"And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus..." (Gremlins (DVD))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	Gremlins (DVD)
Date:	22/12/08 (264 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's an awful lot of fun

Disadvantages: Hard to pinpoint any - I guess the effects could be better

A review of the film - a DVD costs £5 from amazon, although better value is a double-pack including Gremlins 2 for just £6.

This is a fantastic horror comedy from 1984. It's my all-time favourite Christmas movie; I can't think of anything that gets me in the Christmas mood better than Gremlins. It's not heartwarming in the slightest, and there's certainly no community pulling together to overcome adversary. Instead it's just anarchic comedy that's aged pretty well.

A failed inventor buys a mysterious, cute little creature called a mogwai as a present for his son, Billy. Billy works in a bank, and is wooing the lovely Kate. There are some fairy-tale rules you have to follow when keeping a mogwai, though, and those rules are broken. Soon an army of gremlins - murderous, scaly horrors - set about destroying the small town where Billy lives.

I don't like Gizmo, the mogwai. It's too cute - I assume we're supposed to like it for that reason, but I find its high-pitched whining voice irritating and its excessively judgemental attitude infuriating. The gremlins, on the other hand, are fantastic, full of malevolent bonhomie and psychotic delight. They're usually puppets, although there are a couple of stop-motion shots. None of the creatures are convincing in the slightest, either in appearance or execution, but that just adds to the fun.

The film is, among other things, a parody of that most nauseating of Christmas perennials, It's A Wonderful Life. The small town of Kingston Falls is obviously modelled on Bedford Falls from Frank Capra's revolting 'classic'. (Why is everyone so fond of It's A Wonderful Life? The message of the film is 'Don't aspire to improve your lot in life, you stupid hick. Just stay where you are and stagnate or awful things will happen to your family. Merry Christmas!') But Gremlins nods towards lots of other films, from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Joe Dante, the director, is a film nerd, and obviously takes great delight in things like the Hammer horror ending, the bit with the chainsaw, and all the other little film references he throws in.

On the whole, the humour is wonderfully unsubtle. Once the gremlins get loose, it's non-stop fun until the end. It's got a grisly sense of humour, and a genuinely nasty streak, which is refreshing - not many black comedies aimed at a juvenile audience would have the guts to do half the things Gremlins does. In lesser films, the evil town miser would learn the error of her ways - here she just gets hurled out of a window. But most of the really gruesome violence is aimed at the gremlins themselves - the kitchen sequence is one of things I remember best from seeing the film as a kid. The 15 certificate seems a bit harsh, apart from one perhaps too-nasty bit when a gremlin tries to strangle someone using Christmas tree lights.

But among the raucous humour are some surprisingly clever jokes. I love that foreign-hating Mr Futterman's TV can only pick up a subtitled French film after the gremlins have messed up his aerial. I really love the amazing, horrible, hilarious scene where Kate explains why she hates Christmas (funny because of Billy's brilliantly blank reaction, among other things). The film really has something for everyone, with perhaps the exception of very young children, who might find it a bit much - especially the scene where we see a local Santa Claus getting savaged by the little brutes.

Billy is played by Zack Galligan, who sadly never really made it; he's a likeable enough guy. Kate is played by Phoebe Cates, one of the sexiest women ever to grace a movie screen (and check her out in Fast Times At Ridgemont High! Hubba hubba!). Future 80s stars like Judge Reinhold and Corey Feldman have small roles. And the film geek in me is happy to see cameos by Keye Luke (Charlie Chan's Number One Son in the 1930s) and Roger Corman regular Dick Miller.

The small town location is convincingly cheesy (although there's a glaring bit of Burger King product placement). It obviously wasn't really filmed in the winter, though, as no one's breath is visible, in spite of the snow. The music, by Jerry Goldsmith, is fantastic - the main gremlins theme is a jaunty treat - but I also tend to forget that it's almost all done on synthesisers. This invariably fills me with a warm, nostalgic glow, as does the ever-so-slightly-fuzzy 80s visual style.

This film is great fun. There are few more enjoyable moments in any film than the bit where all the gremlins sing along with the seven dwarfs in the movie house. It's very hard to do comedy horror, but this is funny and can occasionally make you jump. If you haven't seen it, you must; if you have, then refresh your memory. One of the all-time greats, Gremlins is the film The Muppet Christmas Carol could have been!

Summary: A classic Christmas movie