The mogwai is small, furry, and soft-voiced. He sings. He is, by every measure the film offers, adorable. Then he gets wet, and the town of Kingston Falls learns what happens when cute things multiply.
“Gremlins” is a 1984 American comedy horror film directed by Joe Dante and written by Chris Columbus. It runs 106 minutes. It stars Zach Galligan as Billy Peltzer, Phoebe Cates as Kate Beringer, Hoyt Axton as Randall Peltzer, Frances Lee McCain as Lynn Peltzer, Polly Holliday as Ruby Deagle, and Howie Mandel as the voice of Gizmo. Steven Spielberg was the executive producer. Michael Finnell produced it. Warner Bros. released it on June 8, 1984.
It is a Christmas movie that is not really about Christmas, and a creature feature that is not really about the creatures. It is about a set of rules, and what happens when they get broken.
Trailer, via Amblin Entertainment.
Three Rules and a Chinatown Antique Store
Randall Peltzer is a struggling inventor. He walks into a Chinatown antique store looking for a Christmas present for his son. He finds the mogwai. The owner, Sam Wing, refuses to sell it. His grandson sells it anyway, and passes along the terms of ownership: keep the mogwai away from light, especially sunlight, which will kill it; do not let it touch water; and never let it eat after midnight.
Randall brings the creature home to Kingston Falls and gives it to Billy. Billy names it Gizmo. Gizmo is friendly and docile. The rules sound simple enough.
They are not simple. That is the whole engine of the film, and Dante knows it. The three rules are not a warning. They are a countdown.
Water, Midnight, and Stripe
Billy’s friend Pete Fountaine, played by Corey Feldman, spills water on Gizmo. Five more mogwai spawn from him. They are a more mischievous sort, led by Stripe, named for the mohawk-like tuft of white fur on his head.
Billy takes one of the new mogwai to his former elementary school science teacher, Roy Hanson. Hanson experiments on it. That mogwai spawns another. Back at the Peltzer house, Stripe and the others sabotage Billy’s bedside clock to trick him into feeding them after midnight. They form cocoons. So does Hanson’s mogwai. What hatches is not furry.
The gremlins are reptilian, imp-like and destructive. Hanson is murdered by his. At the Peltzer house, the creatures torture Gizmo and assault Billy’s mother, Lynn. Billy and Lynn dispatch the gremlins at the house. Stripe escapes to the local YMCA and jumps into the swimming pool, spawning an army of gremlins that wreak havoc on Kingston Falls. Many locals are injured or killed.
Joe Dante’s Small Town, Built to Be Broken
Kingston Falls is a bank town with a widowed miser in it. Ruby Deagle, played by Polly Holliday, wants Billy’s dog Barney put down. Dick Miller plays Murray Futterman, a World War II veteran who is the first person in the film to call the creatures gremlins. That is not a throwaway line. The film draws on legends of folkloric mischievous creatures that cause malfunctions in the British Royal Air Force going back to World War II. Dante puts the word in the mouth of a man who would know it.
The supporting cast is deeper than a monster movie needs to be. Judge Reinhold plays Gerald Hopkins. Edward Andrews plays Mr. Corben. Keye Luke plays Mr. Wing, the antique store owner. Glynn Turman plays the high school science teacher whose study of a newborn mogwai leads to his death after it forms a cocoon and emerges as a vicious gremlin. Chuck Jones, the animator, plays Mr. Jones, Billy’s drawing mentor. Jerry Goldsmith, who composed the score, appears in a telephone booth. Spielberg rides past on a recumbent bicycle.
That is a lot of cameo for a film about wet fur.
Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates
Cates was cast as Kate despite concerns that she was known for more risqué parts, including Linda Barrett in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” in 1982. Spielberg pushed for the relatively unknown Galligan as Billy after seeing the chemistry between the two in auditions. When Galligan was testing with Cates, Spielberg said, “he’s in love with her already.” That is how Galligan won the part.
Galligan compared himself to Billy. He called himself a “geeky kid” and said being in the film “was really kind of a dream,” given “what I get to do, what my character gets to do, blow up movie theatres.” He added that he “got to work with great people.”
Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Judd Nelson also auditioned. None of them got it. The film is better for that.
A Release That Changed the Ratings Board
“Gremlins” opened June 8, 1984, to critical and commercial success. It was also heavily criticized for some of its more violent sequences. Spielberg, in response to this and to similar complaints about “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” suggested the Motion Picture Association of America revise its rating system. The MPAA did, within two months of the film’s release, creating the PG-13 rating.
That is the sequence the source gives, and it is worth keeping straight. Spielberg raised the idea. The board acted. Two films drew the complaints, not one.
The film was accompanied by a large merchandising campaign, which is its own kind of joke. You could buy the cute one in stores while the movie showed you what the cute one turns into.
What Holds Up and What Does Not
The rules are the best thing in the film. Light kills it. Water multiplies it. Food after midnight transforms it. Each rule is clear, each is stated once, and each gets broken in a way the audience can see coming and cannot stop. That is clean construction, and Chris Columbus’s script does not cheat it.
The Christmas setting does real work. It is not decoration. A small town at the holidays is a place where everyone is supposed to be safe and indoors, and the film spends its back half proving otherwise. The black comedy and the holiday framing are not in conflict. They are the same joke.
What dates least is the meanness. Ruby Deagle wanting the dog put down, the gremlins torturing Gizmo, the assault on Lynn Peltzer — this is a film that does not soften its violence, and that is why it drew complaints in 1984. The complaints were about the sequences themselves, not about any lesson the film was drawing from them.
The Release Schedule
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| June 8, 1984 | Theatrical release by Warner Bros. |
| Within two months of release | MPAA creates the PG-13 rating |
| 1990 | “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” released |
| November 2027 | A third film is set to be released |
That table is the film’s real legacy. A sequel in 1990, a third film scheduled for November 2027, and a ratings category that arrived within two months of release, after Spielberg asked the MPAA to revise its system.
Our Verdict
“Gremlins” earns its reputation on the strength of its first hour and its rules. The three conditions of owning a mogwai are the most efficient horror premise of the decade: simple, fair, and impossible to obey. Dante builds a small town worth destroying and fills it with actors who know what movie they are in.
The back half is a monster party, and it is a good one, but it is a party. The rules that carried the first hour give way to spectacle, and the film never quite tops the moment Stripe’s army rises out of the YMCA pool. That is a fair trade for a movie this fun, and a small loss for a movie this well built.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
