GREMLINS: 4K UHD Blu-ray (Warner Bros./Amblin, 1984) Warner Home Video

The horror/comedy, something of a hybrid main staple ever since Abbott and Costello first encountered Dracula in 1949, arguably reached its zenith with director, Joe Dante’s disturbingly sublime contemporary fairy-tale, Gremlins (1984); a cautionary story about a young man’s naïve disregard for the sanctity of another life form and the inevitable fallout that results in abject chaos for the idyllic hamlet of Kingston Falls. Gremlins was Warner Bros. big Christmas offering of the year, and, in hindsight, its quaint holiday milieu, suddenly under siege by a seemingly innocuous pet turned into its owner’s worst nightmare, then made for a thoroughly scary – yet adventurous – good popcorn muncher. Gremlins hails from an optimistic epoch in American picture-making; the industry, bloodied but unbowed, and emerging from a fallow period in the late 1970’s – all its corporate-merging angst, hypothesized as the end of an era - suddenly replaced with a silly sanguinity for having one of their own firmly ensconced in the White House. Ronald Reagan – he did the movies good. So, without adieu, it was let the wacky good times of a new generation roll, simply for want to break out and have a lot of fun. Gremlins had the great good fortune of being produced by Steven Spielberg, then – one of the hottest young directors to emerge on the scene, thanks to mega hits delving into both horror - Jaws (1975) and, the supernatural; E.T. – The Extra-terrestrial (1982).  A little of each is on tap in Gremlins, written by Chris Columbus, who based his modern legend on the time-honored tradition of gremlin-sightings, dating all the way back to WWII.  Although squarely aimed at the tiny tot sect, both in its marketing and merchandising campaigns – especially promoted, Gizmo - the furry little mogwai, deemed a suitable Christmas gift by a failed inventor while visiting Chinatown – Gremlins actually emerged as a much more adult, and frankly scary affair.

I was thirteen in 1984, and can remember going to see Gremlins at the show one snowy night, crammed into a cavernous movie palace, slightly gone to seed, with my dad on one side, and then best friend on the other; buffeted on all sides by a sold-out crowd of other kiddies my age with their parents, who were decidedly not prepared for the moment when these cute and cuddly little fur balls suddenly transforming into hellish, green and reptilian monsters, with winged ears and fangs drawn to inflict maximum casualties on their unsuspecting human wranglers. The sight of the crippled old crone, Ruby Deagle (Polly Holliday) jet-propelled to her death through an upstairs window by a deliberately short-circuited stair-lift, or our hero, Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) being stabbed in the chest by Stripe, the dastardly evil leader, with a common rake inside the otherwise abandoned hardware department at the mall – mercifully to survive this assault and save the day – were two scenes in particular so intensely shocking for their time, I remember cringing behind the chair directly in front of me, and walking back to my dad’s car after the houselights had come up, somewhat shell-shocked by the experience of seeing Gremlins for the first time, looking over my shoulder for any suspicious-looking footprints in the new falling snow, accompanying us back home. Kids – they’re so impressionable!

But in reviewing Gremlins today – and, in 4K – at the age of 48, I was taken right back to that spine-chilling streak of fear from my youth; Warner Home Video’s newly inaugurated ultra-hi-def re-visitation, rekindling the jolly good fear factor that made Gremlins a very worth-while movie-going experience in its day. Difficult to suggest if most thirteen-year-olds today would be as unnerved by the picture. And truth to tell, the special effects – then considered state-of-the-art in full-scale puppetry and audio-animatronics – are ably abetted by John Hora’s sublime and moody cinematography. This can make even a local pub or the back half of a movie screen projecting images of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, about to be slashed asunder by the claw-happy clan appear as unsettling as the most cobwebbed and candle-lit haunted castle in Transylvania.  The deliciously perverted scares in this exercise were further offset by Jerry Goldsmiths’ playful underscore – the Gremlins’ theme, with its discordant bounce and bustle – somewhat minimizing the carnage as Kingston Falls became overrun with these little green buggers up to no good. Despite its critical and commercial success, Gremlins was heavily criticized for its ‘realistic’ depictions of violence. In defense of Dante’s creative decisions, Spielberg suggested the Motion Picture Association introduce a new rating to its scale, which they did barely 4 months after Gremlins’ release: PG-13 officially becoming ‘a thing.’

Gremlins emerged just as the cycle for horror/comedies was once again in vogue – thanks to the debut and runaway success of Ghostbusters, released barely six months earlier.  Laughter through fear is a bizarre emotional tightrope to balance, plucking the human psyche without ever delving into camp. Even if the notion of gremlins had long been established, dating all the way back to explain away mysterious mechanical failures incurred by the RAF during WWII, the term itself did not enter the popular lexicon until the 1943 publication of children’s author, Roald Dahl’s The Gremlins. Dahl’s light and spirited adventure then had caught the eye of Walt Disney, who briefly toyed with the idea to make it into a movie. The mischievous little creatures then appeared in a Looney Tunes cartoon – Falling Hare, pitting Bugs Bunny against a rather effete little green guy, trying to wreck his airplane. From here, it was only a brief hop, skip and jump to alter the playful nature of the beast into the far more sinister, and now iconic, Twilight Zone episode, ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’ in which a shell-shocked William Shatner, during a terrific in-flight electrical storm, is powerless to convince the plane’s crew that their engines are being sabotaged by a winged gremlin riding shotgun.  For Gremlins, Dante wanted a slightly altered approach to these creatures – not necessarily evil, but deliciously dangerous, while indulging in their mischievous handiwork. The story, as originally conceived by Chris Columbus was never meant to be made into a movie, but rather, Columbus’ audition to show potential executives he had what it took to be a screenwriter. Instead, and almost immediately, the property garnered steam and interest from Spielberg who thought it “…one of the most original things I've come across in many years.”

Selecting Dante to direct, Spielberg was well aware his career had entered a curious slump after the release of The Howling (1981). Aside: Dante’s involvement with Gremlins would be extended to Spielberg’s other big-budgeted project: an anthology movie based on Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1983) that unfortunately claimed the lives of two child actors; My-Ca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, as well as its star, Vic Morrow, after a failed stunt caused a helicopter to crash onto the set, instantly decapitating the trio. Jon Landis, the director of this sequence, Spielberg and several others were brought up on charges, but later exonerated of any wrong doing. Mercifully, on the set of Gremlins, everything went relatively smooth. Even so, Columbus’s original vision was much darker; depicting, among other things, Billy's mother Lynn (Frances Lee McCain) dying from her confrontation with the gremlins, her severed head rolling down the stairs just as Billy arrives home; the family’s beloved dog, Buster, being eaten by the fiends at a McDonald’s. In the final reshaping of the plot, Spielberg also decided the instigator of this mayhem, Stripe would be his own entity. In Columbus’ original draft, Gizmo suffered this Jekyll-to-Hyde transformation, turning into Stripe and dying horribly in the end. Despite these revisions, Dante held firm and fought like hell to keep a particular scene in the movie: one that borrows from an infamous urban legend. Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates) confides in her boyfriend, Billy that the reason she hates Christmas is because her late father, having decided to surprise the family by coming down the chimney as Santa Claus one year, instead broke his neck in his descend, but remaining stuck inside the fireplace, unbeknownst to anyone until the stench from his decomposing body was later discovered by police investigating the ‘missing person’s’ claim filed by Kate’s mother.  While Spielberg could have pulled rank here and ordered the scene removed, he respected Dante’s creative decisions enough to stand by him, and, against the executives who thought the scene either played as too serious or too comical to be believed.

Interestingly, Spielberg cast Zach Galligan as Billy Peltzer on blind-faith alone; Galligan having no experience as yet, but, as Spielberg could tell from his screen test with Cates, “…already in love with her” – an essential quality for the pair’s on-screen chemistry. Convincing execs to cast Galligan was a cinch compared to Cates’ who had made quite a splash playing the sexually-charged Linda Barrett in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).  Herein, she needed to be virginal and, true to her skills as an actress, pulled off precisely this coup. To aid his two stars, Spielberg padded the central cast with a slew of veterans, including Glynn Turman as Roy Hanson, the curious science teacher whose study of a newborn mogwai leads to his death after it forms a cocoon and emerges as a vicious gremlin. Other roles went to Dick Miller (as Murray Futterman), Keye Luke (as Mr. Wing), Polly ‘kiss my grits’ Holliday (as crotchety realtor, Mrs. Deagle), Howie Mandel (heard, though never seen as the voice of Gizmo) and, Hoyt Axton, who made an indelible impression as Rand – the laidback inventor who also happens to be Billy’s dad and the unwitting instigator of this debacle. Of the newcomers, only Corey Feldman as Pete Fountaine, would go on to establish himself as a credible child star.  Production was divided between scenes on the Universal and Warner backlots; Dante, dousing acres of free-standing sets in fake snow. Designer, Chris Walas created the exceptionally detailed latex puppets, some mechanical, others using invisible wires, to represent both the benevolent mogwai and their wicked counterparts. The work was not without its failures; the Gizmo mechanical puppet in particular, and due to its condensed size, constantly breaking down. For extreme close-ups of the mogwai and the gremlins, marionettes were used instead, as more detailed emotions could be conveyed by building bigger models with far greater detail. While Howie Mandel became the voice of Gizmo, Frank Welker managed the more sinister tones of Stripe truly terrifying, with remaining voices borrowed from Michael Winslow, Peter Cullen, Bob Bergen, Fred Newman, Mark Dodson, Bob Holt, and Michael Sheehan.

Gremlins begins with an idyllic prologue; Randall Peltzer, preparing to return from an inventor’s convention near Chinatown with an early Christmas gift for his son, Billy. Encountering the aged mystic, Mr. Wing in a used goods emporium, Rand is amazed by his compatriot, a tiny ball of brown and tan fur, curious and charming, intelligent and affectionate. Despite the creature’s virtues, Wing cautions the mogwai (Cantonese for ‘the devil’) is not for sale. Besides, its species comes with dire consequences if three simple rules are not strictly obeyed.  To any and all objections, Rand merely throws more money at Mr. Wing who absolutely refuses to sell Gizmo. However, Wing’s grandson has no compunction in accepting Rand’s money, although forewarning him the mogwai must not be exposed directly to bright lights, or water, and, under no circumstances, are they to be fed after midnight.  Predictably, all three adherences will be broken after midnight once Gizmo is placed in Billy’s care. Meanwhile, back in Kingston Falls, Billy diligently works part-time as a bank teller, secretly fearing his beloved dog will be condemned by the bitter dowager; local realtor, Mrs. Deagle. Overjoyed with his new pet, Billy shares it with his best friend, Pete, who promptly spills a glass of water over Gizmo. The result; five more mogwai spawn from Gizmo’s back. Alas, these offspring are not as passive as Gizmo – the worst of the lot; Stripe – aptly nicknamed because of his white mohawk. Curious to know more about his pets, Billy shows one of the mogwai to his former science teacher, Mr. Hanson who deliberately spawns another mogwai from it on which to experiment. That night, Stripe tricks Billy into feeding them after midnight by severing the power cord on his bedside alarm clock. The mogwai regress into cocoons as does Hanson’s back at the lab. Shortly thereafter, these cocoons hatch. Alas, the mogwai are no longer cuddly, but scaly reptilian monsters who set about torturing Gizmo. They almost succeed at murdering Billy’s mother too. Meanwhile, unaware of their transformations, Hanson returns to his laboratory to find his newly hatched gremlin escaped. It promptly kills him.

Mrs. Peltzer manages to dispose of all the gremlins at her house – one, in the blender (splat!), another in the microwave (more splat!!), but misses her opportunity to be rid of Stripe, who escapes to the local YMCA and, upon leaping into its pool, sets off a hellish birth of hundreds more, who begin their assault on Kingston Falls. Billy tries to warn the police. Naturally, no one believes him, not even Sheriff Frank Reilly (Scott Brady); that is, until the gnarled old hag, Mrs. Deagle, having been strapped into her chair lift, is expelled at warp speed through the upstairs’ window of her mansion, landing with a thud and quite dead on top of the Sheriff’s police cruiser. As Billy struggles to rid the town of its pestilence, he suddenly realizes Kate is in terrible danger. Indeed, the gremlins have already invaded the pub where she tends bar; Kate, keeping the little green monsters at bay by plying them with strong drink to get them intoxicated. When it appears as though the gremlins are about to murder Kate as well, she remembers one of the rules and begins to use camera flash bulbs to ward them off. Billy, who has freed Gizmo from a dart board where he was being used by the others for target practice, rescues Kate; the threesome taking refuge inside the bank. Chaos suddenly gives way to an even more ominous silence. Suspecting something is afoot, Billy discovers all of the gremlins have assembled inside the local theater, enthralled by watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Billy gets an idea; to keep the gremlins preoccupied by the movie, and trap them inside while setting off an explosion behind the screen, certain to wipe out the entire clan. Regrettably, the movie runs out before Billy and Kate have finished installing their home-made bomb. Seeing their shadows on the other side of the screen, the gremlins turn vicious and leap onto the proscenium, tearing through the screen just as Billy, Kate and Gizmo escape through the back door, setting off a horrific explosion that tears apart the movie house and decimates the avenging monsters; all, except Stripe, who is spotted heading towards the Montgomery Ward department store where he plans to leap into its lawn and garden fountain to spawn again. Determined to put an end to Stripe, Gizmo drives a toy car towards the skylight, presently concealed by a heavy curtain. Opening the curtain at precisely the moment when Stripe jumps into the water, the resulting sunlight effectively cooks Stripe and his burgeoning offspring alive. Billy arrives and is momentary startled as a decaying Stripe makes one last attempt to attack him before totally corroding before his very eyes. In the aftermath, Mr. Wing reclaims Gizmo. He scolds the Peltzers and suggests western world is not ready for the mogwai. However, impressed by Billy’s valor, Mr. Wing hints that perhaps someday, Billy might take on the responsibility of caring for Gizmo full time. As the two have bonded over their nightmarish adventures, Billy and Gizmo bid one another goodbye.

For those of us old enough to have lived through it the first time, Gremlins likely remains a clever, and oft wickedly edgy parable about man’s misuse of the natural world and the impending legacy of doom it can perpetuate through rank carelessness. Dante’s direction is pretty swift here. He is going for the adventure strain of a carnival dark ride. And, with its twists and turns, navigating through the streets, back alleys and byways of Kingston Falls with Formula-1 speed, Dante achieves precisely the sort of rollicking roller coaster ride that, at least in the eighties, wholly satisfied. Today, the picture feels somewhat dated – yet surprisingly, not for its special effects. Despite the lack of full finesse – no CGI – or perhaps, because of it, Gremlins just feels real and genuinely spooky besides. In hindsight, it’s Chris Columbus’ screenplay that lets us down. We have come a long way from the one-premise narrative that used to fill run times, theater seats, and ultimately, our hearts and minds. Viewed today, Gremlins just seems to lack substance. Okay – it’s not Shakespeare, or Citizen Kane. It was never intended to be, and does not have to be, to work. Alas, the human characters have very little to say to each other; their modus operandi, merely to react to the crisis at hand and, if they can, survive it. Deconstructing the picture’s nimble premise, one would have to concur that whatever mayhem resulted throughout the night would have resolved itself by dawn’s first light, as no mogwai or gremlin could withstand the power of the sun. My inner Hitchcock is stirred. “Hey, it’s only a movie!”  But Gremlins is still a lot of fun, regardless of its shortcomings. You could do a lot worse, looking for ways to bypass Thanksgiving and go straight from Halloween to Christmas with one or two good scares along the way.

Gremlins was shot on film in 1.85:1 Panavision. For its 4K UHD Blu-ray debut, Warner Home Video has gone back to the original camera negative, graded for dynamic range in HDR10. Gremlins was never intended to appear smooth and clean. Indeed, part of its allure is the earthiness in John Hora’s cinematography and that is just what we get here: thick grain, fine detail and an abundantly rich and multi-layered image full of eye-popping colors. Opticals (titles and SFX) remain soft, but most everything else here has a polished sheen of ultra-clarity we have come to expect from a 4K release.  Contrast is a tad weak. Blacks are more deeply gray than black. But contrast is superior during daytime photography, and, at night, draws out the moody afterglow from Christmas lights. The 5.1 DTS audio appears to be a direct port over from the previous Blu-ray edition, offering excellent clarity and lightly atmospheric touches, surely never to disappoint. The 4K disc contains two previously available audio commentaries from 2009; the first, featuring Joe Dante, Michael Finnell, and Chris Walas; the second, again with Dante, accompanied by cast members Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, and Howie Mandel. Of the two, the first is the more comprehensive offering; the latter, mostly a shameless reason for old friends to get together and wax affectionately about the making of the movie. We also get the original 2009 Blu-ray release – not remastered from this 4K scan. But it contains virtually all of the other extras as before: an all-too-brief ‘behind the scenes’ (it barely lasts 6-min.) plus 10-min. worth of deleted scenes, a photo gallery and trailers for this and the woeful sequel – Gremlins 2: The New Batch – that ought to be avoided at all costs.  For something billed as a 35^th anniversary, personally, I expected some new extras. Oh well, it’s the 4K offering that counts. Warner has met and even exceeded its usual high standards here. So, judge and buy accordingly. Bottom line: recommended.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

2