Movies-TV

Worth a look

Scary but funny monster movie. DVD review.An inventor gives his son a small cute furry pet. But there's some rules to keep, or else.Enjoyable movie that's too violent for young children. Why don't the gremlins breed when they're out in the snow? Movie references older ones including Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Snow White, It's a Wonderful Life, and Roger Corman - some of the cast appeared in his movies. There's some hilarious scenes especially the one where the woman on the stair-chair gets thrown out of the house. Another one was the gremlin in the blender. But when the gremlins turn nasty the movie gets boring as there's too many chaotic scenes of destruction. Why do the gremlins take on human behaviours. Was that Stephen Spielberg at the inventors' fair? One final point - the music over the closing credit has to be the worst I've heard - it sounded like someone playing a plastic Casio keyboard, very badly.Gremlins is an enjoyable black-horror-comedy that is a bit overlong.

Funny and cool mix of cute little pet and slimy, scary, but in some strange way charming monsters.

The plot is well known. This is a cultmovie that should be seen. At first its warm, sweet and cuddly. Like a christmas-carol. Suddenty you are into a wild chaos with slimy monsters taking over a small town. The sequel never feeled as cool as this one. Critters go to bed... THE GREMLINS ARE TAKING OVER!!!!!!!!! By the way, where is Gremlins 3?????

One of the best monster movies ever made

I was 13 years old when I first saw "Gremlins" way back when it first came out in theaters during the summer of 1984. That summer "Gremlins" played opposite several big hit movies such as "Ghostbusters", "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", and "The Karate Kid." All terrific movies. But "Gremlins" was my favorite of the bunch, and it still is today. One of the first films to come from Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, this horror/comedy directed by Joe Dante and written by Chris Columbus is great fun. It ranks up there with Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" as one of the great monster movies ever made. Forget those monster ripoffs that followed after this film became a box office smash. If you want to see a movie about little creatures on the rampage, see "Gremlins". It's scary, and very, very funny.**** (out of ****)

what you see.. isn't always what you get.

Keep it away from bright light.Don't ever get it wet.And no matter how much it cries or begs,never ever feed it after midnight.With these instructions,young Billy Peltzer takes possessin of his cuddly new pet, which he names Gizmo.When Billy slips up on following the rules,his picture-postcard hometown of Kingston Falls is in for a bizarre Chrismas Eve.The result a pack of devilish, mishief-making creatures is set loose--And that means yourwhole family is in for a roller-coaster ride of wild fun and fright.get ready for Gremlins-

The Orginal Furbies?

Joe Dante's hilarious Gremlins is an amazing speeding train of devious fun, amazing tongue & cheek humor, and entertaining film references that make this creature movie one heck of ride for parents and adults alike. The characters of Gizmo and Stripe are very memorable and last long in the memory after the movie's long over with. Who could forget the white haired Stripe saying "GIZMO", Gizmo riding around in a miniature remote control car, or the Gremlins having a bar fight. Gremlins has carved its own niche in American Pop Culture. Though there are some gruesome special effects, they are kept to a minimum, and the film's tone and excesses are perfect for children above the age of seven or eight to enjoy freely. It may be inferior to it's sequel, but Gremlins is filled with irrelevant comedy, quirky dark humor, and contagious energy that will entertain children of all ages.

As for the old DVD edition of Gremlins it contains a widescreen anamorphic presentation, a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track theatrical trailers, and certainly nothing else.

P.S. Watch out for when the Gremlins go to the movies.

IF U RATE THIS BELOW A 5....

Your the kind of person who didn't shed a tear when old yeller got blasted... This movie was made to be dumb... All your serious raters are like its too violent! WOW! I bet you don't let your kids watch cable! This movie is not too violent! You people are making me laugh! This movie is great! I'm in my 20's and I still love this movie! I don't care about the actors! The movie is great! You want a movie to diss, go see Jackass! This movie is a classic! I hope the visitors of Amazon have a sense of humor cause you love this movie!

Xenophobia

The hidden subtext of the Gremlins being a nuisance from World War Two and now being in everything shipped into America is both a true statement of US xenophobia and typical right-wing baloney (coming from a battle-scarred WW2 vet no less). This is most likely a Spielberg influence rubbing off into the script.Joe Dante is an underachiever. He never has made anything better and has only made things worse for himself by repeating the formula of this movie over and over. Character depth is nonexistant, leaving us with either stereotypes or cardboard prop-ups. You can tell she's an evil old lady because she has wrinkles and talks in a grim voice all the time. No Hannibal Lecter subtly here.Jerry Goldsmith does kiddy music here and, while it is different to hear him go from Patton and The Omen to this, it still leaves a nagging feeling that he'd been smoking too many joints with Danny Elfman. The first half of the film suffers from poor editing, but the second half marginally makes up for it.Overall, required viewing for children of the 80s. It's amazing how something so horrifically gruesome could be passed off as a PG movie back then. Yes, I count decapitations and microwave explosions to be gruesome.
You laugh, but you don't know why other than that it's different. 3 out of 5 stars. You could do worse and see Small Soldiers.

Furbies beware!!!!

The gremlins were first and I think they ought to do one these days where the gremlins get out and get the furbies but as for this film it is the one of the greatest movies to come from eighties. It's a kid's film but scary enough that adults will like it but yes you should be on hand for grabbing if a child wants to watch but maybe you should watch first and see if it's suitable for your child age. Some children are more sensitive than others are. My daughter seems to scare easily but she loved the gremlins. I loved it as a kid. It's great rooting for Gizmo and hoping he ends up all right. Hope you all enjoy it as much as my family. I try to share the classics of my youth with my children.

It's classic!

I've been watching this movie since I was about 5 years old! I used to jump into my bed because I was afraid there were gremlins under it. This movie is just plain awesome. How could anyone not like it? Its funny, cute, gross, scary and everything in between. If you don't own this movie, you are a sinner!

One of the better horror/comedies to come down the pike

GREMLINS (1984) ***1/2 Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Frances Lee McCain, Polly Holliday, Judge Reinhold, Dick Miller, Corey Feldman. B-movie monster flick updated with a tongue-in-cheek 80s approach with great results: hack inventor Axton picks up a cute, fuzzy Mogwai as an exotic pet for his teenage son for Christmas with only three catches: don't expose it to bright light, don't get it wet with water, and never, ever, feed it after midnight with naturally no one paying attention to these, resulting in mayhem with reptillian Gremlins taking over the small town they inhabit.
Great special effects by Chris Walas and pop culture-influenced screenplay by budding filmmaker Chris Columbus. Neat blend of horror and comedy, and yes that is Howie Mandel as the voice of cuddly Gizmo (The Giz!) Look quick for Steven Spielberg (in the inventors' convention sequence with sci-fi icon Robby the Robot) and Bugs Bunny animating genius Chuck Jones. ***Trivia note: this was the first film to receive a PG-13 rating by the MPAA for its surprisingly effective cartoon violence. Go figure. Directed with malicious glee by Joe Dante.

Who are we supposed to root for?

The Gremlins, of course: watch them wipe out everything you ever hated about 80s white American suburbia! This truly symbolizes the victory of evil Chinese neo-marxism over trite American capitalism... and on and on! I confess I don't believe any of the above nonsense, though seeing the Gremlins have their fun is the film's most enjoyable feature. This film was underrated by many because they either focus too much on the human protagonists (and this isn't about THEM!) or try to find a non-existant message and don't like it (see above raving). This is just a monster flick, with mean, stupid, twisted green freaks... and Gizmo... and if you look at it that way, it's a very good one (because Critters and the like are pure crap!) and sticks out. Only don't forget: the humans in it are pathetic and we aren't supposed to overlook that. This is about the Gremlins, just as King Kong was about the ape, not the people. So, hardly a masterpiece at all, but in the world of yucky creatures horror fests, this attempt is a very good one!

There are just three rules...

1) Buy GREMLINS. 2) Watch GREMLINS 3) Repeat #2 several times

Every time I surf the t.v. and I come across GREMLINS, I will put down the remote and watch it til the end. GREMLINS, for its time, was truly groundbreaking. It was E.T., except with really rotten friends and relatives. Well-paced and directed Joe Dante, with unique performances by Zach Galligan and the gorgeous Phoebe Cates, GREMLINS deftly treads in and out of suspense/horror and comedy. (Phoebe Cates' explication of how her father died is still outrageous.) And there are plenty of pitched battles between the good guys and the unruly gremlins to keep the plot moving. Just don't show this movie to young kids around Christmastime.

This special edition has a lot of goodies that true GREMLINS fans will enjoy, and the quality is top-notch. Just don't get it wet.

This movie deserves a 'thumbs up'!

With a clever storyline and well crafted animation this horror/comedy makes for an entertaining 1 1/2 hours. There are several cute scenes where you just can't help but laugh, but the dark and vivid violence ruins the chance of a family film. Whether you like it or leave it, this film is a classic!

Mostly fun; sluggish at points.

I had remembered this movie as much better than it really is, having been a huge fan of the sequel for years. Gremlins had a great concept, but it falls into an uncomfortable middle between children's movie and teenage comedy-horror, and the scripting and lighting are badly dated.

Chris Columbus script takes much of the blame for the insufferably cutesy small-townisms. The stereotypes portrayed in this movie are pretty nasty at their core -- for example, the black high-school science teacher is so incredibly dumb that it looks like a racial statement, and the character of Mrs. Beagle, the inhumanly sadistic widow, is neither believable nor funny. The pacing lags badly, and there is a sore lack of good dramatic scenes throughout the movie, especially in its languid second act before lead character Billy finally goes out into the town after the bad gremlins. Zach Galligan is only mildly interesting in the lead (he would really come into life in the sequel), and Phoebe Cates is mostly window dressing, while Judge Reinhold's part was cut down to, mostly, one barroom scene and then, unfeasibly, disappears from the film entirely.

When this movie tries to make the gremlins a real monster threat, it doesn't work all that well. On the other hand, Gremlins is hugely enjoyable when the gremlins are just acting like weirded-out humans. The bar scene at Dorry's with the gremlins getting drunk and acting out is mostly hilarious (although the dated Flashdance spoof is a bit much), and the creatures look great. Notably,Gizmo is less cutesy than he is in the second movie -- probably because the powers-that-be were trying to go for even more kid-oriented merchandising imagery in the second film.

While its flaws don't prevent Gremlins from being a pretty enjoyable movie overall, I felt this movie to be slow and a little thin almost two decades after I'd first seen it. But in 1989 the sequel would turn the franchise on its head and correct every flaw -- and then some.

timeless fun

How can something so sweet and cuddly as a Gremlin become so mean and angry like your own kids when they don't get what they want. The ideas behind this hilarious transformation are so marvellous you'd want to watch this one again and again - with or without your own kids present (who knows, they might get ideas). Gremlins is one of the funniest movies ever. A cult-classic.

A great movie with a lot of heart, humor, and ugly little monsters

Gremlins is a fantastic movie. I really like it. The plot to it is that an inventor goes to a Chinese street market and buys a cute, furry little creature called a mogwai for his son Billy. It multiplies into monsters called Gremlins, which terrorize the town. See, just reading the plot makes it sound great. The deaths are actually humorous (such as when a mean lady gets launched out her window by the Gremlins.) and so is the movie. The only reason I didn't give it a perfect 10 is that it can get old after a while, and in my opinion isn't the best dark comedy ever made.9/10

exciting, compelling and touching

Very compelling, an extremely touching ending with a great speech from the old Chinese man and touching speech about why Phoebe Cates doesn't like Christmas. Plenty of black humour to enjoy from the gremlins themselves and the old lady flying out of window. Character development for some of the characters not great but can be overlooked. Overall 10/10

One of my personal favorites...

Some films are not what they seem. Take "Gremlins" (1984) for example. It is the story of a small-town kid who acquires a strange creature that spawns a pack of menacing green beings that terrorize the inhabitants of the cheery little area.A silly idea, yes, but surely a fun one, and surely one to be cherished. It isn't technically a great movie, or even a very good one, but it doesn't mean to be. The genius lies in the modest scale of the film -- it isn't just a crude horror film with evil alien species (see "Critters"), but a tongue-in-cheek parody of the rest, that still manages to fit in a few thrills along the way as if by accident.Thank Joe Dante for this movie. And thank him for providing us with magnificent and imaginative films over the years. He is one of cinema's great underrated directors, the man responsible for bringing other creatures to life very often, whether it is werewolves or small toys or Looney Toons.The movie is centered around Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan), the small-town kid mentioned above who is handed a Mogwai by his father (Hoyt Axton), who picked the puffy furball up in Chinatown during one of his routine salesman trips. Billy's father is a sort of failed inventor, reminding us of the frizzle-haired Doc Emmett Brown played by Christopher Lloyd in "Back to the Future," only not quite as eccentric. "Back to the Future" came out a year after "Gremlins," and the two are similar in the way they entertain -- silly little ideas that nevertheless become almost genius. Time travel was a myth before "Back to the Future," which turned it into an adventurous notion, a way of being able to transport people back in time to see their own parents. (H.G. Wells himself hadn't even approached these topics, and I can guarantee he would have never sparked a relationship between the sibling and his mother.)"Gremlins" is milestone movie-making magic, a simple idea like "Back to the Future," stretched out into a bigger picture. I won't kid you -- it's not as complex as "Future" is, but it doesn't need to be, and certainly doesn't want to be. It relies on humor and charm, and it has plenty of it.Billy works at the town bank, hounded by the city grouch (Frances Lee McCain) and threatened by the vice president (Judge Reinhold). His long-time sweetheart (Phoebe Cates) works there, too, and at the local bar, occupied by drunks at night (and on occasion some nasty gremlins). The town loon (Dick Miller) is convinced there are gremlins about, and soon he is right."Don't ever get them wet," Billy is more or less told by his father. "And don't feed them after midnight." (See if you can spot the huge flaw in that rule.) Well, the small little Mogwai, Gizmo (voiced in burps and small cutesy sentences by Howie Mandel), does get wet, and spawns a set of fellow furballs -- all apparently mean-spirited and vile. And after tricking Billy by cutting the power on his clock, they get fed after midnight -- and basically evolve overnight into a bunch of green, nasty little gremlins, all of which continue to spawn throughout the town and cause absolute chaos.Will Billy defeat the gremlins, get the girl, and save the town? Take a wild guess.Everything Joe Dante touches is usually magic. Even his live-action/animation film "Toy Soldiers" was a load of fun because of its charming disposition. Dante doesn't try to make his films anything other than what they are -- charming and wildly, wickedly funny -- and that is undoubtedly the key to the outrageous success of "Gremlins," one of the biggest box office moneymakers ever released.I wasn't a huge fan of the sequel, even though I have it in my DVD collection right next to the original. It lost the darkness of campiness of the original and went for all-out laughs (many of which failed) instead of the laugh-out-loud laughs of the original, which were concealed within a film that actually made sense (in some ways) and still managed to be dark and fun. The sequel also introduced the mandatory Goofy Idiot Character. In fact, it had two -- a Donald Trump-like manager and a gremlin that more or less belonged in The Three Stooges, and definitely not in a movie about menacing creatures. In fact, another of the first film's highlights was the way it made its creatures dark, hurtful, and just plain funny. (People complained that the launching of Frances Lee McCain out a window was too much, but come on.)As a whole, I didn't think that the sequel worked especially well. But it has as big a fan following as the original in some respects, for those who favor goofy, pointless cash-ins over original, hysterical movies.I wouldn't expect many people to love "Gremlins" as much as I do, but its charm is certainly worth commenting on -- and so is its wicked humor. Dark, chaotic and pretty darn infectious, the film's sense of humor quickly kicks into boot even during the campy voice-over narrative. The whole film is campy. And unlike something like "Critters" (which I loathe), this film is endearing and fresh and funny and has a bunch of likable characters -- especially Gizmo, the favorite and most infamous little critter ever seen on screen, and Stripe, the lead gremlin whose unfortunate frying incident at the end of the film actually makes you sad. No sequel for that little creep.5/5 stars.- John Ulmer

Unmatched originality

" So the next time your refrigerator goes on the fritz, don't call a repairman. You just never know, there might be a gremlin in the house. "These are the words to end Gremlins. And after the rollercoaster ride that the film has just put us through, they are the perfect way to end the film.
These creatures are perhaps the funniest and most entertaining little ghouls I have ever seen. They act like spoiled rotten little rich kids. These gremlins could be human characters in books by Steven King. They are not just mischeivious, they are down right mean, hilarious, awful, cruel and carefree. Their idea of a good time is to spit up nasty loogies, flash people, swing from light fixtures, play poker, drink to annebriation, bite, claw, scratch and kill. If you haven't seen this film, you have no idea what you are missing. I think this is one of the most original films, on par with Star Wars in terms of originality. Neither film has been imitated.
You just can't do it. Not only is this film entertaining and a little scary, but it is unbelievably funny. And I think the hilarity stems from watching these varments act crazy. They don't give a rat's ass about anything or anyone.
They do what they please when they please and they are oblivious to the consequences of their actions. There is one scene where they are attacking a Santa Clause and they are just hanging off him like he is a toy. They are just terrorizing him. They probably won't kill him, but they sure will scare the hell out of him. They are also incredibly juvenile in their speech. They seem to have a firm grasp of the English language but they speak like babies. "Deagle, YUM YUM!" or when they see Gizmo at one point, they whisper, "Gizmo, Caca" Gremlins has one of the most amazing production teams assembled. It was directed by Joe Dante, produced by the Amblin people ( Kennedy, Marshall and Spielberg ) and written by Chris Columbus. No wonder this is a top notch production. With people like this that have the propensity for success, I'm sure great pains were taken to get everything right. And it shows.Gremlins is a film that I don't think can be imitated and that is because any attempt to make a film like this again and you would be accused of duplicating it. So this may actually go down in history as one of the only films out there that doesn't have a clone.9 out of 10 One of the best film to come out of the 80's. Watch for a funny line in Goonies when Chunk is calling the cops to report the Fratelli's and the cop says to him, "Sure, sure, just like the time you called and told us about the little green monsters that were attacking you." Same production team and also Corey Feldman was in both films. That is a great connection. This is just pure fun.

A classic film

I first saw this film when I was 5 and I am ashamed to say that it scared me. It's just a tad too violent and scary for younger children but it's great family entertainment and there are dozens of in-jokes for film-buffs to spot. Not only is Gremlins a very original and inventive film the animatronic effects are ahead of it's time and way cool. Anyone who is not totally overcome by Gizmo's cuteness and his cool little song must have a heart of stone. The gremlins themselves are nothing but big grins with arms and legs. Their idea of having fun is smashing everything. Who can't agree with and identify with that. I have never seen any of the cut scenes and I hope that in a future DVD special edition they will be included along with the sub-plot about Mrs. Deagle building a Nuclear Power plant in Kingston Falls.This was one of Joe Dante's first movies and you can tell that everything he grew up with and movies he studied as a child are on-screen in Gremlins. A perfect movie made by the right director.