GREMLINS

by Kevin Koehler

"You've got to watch out for them foreigners because they plant gremlins in their machinery.  That's the same gremlins that brought down our planes in the Big One.  That's right, World War II.  They're still shipping them over here.  Put them in the cars, put them in the TV, put them in the stereos and the radios you put in your ears, put them in your watch.  They got tiny gremlins for our watches."

- Murray Futterman (Dick Miller), Gremlins

A few introductory observations:

First, what is it about Steven Spielberg and failed inventors?  Over the course of a single year (1984-1985), he executive produced a trio of commercial hits - the Gremlins, Goonies, Back to the Future trifecta - that each feature these found object inventors who complicate life's simplest tasks with a Rube Goldbergian, low-fi elaborateness.  Shuffling cards.  Feeding the dog.  Opening the front door.  We can see Spielberg's later, anti-technological themes (which bloomed in pictures like Jurassic Park, Minority Report, and War of the Worlds) taking root, even if they are by proxy.  It's worth noting that early Spielberg-collaborator (and later schmaltz factory) Chris Columbus wrote both Gremlins and Goonies, not to mention the Lucasfilm special effects orgy Young Sherlock Holmes, likewise exec-produced by Spielberg.

Secondly, all three of Gremlins, Goonies, and Back to the Future have parents who do not adequately provide for their children, usually leaving it to the kids to correct the (financial) sins of the father.  Spielberg himself was estranged from his own father after his parents divorced (the budding director was nineteen at the time).  There is a clear dichotomy being built during this creative period - where the worlds of adults and adolescents are in conflict, often operating independently of each other - filtered through Spielberg's typical cinematic mysticism.  With himself at the helm, E.T. and the first two Indiana Jones films (Spielberg's three pictures immediately prior to 1985, discounting his Twilight Zone: The Movie segment) notably had protagonists with strained (or non-existent) relationships with absentee fathers (even if, in Indy's case, this would only be revealed later with The Last Crusade).  This recurrent theme would come to define the Spielberg oeuvre.  Again, at least early on, he seems most comfortable addressing these issues through filmmaking intermediaries.

Lastly, while Spielberg's vision of the suburbs has been consistently bleak, he really never rendered this enmity through satire.  Gremlins is satire.

Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton, also an accomplished country music artist) invents things that don't work, like his "bathroom buddy," which is basically a swiss army knife but with things you'd use in a bathroom.  While on a sales pitch, he happens upon a caged creature in a poorly-lit, Chinatown basement store.  This thing, called a mogwai, is so fucking precious every kid in America would want one (did I mention he sings?).  Unfortunately, it's not for sale, but Rand doesn't take no for an answer; this is America, after all, where everything is a commodity.  He purchases it on the sly from a Chinese kid who doesn't know some white asshole who invented the bathroom buddy can't be trusted with the secrets of the Orient.  The mogwai is his for two hundred bucks, but with it comes three simple rules: keep it out of the light, keep him away from water, and no feeding after midnight.  Rand quickly rechristens this furry creature "Gizmo" and gives his son an early Christmas present.

While Rand fine-tunes his money-sucking widgets, Billy (Zach Galligan) is supporting Mom and Dad via his thankless job at the local bank.  Gizmo is a welcome surprise: the two make music together, watch television, and Billy dresses his new pet up in cute hats.  Despite the clarity of the instructions, not even a day goes by before Gizmo gets wet; this is how they reproduce, a spilled glass of water resulting in five additional mogwai.  Gizmo cries afterward, a heartbreaking visual as its quite distressful to watch something so damn adorable cry over a species-specific sexual shame.  Dad senses a business opportunity and these mogwai get still another name: "The Peltzer Pet."

It isn't long before the most important rule is broken, this being the one about feeding them and not doing it after midnight.  A profound metamorphosis ensues - what was once a cuddly plush doll is now the titular reptilian creature bent on murder, mayhem, and a lampooning of our human excesses (it's no coincidence this all takes place at Christmas).  You can guess what happens when one of them falls into a swimming pool at the YMCA: the idyllic community of Kingston Falls is idyllic no more.  Not that it ever was.

The gremlins attack with a gusto that stretches the boundaries of a PG-rated film, unsurprising given that the reaction of parents to Gremlins (specifically exploding gremlins, gremlins in blenders, and gremlins shooting firearms) precipitated the birth of the PG-13.  Like its gluttonous monsters, the film's (easy) targets are myriad: jingoism, consumerism, xenophobia.  It basically boils down to this: Respect the traditions of other cultures, even if you don't understand them.  None of it's especially complex, but at least the picture has something on its mind.

Of course, it's hard to take Gremlins so seriously as an anti-materialism diatribe given how built for merchandising it is.  Perhaps the irony is intended; product placement becomes so overt, by the end you wonder whether director Dante was being subversive or just wanted it both ways (this uneasy relationship with stuff that's bought is shared by Back to the Future).  He certainly seems to have anticipated the inevitable cottage industry of Gizmo kid toys: the evil Stripe at one point conceals himself behind a stuffed E.T. doll as a cinematic in-joke (reminiscent of E.T. hiding among Drew Barrymore's toys).  Or maybe Dante is just giving his producer a good-natured poke in the ribs.  Indeed, an entire climactic sequence at Montgomery Ward (my, what a selection they have!), with its bonanza of easy-to-read brand names, is either the slyest satire of consumerism you will ever see or a filmmaker, reared on action figures and electric trains, acting out his childhood fantasies of being locked in a department store at night.

© Pretentious Musings. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.