In years past, I’ve not been able to enjoy this Christmas movie because we did not have a copy of it. Sometime last year or earlier this year, I stopped at Vintage Stock (whilst killing time, when buying gift cards for Christmas, or whilst spending a gift card received for Christmas), I picked up a copy. And my beautiful wife, my youngest son (who is 16 and a half at this point, so old enough for exploding gremlins), and I watched it over the weekend. It might represent only the second or third time I’ve seen it–which is not a lot considering I cheekily put it on the top five Christmas movies list (so maybe Night of the Comet will someday replace it).
At any rate, the plot: An inventor/tinkerer is trying to hawk his inventions and to buy a present for his son in a Chinatown when he comes to a hidden shop and discovers a small cutesy made-for-merchandising mogwai which the old man in the shop won’t sell him–but his grandson does, and who tells the man the three rules. C’mon, say them with me:
- Keep them out of bright light; they hate it. And sunlight will kill him.
- Don’t get them wet. Don’t give them a bath.
- And no matter what, no matter how much they cry or beg, never, ever feed them after midnight.
Well, of course, that doesn’t happen. What does happen is that the son’s friend, played by a young Corey Feldman, spills water on Gizmo, the good mogwai; the water causes the mogwai to blister and spawn other mogwai; the other mogwai trick Billy, the son, into feeding them after midnight; and the mogwai go through a pupal stage to become gremlins, which then go on a rampage through town until Billy and his girlfriend-to-be save the day on Christmas.
I mean, there’s more to it than that–scenes of, frankly, shocking brutality and practical effects as gremlins are killed by a variety of kitchen gadgets and other ways. And the gremlins dispatch several sympathetic characters rather casually and has an unnecessary gruesome story featuring a basic misunderstanding of modern chimneys–this is a Steven Spielberg production, but it smacks of a different Stephen. My mother-in-law took her twelve-year-old daughter to see this film in the theaters, and that’s how she learned Santa wasn’t real.
Still, a family tradition of sorts might begin here, although the number of years I have with offspring at home is dwindling and the number of years I have until I can watch it with grandchildren should be at least fifteen years if not more. So maybe it will be me just watching it every couple of years.
Even if it does feature Phoebe Cates as Billy’s girl.
Phoebe Cates was born into a New York showbiz family, started acting in commercials young, studied dance, successfully modeled, jumped to acting and appeared in several films in the 1980s and early 1990s, married Kevin Kline, and gave all of it except the marriage to raise their children.
I understand (by reading Wikipedia) that she opened a shop in New York a couple decades ago. But now that her kids have grown, she has not raced back to Hollywood.
Her pool scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High still appears in corners of the Internet I visit as an animated GIF. She was absolutely adorable and remains very pretty, and I’m sure men of a certain age would agree, and the only arguments we would have would be over which superlatives to use and in which order.
