried to light a fire in their fireplace, and it smelled like something was cooking in a chimney. That’s when the fire department discovered her father’s body.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
Billy and Kate then head back outside and notice that the streets are now eerily quiet. All of the gremlins have disappeared. They quickly discover that the monsters have gone to the local movie theater, and they’re all watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The gremlins are laughing and singing along to the animated film, having a great time at the theater. In one quick shot we can see one of the gremlins wearing a pair of Mickey Mouse ears. Seeing how all the gremlins are all in one enclosed area, Billy comes up with an idea of blowing up the movie theater. They go backstage and open the gas line. A match is lit and Billy, Kate and Gizmo run out of the theater. In a few moments the gas reaches the flame and the theater is destroyed in an explosion, killing all of the gremlins.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
That is, all of the gremlins except for Stripe. The leader of the gremlins had ran out of popcorn and made his way outside to another store to find some snacks. Kate spots Stripe inside of the window display for the Montgomery Ward department store. If Stripe can find some water, then he’ll easily create another army of gremlin monsters.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
The three of them enter the department store. Billy takes a baseball bat and goes hunting for Stripe while Kate searches for the store’s electrical control panel, hoping to find a light switch. Stripe surprises Billy in the hardware section and throws steel saw blades at him. The gremlin then disappears and later surprises him again in the sporting goods section. He manages to use a baseball pitching machine to knock down Billy, then he shoots him with a small crossbow. The gremlin then uses an electric chainsaw to kill him, but Billy uses his baseball bat to stop the attack.
Just as Stripe is gaining the upper hand with his chainsaw, Kate breaks into a fuse box and turns on the store’s emergency lights. The bright lights send Stripe running for cover.
The gremlin finds his way to the lawn care section of the store with a bunch of plants. More importantly, that part of the store also has a decorative water fountain. Stripe has also found a pistol in another part of the store. When Billy finds Stripe by the fountain, the gremlin uses the gun and starts shooting at him.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
Billy is pinned down by the gunfire and Stripe clearly has the upper hand. He then climbs into the water fountain and lets the water get him wet so that he can start reproducing again. Just then Gizmo arrives while driving a toy car. The mogwai pulls a rope that opens the sky light. It’s daytime now outside the store and sunlight pours into the garden section of the store, striking the gremlin. Stripe dies a painful and gruesome death from the sunlight, and it stops any new gremlins from being created.
Back at the Peltzer house, Kate, Billy and his parents are watching the news reports on TV when there’s a knock on the door. It’s Mr. Wing, the elderly owner of the Chinese antique store in Chinatown. He’s there to take back the mogwai as Billy’s family isn’t responsible enough to take care of the creature.
Gremlins (1984) – (c) Warner Bros.
Gremlins ends as Mr. Wing takes Gizmo back to Chinatown.
So is Gremlins a good movie?
Without a doubt, Gremlins is a great film and a classic 80s movie. The story is good, the music and settings are great, and the gremlin creatures are fantastic. The creatures have a nearly perfect blend of hilarious yet horrific looks and behavior. While a few moments with them might be scary or suspenseful, the rest of the time you’ll be laughing with them at their antics.
Perhaps the scariest and most gruesome parts of Gremlins is when Billy’s mother, Lynn, has to fight the little monsters both in the kitchen and later the living room. One gremlin dies in a blender, another is brutally stabbed to death with a kitchen knife, and a third gremlin dies a painful and extremely bloody death in the microwave. The freakiest moment for me was when the gremlin hiding (very well mind you) in the Christmas tree ambushed Lynn. That little creature blended almost perfectly with the tree, and its two red eyes looked just like Christmas lights. Scenes like that might make you think twice about approaching Christmas trees or similar harmless decorations.
One part of Gremlins that I did not understand were the two main characters, Billy and Kate. We know that they are both young adults who live with their parents, but are they high school students or what? We see them both working at the bank during the daytime, but that could have been on a Saturday. They might have also been working extra because of the Christmas break. We also know that Kate helps out as a bartender at night, but again, she could have been doing that while still going to school. I spent many weekday nights closing a fast food restaurant during my senior year in high school.
It also seems a little bit odd that neither Billy or Kate appear to have any friends their own age. It’s understandable that they live in a small town, but didn’t they have any classmates or friends still in the area? Perhaps it would have been better if A) It was confirmed that Billy and Kate were still in high school, or B) Neither of them lived with their parents. The film could have done a better job explaining their status in society.
But that’s a minor issue.
The rest of the film is still a great movie that can be enjoyed by most of the family.
To me, Gremlins will always remain a classic film for several reasons. First of all, this is a classic 1980s film from the setting to the actors to the way that it was mainly pupperty and robotics that brought Gizmo and the gremlins to life (and quite realistic, too), and not CGI. Add in a charming yet somewhat horrific story that takes place around Christmas, and that increases the film’s overall level of greatness.
Gremlins (1984) – movie trailer
Sure, Gremlins is not a perfect film. There are some minor plot holes and unexplained elements here and there, but it’s not enough to really bring down a film of this magnitude. The rest of Gremlins shines, and this film is just a LOT of fun!
Kate – “What are they, Billy?”
Billy Peltzer – “They’re gremlins, Kate, just like Mr. Futterman said.”
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Mr. Wing – [leaving with Gizmo, to Billy] “Perhaps some day, you will be ready. Until then, Mogwai waits.”
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Randall Peltzer – “Well, that’s the story. So if your air conditioner goes on the fritz or your washing machine blows up or your video recorder conks out; before you call the repairman turn on all the lights, check all the closets and cupboards, look under all the beds, ’cause you never can tell there just might be a gremlin in your house.”