No Gremlins thread?

bizzare. i mean considering what there IS threads about.

anyway it's the best Christmassy Christmas movie of the last 30+ years and it's Dissolve's Movie Of The Week

http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/837-gremlins-unleashed-cartoon-hell-on-frank-capras-am/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS1XZlEEplY

No, seriously, Gremlins was pretty great when I watched it years back. Gremlins 2 was....really, really weird.

recently re-watched Gremlins 2 and it totally holds up

i don't even know if i've seen the original but i watched G2 a million times as a kid (mostly over the course of one day when i was home sick).

I suspect I might enjoy it better now. At the time, in the theatre, everything just seemed so off and odd and random.

Wasn't there some random bit of dialogue about Abraham Lincoln in there?

I've never seen 2, but when I saw the original Phoebe Cates became my first "whoa hey girls are giving me feelings!" crush. Then I saw Fast Times a few years later. I was never the same.

2 is great

original is p fun too

Not a believer. G2 pales before Meet the Feebles.

most puppet films do

Wasn't there some random bit of dialogue about Abraham Lincoln in there?

idk but it was all meta-jokes and fourth wall breaking. and commentary about gentrification and corporations ruining the environment.

also the dulcet tones of Tony Randall

Holy shit, just posted about this ilf. Will cut and paste.

I watched "Gremlins" with my 10-year old daughter tonight. It's always been a favorite, but man, what an astoundingly subversive Christmas movie that has not only Santa being attacked by gremlins, a gremlin in a Christmas tree attacking mom, but obviously also Phoebe Cate's monologue, which really serves no purpose other than to be totally dark and perverse. I was looking online for opinions of age-appropriateness, and seriously, one of the biggest complaints parents have is that Cates speech, which ends with her saying there's no such thing as Santa (or whatever).

But get this. My daughter was a little freaked out by the movie, on the cusp between enjoying it and being scared. That was to be expected. But no joke, right after the gremlins multiply and begin to cause havoc, the power to the house (and the whole block) suddenly goes out and the basement goes pitch-black! She freaked the fuck out and refused to leave my side for the next 20 minutes (the power came on a few minutes later). William Castle would be proud.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, November 24, 2014 4:40 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Awesome. I totally didn't remember the monologue from when I watched it as a kid, and so when we screened this for our oldest a few years ago, it caught us off guard. He was definitely still a Santa believer at the time.

Any opportunity to post one of my favorite videos on the internet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3IxhVDf3og

i was already in a giddy mood but that brought lol-tears to my eyes.

I'm so glad I could share the beauty and the magic.

is today revive-a-thread-about-dark-80s-comedies day?

i love this film. i also love that despite being rather explicitly the anti-E.T. it was produced by spielberg.

the sequel is great too, although spider-gremlin is almost too genuinely horrifying for a horror-comedy.

I feel like I need to put this here because it's the greatest thing I've ever seen and want it to bad but it's $85 and that seems steep but LOOK AT THIS FUCKIN SWEATER

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0558/2081/products/GremlinsSweater_emma_grande.jpg?v=1413580274

oh i really really want it

wow. link?

Why? Are you going to buy it for me?

;)

http://mondotees.com/products/gremlins-knit-sweater

They also have a Krampus sweater and my love for Krampus is public knowledge around these parts but it's not nearly as good as the Gremlins sweater.

For a sec I thought maybe this was a thread where Gremlins were not allowed to post and was waiting for Mordy to come complain.

Anyway this is like my #1 or #2 Christmas movie (close competition with Die Hard) and my wife hates it.

Hates Gremins?! :(

Confession: I only saw it in full for the first time fairly recently because Ghostbusters scared me so much when I was little that I made me mom leave the theater and she figured I couldn't handle Gremlins. I watched the New Batch approx 200 times as a tween though. It seems like that was on TV constantly for a while.

funny how movies that seen from an adult perspective are obvious comedies can function as really involving (and sometimes scary) dramas to kids. goonies works this way, too.

Totally. When I tell people this they usually say "But it's a comedy!" which it is but there are some scary monsters in it too! Plus, I was 6. And a wimp.

With a big imagination. An episode of the Freddy Kruger TV show that a babysitter let me watch when I was around 10-11 triggered night terrors that lasted about 6 months and were awful.

Gremlins 2 factoids re: the bit where the film 'breaks' (from IMDB natch)
There are two different versions of this film: one for the theatre, one for video. The difference is that in the theatrical version, it appears that the film begins to burn, however, in the video version, this segment is replaced by a segment which simulates a broken VCR machine.
The cinema version featured Hulk Hogan shouting at the gremlins to start the film again; the video version features John Wayne.
The special edition DVD features both versions of the film. Playing the movie normally will show the theatrical version. The video version is an easter egg found by clicking on the Gremlin claw in the special features menu.

-

never saw the John Wayne clip but..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCC5C5n6_PE

I don't think I'd ever seen that either. Awesome! I really want to watch this. Like, right now.

I remember that theatrical breakdown because I saw it in the theater!

Haha, now I'm thinking about the radio DJ scene in the first one. "Hey, you're not Rockin' Ricky fans!"

the original movie is still one of the most mean-spirited comedies of its time. especially when grandma goes flying out the window.

I love that. "Listen, Rockin' Ricky is getting pretty tired of all this!"

x-post - THAT IS THE BEST

Famously, Spielberg protected the film to make sure all the mean stuff stayed in! Between this, Poltergeist and Indiana Jones 2, Spielberg was goin' dark.

OMG, that cereal ad.

Also, the old lady who flew out the window wasn't a grandma. She deserved it.

(Deserved it because she was mean, not because she was barren.)

lol

Yeah, she was the wicked witch of whatever this town was. "And your little dog, too!"

Same set as Back to the Future, iirc.

http://www.empireonline.com/features/gremlins-viewing-guide/

One of my fave gags is when the mom is cutting onions while watching "It's a Wonderful Life." Billy asks her why she is crying and she points to the TV: "sad movie." But of course, she is also cutting onions, which would have been the more obvious gag.

oh i didn't mean she was literally a grandma. grandma = shorthand for "old lady"

Gremlins 2 factoids re: the bit where the film 'breaks' (from IMDB natch)

yesss thank you, the version i recently watched from Netflix was the Hulk Hogan version, and i grew up with the VHS one, i knew something felt off.

they should really do a re-release where the stream buffers & freezes.

One of my fave gags is when the mom is cutting onions while watching "It's a Wonderful Life." Billy asks her why she is crying and she points to the TV: "sad movie." But of course, she is also cutting onions, which would have been the more obvious gag.

I always thought she was hiding the third reason: that her husband is terrible at his job and she's forced to cut onions the old way.

Oh shit I just realized: Rand Peltzer. Ron Popeil.

Ron Paul

Mind Blown

All of Mrs deagles cats are named after units of currency.

Xpost how else do you cut onions?

The Peltzer Mince-O-Matic (which actually just sets onions on fire).

Gremlins is fantastic but my love for Gremlins 2 is enormous and indeed possibly overblown in comparison to how good the film actually is. BUT I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

what's the new way to cut onions

http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsB/913.gif

Ehrmantraut's in this

whaaat, amazing

these movies are the best

In a just universe Joe Dante would be making even more subversive movies rather than slumming it on Hawaii Five-O episodes.

Because of this thread, ended up seeing a midnight showing of Gremlins at Sunshine on Saturday. Think everyone was primed for Phoebe Cates' monologue; I'd forgotten the "... and that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus" kicker to it and ended up laughing so hard I cried :/

It's that time of year again.

A 10-episode, animated prequel series is coming.

Um

Appropriate response.

how it started // how its going blah blah blah pic.twitter.com/CGvIaqH6cz

— T$E CHUN (@thetzechun) May 17, 2022

I love Tze Chun's comics imprint TKO Studios. Ironically, I've only read one of his actual comics - The Fearsome Doctor Fang - which was not among my favorite of TKO's offerings. He does a lot more TV work though, so I'm hoping that he works better in that medium. Fingers crossed! I don't have HBO MAX though, so I guess I won't be watching it initially.

Finally, we’ll be able to enjoy Gremlins and Gremlins 2 properly, once the secrets of their whole deal are adequately explained

Gremlins 0: The Secret Of Their Whole Deal

To start with:
If i hadn't known Joe Dante was involved, i never would have suspected it.

I was looking forward to this for years, could not conceive of a better Gremlins follow up than Sam Wing encounters and battles beings from actual Chinese mythology in 1920s Shanghai on an episodic quest. wasn't so crazy about it being animated but nbd.

This is more Disney than Tex Avery, lots of winks, no bite and about as anarchic as Finding Nemo.

:(

Guess with the good tmnt film out it would have been too much to expect two of my childhood obsessions to come out swinging in 2023.

They could have done this concept as a live action series with HBO cinematic production, for grown up fans of the old movies, ideally in Chinese with subtitles and Joe Dante's sense of mischief poking through. and it would have been THE BEST THING EVER but i know that's asking waaaaay too much.

Dante's involvement: a guy who has only made two VOD flicks in the last two decades and has a 35mm collecting habit accepted some money to say "I do not curse this TV show produced by a flim-flam man"

He might have encouraged the slapstick sfx in scenes where the gremlins ("slimy mogwai" in the series) run amok. Probably not even.

Pro: Fuxi and Nuwa are invoked seamlessly enough, and the latter has amusingly fallen on hard times

Con: seamless in this case means they're Disneyesque characters.

I doubt Dante was that involved, but he's done some tv director gigs and The Movies That Made Me podcast is pretty regular. I figured he was semi-retired

Got to shout out the Key & Peele 'Gremlins 2 writers room' sketch which I only saw recently

Involved Dante, August 2022:

the animated series prequel, "The Secrets of the Mogwai," which I'm associated with and is coming to HBO Max this coming year. It was supposed to be this year, but they've had a lot of turmoil over there, and nobody quite knows what's going on. But they've already done one whole season and they've ordered the second season, which they're working on. I think it's pretty likely that we're going to see it.

...

It seems to still be on track, and it's not so much HBO Max itself. It's the parent company. Discovery is the "Shark Tank" people. So now it's Warner "Shark Tank."

...

I think it's inevitable. The title is too well known to not do something with. So eventually somebody's going to do something with it, which is fine as long as there isn't too much CGI.

😆😅😂🤣😭

his name is the most prominent in the credits, of course

Got to shout out the Key & Peele 'Gremlins 2 writers room' sketch which I only saw recently

― nashwan, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 19:23 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Glad to have this sketch in my life now... been thinking of all the other times this guy showed up in the writers room.

Malignant being the most recent example I could think of....

Watched both movies this week as they just got taken off Prime. 2 is mostly better than I remembered (especially for being so met-a-narchic yet within an incredibly disciplined, by modern standards, 106 minutes) and really enjoyed spotting the Jonatham Banks, Dean Norris and Raymond Cruz bit parts.

especially for being so met-a-narchic yet within an incredibly disciplined, by modern standards, 106 minutes

I think I was at just the right age and fully Mad magazine-d up to appreciate the smart-ass invention of the second movie when it came out. Would love to see them both again, waiting until my daughter's of an age not to be terrified for several sleepless nights by it.

Gremlins 2 is an amazing film, such joke density.

I must have been exactly the right age when it came out because I was OBSESSED with it as a tween. I watched G2 so many times. It really is the best though. Saw about 1/2 of it not too long ago and it was so fun to watch.

Any age is the right age to see a Gremlin namedrop Susan Sontag!