Episode 15: Gremlins
Justin:
We’ve spent a lot of time on episodes in the past diving deep into truly meaningful movies, movies that challenge us and make us reevaluate everything about life itself: why humans do what they do and make the decisions they make and how to reconcile those decisions in order to just keep moving on.
Well not tonight!
But despite it lacking any existential questions or causing any real introspective feelings, Gremlins does do one thing really well. It reminds me of why I love movies. Entertain me, piece of cinema! And this one absolutely does that. It’s just a straight bonkers movie with a super dark side that doesn’t bother to ask for permission or forgiveness. It just goes for it. Once the gremlins get their first post-midnight meal and the shit starts to hit the fan, the movie becomes what I view as a brainstorm session come to life. I can picture the writing room now.
“What if we got a few of these things around a table imitating the dogs playing poker poster?” Done.
“What if one of em got into a blender and then the mom turns it on and its guts just go everywhere? Wait, no, the microwave. Wait, no, one of each!” Set it up!
“I got it! Put a trench coat on one of those little guys and have it pretend like it’s flashing the other ones!” Roll. The. Camera!
Gremlins is the prime example of the idea that in a brainstorm, there are no bad ideas. Just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. And unlike so many movies that also try to do that, nearly every single thing that’s thrown in this movie sticks and HOLDS.
I wouldn’t even call this a dark comedy, to be honest. It’s near sinister! But it’s always winking at you as you watch, letting you know it’s ok to laugh as the evil dog-hating lady gets her ass tossed from her stairs-chair and out the second story window to her death or when the Fast Times girl opens up her heart about her dad dying in her family home’s chimney trying to be Santa. Nothing is off limits and I guess I have to thank 1984 for that, because I don’t think this movie looks like this if it comes out today.
I keep thinking about Randall Peltzer’s pitch line for his inventions about making the illogical logical. That is 100% what Joe Dante does with Gremlins. The movie makes absolutely zero sense and if you stop to question things or ask “why” about too much of it, you’ll unravel it quicker than that ugly sweater your job made you throw on for your Zoom Christmas Party. So my suggestion is… don’t. I guess, consider that rule #4. Hopefully you follow that one better than the stupid folks in the movie’s random white-ass town followed the first three.
Pete:
I think if you asked most people who the bad guys were in Gremlins, they’d look at you like you were a fool and tell you that the Gremlins are obviously the bad guys. And so my question to you is: are they? At the very least, I don’t think director Joe Dante sees them as the forces of evil most would claim they most certainly are. Traditionally, we think about Xmas, and the holiday season, as a time of joy, and the joy of Gremlins is in watching how Dante lets these tiny monsters lose on Kingston Falls and its residents. Christmas in his world is one where you don’t know if a father dressing up as Santa and ending up dead in a chimney is funny, or sad.
Really, the movie is asking us to ponder what would happen if the black and white, right vs wrong certainty associated with small town America were erased completely. Sure, it comes in the unlikely form of little green monsters birthed from a $200 Christmas present a father bought for his son, but anarchy does reign. At least it does for a few glorious moments in Joe Dante’s Gremlins, a movie bursting with joy and glee that imagines all the fun we could have at the end of the world.
