Review: Gremlins (1984)

Stars: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates

Budget: 11 Million

Directed By: Joe Dante

This has to be one of the most influential films from my childhood. I remember it was billed as a kids film but most definitely at its heart its a horror film.
The Gremlins though amusing are quite terrifying and do some very deadly things to the people of Kingston falls as you'll see in the review. Most would term this type of film a black comedy. Howie Mandel does the voice for the small creature called Gizmo, a Mogwai.

Randal Peltzer a travelling salesman, selling his own homemade inventions realizes he's late getting his son a Christmas present.
He's led by a small Chinese boy to his grandfathers curio store. He doesn't see anything initially and then when trying to sell the owner an item his attention is drawn to a small animal in a cage.
Unfortunately Mr Wing disagrees with Randal's offers for the creature. His grandson tells Randal To meet him out the back with the money. He does and gets the animal from Wing's Grandson, though there are three rules you must follow being the owner of a Mogwai. Rule one Don't get them wet, rule two don't feed them after midnight and rule 3 keep out of bright light, full on sunlight will kill him.

Billy Peltzer is Randals son and we see him being late for work and his dog following him there too. We then see Mrs Deagle strutting her way towards the bank. She's the main human protagonist of the film and something against Billy and his dog.
His dog has destroyed her expensive replica snowman and in the middle of her tirade Barney leaps from under the desk giving the woman a near heart attack. After all that trouble Billy heads home and is given the present by his dad, who has named him Gizmo. Billy's younger friend Pete comes around later (Cory Feldman) and accidentally spill water onto Gizmo. This spawns five more little Mogwai from Gizmo's back they seem a lot more hyper and rambunctious than Gizmo though, especially one with a white hair mohawk they call stripe.

Billy gives one of the creatures to his old high school science teacher, who quite cruelly experiments on the poor little chap. Both this mogwai and the rest at Billy's manage to eat after midnight the latter biting through the clock cord tricking Billy. They seal up in large green cocoons and Billy goes to see the science teacher who explains it's like a pupa stage.
The cocoons hatch while Billy is on his way back home, Hanson the teacher is murdered by his one and Billy's mum is terrorized until Billy gets back home. The all attack and kill the gremlins in a number of gross ways, all except Stripe who manages to escape out the window.

Stripe is chased to a nearby swimming pool who he jumps into the water and spawns hundreds of new gremlins. Billy runs escaping to the bank, we are then treated to Phoebe Cates character Kate who works at the local bar. The gremlins have taken over drinking, smoking and wreaking havoc while Kate tries to serve them drinks.
Meanwhile we see Mrs Deagle catapulted out of her top floor window sat upon her stair lift which was tampered with by the gremlins. Kate manages to escape the gremlins using a cameras flash bulbs to scare away the creatures.
She meets up with Billy and they both realise the town has gone quiet, singing draws them towards the cinema. Inside the whole gremlin force sits there watching snow white and the seven dwarfs.

They rig up for the gas to blow up the cinema and it does killing all the gremlins inside, unfortunately Stripe has once again evaded death as he was ransacking a sweet store. Once again he is chased by Billy and co into an apartment store. He uses an array of power tools and deadly implements to try and kill Billy until he finds another source of water.

So my Nation i'll leave it there because if you haven't seen gremlins, firstly where have been living under a rock? Secondly go, go watch it now, right now! It's really not worth me spoiling the end to this classic film it NEEDS to be watched. So please go ahead and i will just say this film has the correct mix of comedy and horror and hits all the right notes.
THN awards Gremlins the best 5 out of 5 stars with a go out and watch it now!