“There goes my career in noodles” – Mr. Futterman
Gremlins (1984) opens like an old anthology horror comic as the inventor Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) ventures into Chinatown in search of a unique Christmas gift for his son Billy (Zach Galligan). A few moments later, back in the picturesque town of Kingston Falls, Billy is introduced. Director Joe Dante tracks Billy’s progress through a town just like Bedford Falls (even the names are similar), recreating the iconic shot of James Stewart in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life (1946).
Joe Dante’s holiday horror-comedy is a dense web of intertextuality; dialogue, shots, and scenarios reference other films in a post-modernist complex of images. Gremlins mixes elements of It’s A Wonderful Life, Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers (1956), and The Wizard Of Oz (1939) with direct references to those same films as well as Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs (1939), The Time Machine (1960), Orphée (1950), Forbidden Planet (1956) and To Please A Lady (1950). The Movie Orgy (1968) lives on in Gremlins, making it the most self-aware of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin productions at that point.
Joe Dante’s cinema functions like a collage as it brings together disparate elements from a dozen or more films to create a new escapist spectacle. And, like a collage, the various pieces of the film’s text suggest their origins, their context. Dante’s unmatched cinephilia makes him well equipped to deconstruct the history of cinema and then condense it into the wacky hijinks of a gaggle of pint-sized monsters. A post-modernist filmmaker such as Jean-Luc Godard would calibrate this elaborate operation to dissect a political quandary or investigate an aesthetic paradox, but, like Rand Peltzer, Dante employs his post-modernist operations to dream; to invent something “new”.
Gremlins, like so many of the Amblin films from the eighties, feels like a warm and cuddly family picture but it’s not. A side effect of Joe Dante’s singular style and voice is that he can make a dark and cynical film that, superficially, offers the spectator an abundance of gags and heartwarming characters. The world of Gremlins began in Chris Columbus’ script as a straight horror movie only to evolve into a horrific reimagining of Looney Tunes violence where the safety suggested by animation is supplanted by the comforting trappings of established cultural touchstones. Kingston Falls looks and feels like Capra’s America, but beneath that cozy veneer are the cruel machinations of capitalism and a rampant, casual jingoism.
The troubles and anxieties of the people of Kingston Falls are very real and often tragic. Yet, the casual way that these characters victimize or protect one another suggests an indebtedness to the goofball violence in animated comedies. The arrival of the titular Gremlins merely takes the want and desire for violent retribution that has existed as subtext and makes it the text. The jingoist paranoia and economic exploitation are acted out in maximalist gestures of Wyly Coyote proportions. Gremlins is hilarious and disturbing all at once. The outburst of mayhem that the Gremlins of Gremlins provides becomes a catharsis for an audience of middle and working class backgrounds.
The cathartic potential of Gremlins is largely why the film has maintained its status as a holiday classic. Beyond its production design and musical soundtrack, Gremlins is able to invite an audience under the economic and social strains of the holiday season to find temporary release in the adventures of Gizmo, Billy and Kate (Phoebe Cates). Gremlins is Joe Dante’s most compassionate film and that resonates throughout the film in a myriad of indetectable ways. The viewer relates to Billy and company because Joe Dante himself is so invested in these characters; particularly the dreamers and creators Billy and Rand.
