TOTAL FILM CLASSIC
Avoid bright lights, don’t get them wet, and whatever you do, never feed them after midnight… The rules were simple yet despite these clear warnings, we all learnt the hard way what happens if any of these mandates were broken – and it wasn’t pretty. In fact, according to director Joe Dante, no one was more dismayed at the gleefully slimy chaos that ensued in his 1984 monster-hit Gremlins than the studio that helped make it a reality.
‘[Warner Bros.] just didn’t get it,’ Dante tells Buff, recalling the early days of his Steven Spielberg-produced Christmas classic 40 years after it first hit cinemas. ‘They thought the Gremlins doing stuff like blowing their nose on the curtains was disgusting. At one point they said, “The only thing wrong with this movie is that it’s got too many Gremlins in it.” Spielberg said, “Well, we can cut out the Gremlins and call it People but nobody’s gonna go see it…”’
Based on a spec script by the filmmaker Chris Columbus, has become one of the most beloved movies of the 80s. It follows Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan), a young man who receives a mysterious creature known as a Mogwai as a gift from his inventor father – along with those three all-important rules. Unfortunately for him but fortunately for us, it’s not long before these are broken, unleashing a gaggle of cackling green Gremlins on his sleepy suburban town. Together with girlfriend Kate (Phoebe Cates) and new Mogwai pal Gizmo, Billy must stop head Gremlin Stripe from multiplying before things get even more out of hand.
