Gremlins

There are so many types of monsters around in the film industry. Godzilla and King Kong are the type of monsters that are massively big and known to cause terror to large cities. You can also say a monster is something like Dracula, Freddy Krueger or just a murdering villain. In my mind, you can't always put a type of monster into a certain genre and this is a type of discussion that could last for a while.

Fitting into that long discussion should be the 1984 film Gremlins, a monster film in many ways. Inventor Randy Pultzer (Hoyt Axton) while in Chinatown gets an animal known as a mogwai as a early Christmas present for his son Billy (Zach Galligan). A mogwai could be described as very small and fury creature who's owner must observe strict rules regarding their handling or negative consequences will occur. For example, they can't be fed after midnight, can't be exposed to bright lights nor can they come into contact with water. If these rules are not observed basically you get "monster terror".

To say a mogwai is one certain type of creature would wrong. A mogwai is a type of creature that could appear in a Saturday morning cartoon or a family film but once those mogwai handling rules are broken, he turns into the exact opposite who could be something very R rated. It is then a type of creature wanting to cause harm to the town and also a very ugly looking thing. The actions scenes involving them interestingly combine horror and comedy. The scenes involving them are quite fun and also ahead of it's time with some great special effects.

 That said, there are some plot holes in these scenes. Being set at Christmas time, many of the action scenes are set in the snow. So how can the gremlins run through snow as they do when you know snow is filled with water which is against the mogwai rules? You can't feed a mogwai past a certain time but the film gives us no clue to what time zone we are in and if you think about it, anywhere in the world it's past midnight somewhere?

As any good film should do, this film give the cast many things to do. Billy is our leader and main fighter for the town. Phoebe Cates playing Kate Beringer is the Billy's love interest. She is very likable and also very sexy as always. Randall Peltzer is the father who I'm sure feels some sort of blame towards the creatures creating havoc in his town and his character does have some funny moments with his strange and worthless inventions. Even Corey Feldman shows up as the character Pete who is like your little brother in that he is highly annoying and just seems to roam around without direction but you like him though.
  

Gremlins apparently was one of the movies which introduced the PG-13 rating. It is a film that in some respects defines 1980's era films. It is a film that I enjoyed more when I was a little boy but the teenager in me still found something in it that I liked. Gremlins would surely work for a modern family audience today. This is a film that is as powerful then as it is now. Monster film joy.

4/5