Originally marketed as another kids’ adventure movie from Producer Steven Spielberg, Gremlins is now seen as one of the darkest, most violent children’s movies ever made. Released before the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) created the PG-13 rating, the film was distributed with a PG rating in the United States. But in the UK, the British Board of Film Censors rejected Warner Brothers’ assigned rating, stipulating that no one under 15 years of age would be permitted into theaters. The British censor saw the film as a disturbing subversion of Christmas, and many audiences were appalled by the violence and bloodshed on display. The controversy around this film, along with that of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) that same year, led Spielberg to appeal to the MPAA for the creation of a new rating system, now known as PG-13.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
Gremlins Director Joe Dante got his start with low-budget horror films like Piranha (1978) and The Howling (1981), catching the attention of popular Hollywood directors and honing his style. When Spielberg was looking to start his own production company, he felt compelled to start things off with a low-budget horror, and connected with Dante and screenwriter Chris Columbus. Using his name and track record, Spielberg was able to trojan horse the film through production, essentially bamboozling Warner Bros., the distributor, into signing off on something which they may not have initially greenlit. Although Spielberg famously made the family-friendly decision of making the lovable Gizmo Billy’s ally, unlike earlier drafts of the script, he kept a lot of other quite horrifying elements in the final product. Taking into account the gory practical effects, the copious violent Gremlin deaths, a startling revelation from the main character Kate, and the central metaphor, the film is now seen as a strong contender for one of the most disturbing Christmas kids movies of all time.
Practical Body Horror
Warner Bros.
Billy Peltzer, our bushy-haired protagonist, gets a Mogwai named Gizmo as a gift from his gregarious father Randy, a somewhat hapless inventor. The three rules of Mogwai upkeep are simple: don’t give them any water; don’t feed them after midnight, and keep them away from bright light. Billy does his best to follow the rules, but it’s only a matter of time before Billy’s friend Pete accidentally spills water on Gizmo, creating a litter of new Mogwai. One of these new Mogwai is a mischievous critter called Stripe, and he quickly swindles Billy into violating another of the key rules. One night, Billy snacks on a sandwich while doing his homework, and the pack of Mogwai starts to whine for food. Billy checks the clock and sees that it’s not yet midnight; so the coast is clear. He brings them a big plate of chicken wings, and they go to town.
This moment is a hint at what’s to come; the Mogwai feast on the chicken, slurping and chewing in a disgusting display of gluttony. Their small beak-like mouths gnash and tear at the meat, chicken fat flying through the air. When Billy wakes up in the morning, the fuzzy little Mogwai have turned into oozing, hard-shelled cocoons, undoubtedly an homage to the Xenomorph egg sacs of Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). As it turns out, Stripe sneakily bit through the cord of Billy’s alarm clock so that he’d mistakenly feed them after midnight. With the help of his high school teacher, Mr. Hanson, Billy realizes that the Mogwai have entered a pupal transformation stage. Before long, the cocoons burst open in all their gooey splendor, completing the Gremlin transformation. Gremlins are the complete opposite of their fuzzy little Mogwai counterparts: they’re scaly, bony, red-eyed, sharp-toothed, vessels of death and destruction.
The Great Gremlin Massacre
Warner Bros.
At first, the Gremlins are contained to Billy’s house and Mr. Hanson’s lab. Billy’s mom is the first to discover them, and she immediately engages in a grisly showdown. She stalks around the house with a butcher knife, looking for the foe. When she does find them, she violently stabs one of them. Seeing an opportunity for another kill, she throws one gremlin into a blender and sets it to purée. Seeing that, she doubles down and throws another gremlin into the microwave, blowing it to smithereens. Laden with detail puppetry and cartoonish gore, this sequence proves to be one of the most technically-dazzling, visually exciting parts of the film. The ingenious evil of these creatures knows no bounds: they cut the phone lines so that nobody can call the police and throw Gizmo up on a dart board and torture him with incoming darts. The gremlin in the laboratory in Mr. Hanson’s care escapes its cage, sneaking up behind the teacher and killing him with a syringe. This scene plays out while a video of open-heart surgery plays on the projector in the background, adding another level of visual viscera to the moment.
The Gremlins leak out into the world. At one point, they force their way into the house of Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday), the loathsome town grump. The Gremlins fry the circuitry of the electric chair she uses to ascend her staircase, launching her out of her roof and soaring through the sky. Although it’s somewhat cathartic to see a villainous character get her just deserts, it’s a real shock. Soon we catch up with Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates), Billy’s coworker and high school crush. We find her at her night job, bartending at the local pub. The Gremlins have taken over, and it’s quite a scene: some gremlins smoke cigarettes and drink beer; one gremlin shoots another with a gun. A different gremlin pulls open a trench coat to flash Kate. As the town descends into chaos, Billy and Kate devise a plan to kill off most of the Gremlins. They’ve conveniently – with a tasteful bit of meta irony – gathered together at a local movie theater to watch the show, so Bill and Kate cut the gas line and light a match, blowing up the theater. In the grand finale, Billy and Gizmo showdown against a chainsaw-wielding Stripe, eventually using sunlight to melt him down to a sizzling green goo.
Kate’s Horrifying Childhood Trauma
After Billy and Kate kill off the majority of the Gremlins in the movie theater, they have a quiet moment together to take a breath in the abandoned town bank. Kate finally opens up and reveals perhaps the most horrifying element of the film. Billy knows she hates Christmas, but he’d never heard why. Her father went missing on Christmas Eve when she was nine years old, and the police couldn’t find him for several days. And then one night, when Kate went to light the fireplace, she noticed a terrible smell. The fire department came and broke open the chimney, looking for a dead animal. But in reality, it was her father, dressed in a Santa costume. He was going to surprise the family, but accidentally slipped and broke his neck on the way down.
Watching the film today, the story comes off as so aggressively terrible that it tends to elicit laughter from the casual viewer. It’s hard to say exactly what audiences would have felt at the time, but it’s clear that Dante and Spielberg were deliberately working to inject darker, more mature themes into childrens’ films. The real kicker, however, is that Kate didn’t just discover her dead father in the chimney; she also realized at that moment that Santa Claus wasn’t real. The decision to include this scene in the film feels like a gleeful, deliberate gesture to subvert kids Christmas movie fare. And the filmmakers knew exactly what they were doing – they specifically underplayed the horror and violence of the film in the trailer and overall marketing scheme. Images of the film sold Gizmo as a sweet creature reminiscent of E.T., saving the revelation of the actual monsters for the silver screen.
The Central Metaphor
While Kate’s story is undeniably the most upsetting component of the story, an element of the story that’s often under-discussed is the central metaphor of the story. All credit goes to screenwriter Chris Columbus, who went on to direct such hits as Home Alone and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Throughout the movie, we encounter Mr. Futterman (Dick Miller), a regular at the pub at which Kate bartends. In a key scene, Mr. Futterman rambles on about how foreigners don’t know how to build machinery right. “You gotta watch out for them foreigners ‘cause they plant gremlins in their machinery,” he says. “It’s the same gremlins that brought down our planes in the big one… that’s right… WWII.” It’s a quick scene, but it’s one that lingers with you. It introduces the idea that Gremlins symbolize some kind of deliberate malfunction, and that so-called “foreigners” are responsible for it.
It’s an on-putting scene that isn’t really relevant again until the final moments of the film. Mr. Wing, the Chinese shop owner who reluctantly sold Gizmo to Mr. Peltzer in the beginning, comes back to retrieve his pet. He’s gotten wind of the chaos in this small town, and knew that Gremlins were responsible. After taking Gizmo back, he scolds the family for what they’ve done. “You do with Mogwai what your society does with all of nature’s gifts.” It’s a quick moment, but it’s heavy. Especially for an ’80s kids’ movie. The shop owner’s point aims to refute Mr. Futterman’s drunken xenophobic ramblings for the viewing audience. He wants to make it understood that “foreigners” are not to blame. Gremlins are a metaphor for the natural disasters caused by our capitalist society’s destruction of the natural world for the sake of industry and entertainment. And again, the audience at the time consisted mostly of bright-eyed grade schoolers and their soon-to-be bewildered parents.
