In 1984, director Joe Dante‘s Gremlins was such a scary PG movie that the PG-13 rating was created soon after.
It was a Christmas horror comedy about Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) and his new pet, Gizmo (voiced by Howie Mandel), a mystical creature called a mogwai.
When Billy failed to follow the mogwai rules, Gizmo accidentally spawned deadly gremlins that went on a rampage.
The sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, is set to leave HBO Max in a few days. It’s also our pick for the great movie you need to watch before it leaves in December.
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The Gremlins Special Effects Are Still Impressive
Gremlins and Gremlins 2 were both made before CGI animation became commonplace, which is why both heavily relied on puppetry to create the illusion of the mogwai and the gremlins. The sequel pushed things even further with more advanced puppets and designs, including the mutated gremlins that become more grotesque and bizarre.
The biggest accomplishment of the special effects team is the slightly redesigned Gizmo puppet, which had a much more emotionally expressive face. The mechanical puppet technology may be 35 years old, but most of it holds up really well. The gremlins aren’t as sinister as they were in the first film, but they have more personality in this flick.
It’s a Hilariously Meta Self-Parody
Dante was given complete freedom to make Gremlins 2 any way that he liked. What he really wanted to do was satirize and parody his own movie, and that’s exactly what he did. In the first film, Phoebe Cates’ Kate Beringer gives a dramatic monologue about the family trauma that caused her to hate Christmas. In the video above, Kate apparently had a similarly traumatizing event with an Abraham Lincoln actor, which is played for laughs here.
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Film critic Leonard Maltin hated the first Gremlins, but he was willing to repeat his review for the flick in this film right before the gremlins kill him. It doesn’t make any sense in the narrative of the movie, but Maltin’s last words make the gag worthwhile.
The entire movie is filled with meta humor like the scenes shown above, and Dante didn’t even bother to make this film feel serious. Warner Bros. handed him a much larger budget than his first film, and Dante repaid them with something that the executives probably weren’t expecting. Among the new cast members, John Glover had a very funny turn as Daniel Clamp, a wealthy executive modeled on Donald Trump and Ted Turner. His performance adds another comedic layer for the audience to enjoy, both then and especially now.
‘Gremlins 2’ Mixes Horror With Dark Comedy
As noted above, Gremlins 2 isn’t as violent as its predecessor, and it favors comedy over horror. While there aren’t as many nightmare–inducing images this time, Gremlins 2 still occasionally reminds its audience that they’re supposed to at least pretend to be scared.
Sometimes, the film’s attempts to tone down the violence by adding darkly comedic moments to go with it. The original movie did the same thing, but the gremlins were a little too terrifying. This time, Dante found the right approach by embracing the premise’s comedic potential. Over the last three-and-a-half decades, Gremlins 2 has become a fan-favorite. That may have gone a long way towards reviving the franchise with the recently announced Gremlins 3 film.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch is streaming on HBO Max.
