My most favorite childhood movie, Joe Dante's masterpiece and the movie that had the greatest impact on my life. Return of the Jedi was the first movie I ever saw in a theater, back in 83 when I was five, but the next year Gremlins had a truly profound impact on me. I think it's the best movie for kids ever made and the best Christmas film at the same time. It made me an instant fan of Horror movies and compelled to me seek out other likeminded films (Ghostbusters, Poltergeist, The Neverending Story etc…) which eventually led me to outright Horror flicks such as Return of the Living Dead and Creepshow which are my number one and two all time favorite movies followed by Gremlins at number three.
I just bought it on Blu-ray and the movie looks stunning. John Hora's photography is absolutely gorgeous with its candy colored palette and mixture of light and shadow. It also has one of Jerry Goldsmith’s best scores, so distinctive and playful and the man had just done Poltergeist the year before which was another incredible piece of work. The casting is perfect and the effects are fucking great and still hold up almost 30 years later. The whole thing has such a great comic book style look and feel. There are people who suspect that Steven Spielberg might have ghost Directed this the way he did on Poltergeist but I seriously doubt that as Gremlins totally feels like a pure Joe Dante flick. I also find it amazing that Chris fucking Columbus actually wrote this thing which means he will always have my respect no matter how many shitty movies he makes. Even more incredible is that the original script was much more hardcore and violent!?! I also can’t talk about this movie without mentioning it’s vocal performers; Howie “Gizmo” Mandel, Frank “Megatron” Welker, Peter “Optimus Prime” Cullen and Michael “Police Academy” Winslow.
I don’t have the words to express how much I love this movie.
I can’t say that I was ever as impressed with Gremlins 2 although I do appreciate that Dante played it almost as a spoof of the first film while also satirizing 1980’s New York corporate culture – “Because of the end of civilization, the Clamp Cable Network now leaves the air. We hope you've enjoyed our programming, but more importantly, we hope you've enjoyed... life”! But I never liked Rick Baker’s admittedly great effects as Gizmo looked over designed to be cute where as he seemed more like a little animal in the first movie. The reptilian gremlins are also slicker but lack something that the first films monsters had but Tony Randal’s Brain Gremlin fucking killed. Not as good as the first but it had lots of good things in it such as Christopher Lee (“All they have to do is to eat three or four children and there'd be the most appalling publicity!” ) and Long Duk Dong for fuck sakes not to mention Dick Miller and Paul Bartel so it’s not all bad.
But Gremlins is Dante’s Ninth Symphony and I will be forever grateful that he showed us the Norman Rockwell’esque town of Kingston Falls being overrun by a hoard of hilariously mean little bastards. The only downside to Gremlins is that Dante has sadly never made anything that has come up to that level of genius. I live in hope that he will find the zone once again and one day give us a worthy successor to the greatest film of his career and the most beloved of my childhood, Gremlins.
Edited by CatchThatMan - 6/16/11 at 5:52am
