Saturday night I watched one of my favorite films, Gremlins. It's a great movie to transition from Halloween to Christmas, as it is a horror movie that takes place at Christmas-time.
Here is Gizmo with a heavy santa hat crushing his sensitive ears. That look on his face is how he expresses pain.
Gremlin Christmas carolers! I wish I could have found a better picture of this. I love it because they are so happy to be singing to the Mrs. Deagle, who they end up killing.
I couldn't find it, but I prefer the microwave death. This, however, is the first murder of a Gremlin. Afterwards Billy's mom (pictured at right) stabs a gremlin multiple times with her knife, and all it's doing is throwing dinner plates at her.
This inventive gremlin is experimenting with electrical conduction.
A shot of an entire audience of gremlins, watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Ultimately they all get blown up and die.
I'd like to point out that PG movies aren't made like this anymore. Kids play GTA and Gears of War, but they can't handle a horror movie where some people die. Lots of people die in Gremlins! Let me just recount from what I can remember:
- An older couple gets bulldozed.
- The science teacher dies from gremlin attack. We assume that he is dead but it's possible he's asleep from an injection of something - a hypodermic needle is shown sticking in his ass. If nothing else, he has a chewed up hand from when he tries to feed a gremlin a Snickers bar. Or maybe it's a Milky Way... Who cares.
- Old lady mentioned above is thrown from her second story window - lands head-first in the snow.
- Santa is shown running out of a house with gremlins attacking multiple points on his body. Like gremlin acupuncture. Basically, they are eating him. The police witness this and drive off in fear.
- Phoebe Cates' character tells a story where her father goes missing around Christmas when she was younger. They eventually figure out where he is when they smell his death stench. He was trying to climb down the chimney to surprise them on Christmas morning, his arms laden with presents. He breaks his neck after he falls, killing him instantly; or so she says, I think he probably suffered.
- Gremlin leader Stripe fires a gun a few times. A gremlin with a gun could be a problem. He only kills another gremlin with it though.
I must digress on the point of the ultimate danger posed by gremlins. At first it seems extreme, since they reproduce so quickly with only a bit of water. However, since daylight kills them so effectively, I can't help but discount them as any sort of real threat. Also, once they die, they melt away, and no evidence is provided that the waste is acidic or radioactive in any way, so cleanup is rather simple. Of course, most of the people in this film didn't know this fact about gremlins, and not surprisingly they were appropriately terrified.
Anyway that's all I can remember at this time. If you have some thoughts about this excellent, classic movie, feel free to chime in. I think more people may have died. If you do, please restrict conversation to Gremlins. I don't want to talk about Gremlins 2.
chipper
