a look back at Gremlins
it’s now time for gremlins.
1. “bring your dog to work day”
2. “threatening to torture an animal, in public, is acceptable if you have a nice coat”
3. “these damn foreign cars”
4. Judge Reinhold.
5. mom is chopping six hundred onions.
i’m crying because I hate onions.
6. seriously, you can’t take someone’s dog for breaking your lawn ornament, even when this movie came out that was a bizarre set-up
seriously, even back then, a nice coat didn’t keep you out of trouble
?7. “I told you, everything is real”
sorry, we’re in the wrong suburb
8. Chinese people are broke too and yet so mysterious and mystical that ‘toothbrush’ is meaningless to them
seriously, motherfucker, we brush our teeth.
9. sunlight will kill the thing, it’s obviously a fuckin vampire
10. singing the alien hello song from ‘close encounters’ is also a bad sign
IT DOESN’T APPEAR IN MIRRORS EITHER
11.this guy is old enough to drink and have a bank teller job and lives with his parents, never draws and only once is it mentioned that he’s ‘artsy’, but he has unused art supplies in his room.
12. his friend is…9? years old? and also has a job.
we swear, he’s artsy, there are paintbrushes in the room, see?
13. corey feldman being a child, and still a terrible actor.
14. the dog. all movies have the free-roaming unleashed dog though. but then you wonder why the dog gets strung up or lost or anything. you let it roam freely when a neighboring sociopath wants to torture him. what?
15. this vampire alien from Chinatown makes babies and they try to bite you, so you…keep them and don’t bother to go ask the dude who gave you the thing to begin with, you go to a (strangely vivisectionist) elementary school science teacher instead.
16. also they’re mean and vicious animals so you let them roam around the house and…consider selling them as pets.
here’s your pet from hell, jimmy!
17. even a (seriously, he’s torturing that creature, wtf) low level science type person is going to call nasa or mufon the instant you bring them a self-replicating chinese alien vampire.
gremlin mengele.
18. foreign gremlins prevent your WWII vet plow’s ass from starting when you are drunk, thereby saving your life, so quit ragging on them. they’re basically mythical members of MADD
these damn foreign cars.
19. suicide. dead dad. great story, too bad the character with the interesting backstory is a chick and therefore may as well be a pretty lamp (oh yeah- I just remembered who directed this)
I am a sad lamp. You can’t tell from looking, so allow me to narrate the reason why.
20. seriously, that science teacher. what is UP. you’re not a biologist in a lab, why are you drawing blood? the hell? torturing it? I mean yeah it should for sure be in a cage along with the rest of the ‘bad’ ones, but seriously???
21. fried chicken. mogwai eat fried chicken. and baloney. that’s it.
22. you broke every rule in one day. the hell, the rest of the movie should be worse.
no,worse than this.
23. giant evil geiger pods in the house. keep em in the house, and don’t do a damn thing about it. they’re only alien vampire chinese rulemonsters that you’ve repeatedly violated.
24. everyone hates deagle. but it’s still legally ok for her to threaten and stalk a neighbor at his job, and talk about killing his dog. I want to reiterate: you could get arrested for that shit even in the 80s.
call the state police if your local cops are corrupt and lazy.
25. teacher (of evil) a cardboard box is not really a replacement for a cage. and turn on the damn lights.
26. candy bars never work. fuck there’s a lot of product placement going on in this movie.
27. not, oh it hatched, better go home and check on my mom and other pet…but oh it hatched, off to see Dr. Gremlinmengele I go?
oh, yeah. my adult son who lives at home…he’s just “artsy”. check out the sculptures he’s working on.
28. Mom battling gremlins is the best. But why did you let him keep that shit in your house!?
this is the best part of the movie.
29. sure kid, hang out in the empty police station, all us cops are leaving.
30. DEAGLE. her cats are named kopeck, dollarbill, etc.
31. deagle, deagle, deagle.
feeling SO charitable, because fucking seriously.
32. …gremlins are chinese. therefore, they’re the same as the japanese gremlins from WWII. when china was our ally. also it means they’re really good with electronics, of course.
All I know is they were from the Orient. Just let me watch It’s a Wonderful Life in peace.
33. cops in this movie: no shooting. just go home. alien chinese vampires are too much.
let’s just go home.
34. everyone driving top speed in the snow.
35. toothpick AND cigarette.
he does in fact have a toothpick AND a cigarette at the same time, one in each corner of his mouth. amazing acting work.
36. I’m going to pretend the entire bar scene never happened, I’m feeling charitable. Because I’d definitely serve beer to a hundred tiny aliens for hours, out of love for my job working alone in a dive bar with no human customers.
i’m feeling SO charitable.
37. the shitty town with bad cops and awful rules about dog torture totally deserves all that destruction. but it’s a bad time for the lamp to narrate her backstory monologue.
she’s just part of the scenery, a part that occasionally tells an unrelated anecdote. also, no jews live here.
38. the movie theater is damn good. based on the muppet show intro, engineered the same wonderful way. how the hell they know the lyrics before the movie starts will forever be a mystery to me though.
39. evil things always love disney. this is some heavy long-arc real-life foreshadowing, right here.
40. the backlit gremlins, those are awesome. now it’s sort of a horror movie for a split second?
good effects, all the puppetry in this was good actually.
41. “figure control record, hypnotism”
for sale now, in your local Mall! just in time for xmas!
42. holy fuck, the product placement. fuckin ET. quit kissing your own ass.
i don’t know, billy. it seems like the more things we buy, the emptier our lives FEEL.
44. crossbow wound, no big deal.
45. eeeewwwwaaaattttuuuhrrrrrrrr
46. that fuckin dog has no leash and it just jumps out of a moving car.
47. DON’T LOOK COVER YOUR EYES
48. jumpscares have always been a cheap copout.
49. ancient mystic asian man saves the day. because of course, foreign people and especially people of color, are just totally magical. and they hate television.
look man, I’ve got to walk all the way back to the City carrying this vampire pet.
50. ‘your society’… this could not be any more like an actual alien species, seriously. dude, he’s just chinese, not a master of the galaxy. also, old asian guys walk all the way back to chinatown.
although he does smoke a rad pipe.
Next: Critters.
