Welcome to this week’s edition of the Nerd Review!  Every week the Nerds give you their take on a different classic from the Nerdosphere.  This week Dave and Patrick begin their holiday film reviews with that classi Christmas Horror-Comedy Gremlins!

The Flick:  Gremlins

What’s it About:  Billy Peltzer receives an exotic pet called a Mogwi from his father for Christmas.  Although adorably cute the Mogwi comes with three vital rules that must always be followed.  When Billy breaks these rules, he unleashes destructive creatures called gremlins on his unsuspecting community.  It’s up to Billy, his girlfriend Kate, and his Mogwi Gizmo to stop them.

Metacritic Score: 74

The Nerds’ Take on Gremlins (1984):

Patrick: For the month of December the Bandwagon has agreed to review some holiday flicks, but of course we aren’t going to tackle twaddle like It’s a Wonderful Life.  No sir, we are nerds and so will review sour kind of movies.  Up this week is the classic Steven Spielberg production Gremlins.

Young Billy Peltzer is given a unique creature called a Mogwi as a gift by his father for Christmas.  Purchased in Chinatown, the Mogwi, named Gizmo, comes with three very specific rules.  First, don’t expose them to sunlight.  Two, don’t ever get them wet.  And third never, under any circumstance, feed them after midnight.  Unfortunately, Billy accidently gets Gizmo wet and quickly learns that Mogwi multiply in water creating more Mogwi.  And while Gizmo is a sweet, fun loving creature, the new Mogwi have something sinister in mind.  They trick Billy into feeding them after midnight.  This causes the new Mogwi to transform into evil little monsters called Gremlins.  These Gremlins proceed to wreak havoc all over town and it is up to Billy, Gizmo, and Billy’s girlfriend Kate to stop them.

Here’s the thing I love about Gremlins: it manages to be both genuinely funny and genuinely scary.  Chris Columbus (future director of child friendly films like Harry Potter 1 and 2) wrote the screenplay and blends the comedy with some truly dark elements found in horror films very, very well.  The sequence where the audience is first introduced to the gremlins is quite suspenseful and at times terrifying.  Billy’s mom is alone in her home being stalked by these hidden creatures.  There is no sound in the scene and it creates an atmosphere of impending doom as you wait for an inevitable jump scare.  These tense moments are followed up again as Billy and Gizmo chase lead gremlin Stripe to an empty YMCA.  Again there is no music just classic bum in the night noises to keep the audience on edge.  Director Joe Dante, along with Columbus, easily could have kept this mood throughout the film.

But they don’t.  As the film progresses things start to get more than a little silly.  Strip manages to jump into a swimming pool and create hundreds of these gremlins to run rampant all over this small town.  Many of them invade a bar and here the audience is given it’s first taste of the various personalities these creatures can carry.  There are break dancers, flashers, poker players, and even one wielding a goofy puppet.  Many of the gremlins are played up for laughs even as they cause mayhem.  When the gremlins all break into a movie theater to watch Disney’s Snow White it makes for one truly funny little scene.

The cast of Gremlins is solid with the biggest name of the bunch being a tossup between Phoebe Cates as Kate, or a young Corey Feldman as neighbor kid Pete.  Zach Galligan does relatively well as Billy, but his performance isn’t particularly memorable.  The real stars of the movie, of course, are Gizmo and the gremlins.  For 1984 the puppetry and animatronics are top notch, although it is clear much more time and attention was given to Gizmo over the gremlins.  This makes total sense given the number of puppets involved.  The puppetry would hit a whole different level in Gremlins 2, but that is a review for a different day.

For this review, Gremlins, should be regarded as a fun little horror-comedy that was great for its time.  The effects haven’t aged particularly well, but hey it was 1984.  The film has some scary moments and may be a bit intense for younger viewers, but the silliness can offset the scary.  My eight year old son jumped a little, but was driven from the room and found the gremlins goofy.  So, if you’re looking for something a little different during this run of holiday specials, Gremlins certainly fits the bill.  An enjoyable film and worth the time to watch.

Patrick’s Rating: 3.75/5

Dave: Last week, the BWN Nerd Review unofficially began its tour of Holiday movie classics with Planes, Trains & Automobiles. This week, we officially enter the Christmas season by reviewing 1984’s Gremlins. Gremlins tells the story of Randall Peltzer, a less-than-successful inventor who ventures into a store in Chinatown in an unnamed city, on Christmas Eve. While there, he encounters a furry, Furby-like, creature known as a mogwai. Randall wants to buy the mogwai for his son but the elderly store-owner won’t sell it because owning a mogwai carries a great deal of responsibility. The younger grandson, however, is not so discerning and gladly accepts the $200. As he gives the mogwai to Randall, he informs him of three very crucial rules regarding the creature: (1) Keep him out of bright light, especially sunlight; (2) Never get him wet or even give him water to drink; and (3) Never feed him after midnight. With rules like that, what can go wrong, right?

If you answered everything, you are correct. Randall’s son Billy loves his new pet and names him Gizmo. Gizmo is just the cutest thing there is. Think Baby Yoda (or Grogu now if you want to be technical about it) levels of cute some 35 years earlier. When water is accidentally spilled on Gizmo though, we find out that when mogwais get wet, they spontaneously emit furry clones from their bodies. The clones, however, have a much more mischievous air about them and the leader, Stripe, soon outsmarts Billy into feeding them after midnight. This triggers a metamorphosis in the mogwai. They evolve from adorable furry creatures to dragon-like, highly-dangerous, and rather homicidal beings, known as gremlins. Stripe is able to elude an early attempt at capture and leaps into a swimming pool at the local YMCA setting off a chain of events that is equal parts hilarious and horrifying.

Make no mistake: The only thing Christmassy about Gremlins is that it takes place during Christmas. It is a textbook example of a black/dark comedy. The gremlins themselves seem very much like Muppets gone terribly wrong. They are enormously funny and full of mischief. They are driven by an insatiable need for food, especially those of the sweeter variety.  The scene where they take over Dorry’s Tavern is particularly memorable. But the gremlins also have a much darker side to them and have zero qualms about killing someone purely for the sake of killing. Gizmo, meanwhile, never changes and ends up in a heroic role as he ends up saving Billy at a point where things look rather bleak.

The movie is an enormous amount of fun. It has its disturbing moments, to be sure, and it came out at a time before a PG-13 rating existed. But, compared to modern standards or just about anything anyone sees on You Tube on a daily basis, it is rather tame. The gremlins are clearly the stars of the movie, but the humans are quite good as well. Zach Galligan played Billy and does just fine in this role. Phoebe Cates plays Kate, Billy’s love interest. Up until this movie, she had been best known for an iconic scene in Fast Times At Ridgemont High. Yeah, you know the one…. don’t act like you don’t. But in Gremlins, Cates showed she was more than a pretty face as she delivered a solid performance, particularly when she describes the nightmarish reason she hates Christmas. Polly Holliday is fantastic as the vile and detestable Mrs. Deagle. But, those performances aside, it is the personality injected into the gremlins that makes the movie memorable, and this is particularly true during the climactic final battle between Stripe and Billy.

Gremlins is one of those rare movies that can make you laugh and cringe at the same time. The special effects do not hold up so well by modern standards as the gremlins look a bit too plastic. But in 1984, they were definitely disturbing creations. Gizmo, on the other hand, has a timeless quality to him and anyone watching The Mandalorian will easily see the influence of this movie on that series. The movie is not without its problems though. The main one is that the rules do not make much sense. How exactly does an organic life form, especially one as complex as a mogwai, survive without being able to drink water, but can survive by drinking beer, which is predominantly water? And the feeding after midnight thing…. midnight comes every night. At what time of the day does it then become safe to feed them again? And what exactly is a mogwai? Where do they come from? There was a sequel, but it really did not explain much as far as these issues were concerned.

All that aside though, the movie was a commercial success and most critics loved it. It got a bad rap from parents who were not expecting the violence that was depicted. But for most everyone else, the movie was enormous amounts of fun mixed in with some darker moments. Is it a Christmas Classic? No. But it is still a damn good movie and a classic in its own right. This is another one Big Dave highly recommends.

Dave’s Rating: 4/5

Overall Nerds Rating on Gremlins (1984):  3.8/5