Gremlins

Tags

1980's, Dark Comedy, Frances Lee McCain, Gremlins, Horror, Hoyt Axton, Joe Dante, Phoebe Cates, Polly Holliday, Zach Galligan

Film Title

Gremlins

Director

Joe Dante

Starring

• Zach Galligan as Billy Peltzer
• Phoebe Cates as Kate Beringer
• Hoyt Axton as Rand Peltzer
• Frances Lee McCain as Lynn Peltzer
• Polly Holliday as Mrs. Deagle

A comic horror set at Christmas, Gremlins makes for deliriously entertaining and twisted viewing after all these years. Time has not diminished both the dark humour and shocks of this Yuletide movie that has a deliciously morbid way of subverting things. This movie is perfect for Christmas viewing with an edge and has lost none of the strange charm it had upon release.

Billy Peltzer is a young man working at a bank in his hometown of Kingston Falls. It’s a largely uneventful, suburban town that is about to become anything but peaceful as Christmas approaches. His inventor and travelling salesman father Rand returns from a trip bearing an unusual gift; a fluffy creature known as a Mogwai. Billy is entranced by this present that he names Gizmo and is very grateful, yet his father warns him that he must obey three rules to do with the new pet. He shouldn’t expose it to bright light, he mustn’t get it into contact with water and most important, don’t feed it after midnight. Billy is understandably thrilled with Gizmo and spends a lot of time with the guy. But through accidental carelessness, Billy violates the rules and after getting Gizmo wet, he spawns creatures that resemble him. At first these creatures appear to be just like the furry Gizmo, but they trick Billy into  feeding them after midnight which has dire consequences. The creatures go from cute and cuddly into scaly, greedy beasts known as Gremlins, whose only goal is full on chaos. Once more of the creatures have spawned, they lay siege to the town with murderous glee and maniacal destruction in mind. With the Gremlins running wild and terrorizing the sleepy town, it’s up to Billy and his girlfriend Kate(whose quick thinking comes in handy) to stop the maniacal creatures once and for all.

Joe Dante behind everything with his excellent direction of the shocking but wholly engrossing material. One can tell he is relishing the destruction of suburbia with unusual and twisted ways being employed by the title creatures. Dante has his tongue firmly in cheek for this outing and I’d all the better for it. Shots of black humour colour so much of Gremlins that you can’t imagine the movie without it there. Irony and juxtaposition play a significant role in making Gremlins so wildly watchable and full of mayhem. For instance, the fact that such nasty little critters spawn from one of the cutest things put on screen is deliciously arch. And the various filmic references( Snow White makes an appearance as the Gremlins take a break from their carnage to sing along with it) are very much in keeping with Dante’s pop culture nods that regularly appear in his movies. Plus, while the town of Kingston Falls looks lovely, some of the residents are far from pleasant. Billy’s neighbour is a xenophobic man, but worst of the bunch is the penny-pinching old bag Mrs. Deagle. These two people are ones that are targeted first by the Gremlins, in a sort of grim poetic justice. I mean who can forget what happens to Mrs. Deagle? It’s a movie I’ve seen a million times and yet I never tire of it. A lot of that is down to the tightrope being walked between tongue in cheek humour and outright shocking carnage being depicted. Not many movies can get both camps right, but Gremlins is a success on blending these two disparate things into a sinister yet hard to resist ride. A great example of both the humour and horror is the scene in the kitchen, where Billy’s mother demolishes a bunch of hungry Gremlins. Now until this point, we’ve seen Billy’s mother as mainly just a supportive homemaker. But when the attack starts, she goes to town on the beasts with ferocity that is hilarious and alarming. And it can’t be stated enough how memorable and iconic the move and especially Gizmo and the crazy Gremlins have become in film history. The effects used for Gizmo and the Gremlins is still excellent, ensuring that all of them have a semblance of personality in the grand scope of things. Jerry Goldsmith’s score is an extremely lively and creepy one, that gets across the maniacal mischief of the Gremlins and the shocking spectacle of a picturesque town under seasonal attack.

Zach Galligan makes for a likable hero as he is a regular guy who is trying to undo what he accidentally set in motion. He is relatable and the very ordinariness of him is a gift that Galligan uses to his advantage. Phoebe Cates is similarly excellent as his girlfriend, possessing a certain girl next door charm and smarts that is endearing. Both actors are ones that make you immediately like them, because they seem like regular people who you want to succeed in stopping the eponymous creatures from even more destruction than they’ve already caused. Hoyt Axton is delightfully sly and oblivious as the inventor father whose gadgets are not quite the best, while Frances Lee McCain comes into her own as the avenging mother who protects her house fiercely. Polly Holliday is nastiness incarnate as the horrible neighbour who ends up at the mercy of the Gremlins in a very satisfying sequence that is as shocking as it is grimly amusing.

Devilishly sinister and darkly hilarious in parts, Gremlins is Christmas movie making with a difference that is sure to entertain audiences the world over. If it’s one outrageous ride into scares and chuckles you need, Gremlins is the required cure. After watching and reviewing Gremlins, I think this is the time to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

Piranha

Tags

1970's, Barbara Steele, Bradford Dillman, Bruce Gordon, Heather Menzies, Horror, Joe Dante, Kevin McCarthy, Piranha

Film Title

Piranha

Director

Joe Dante

Starring

• Bradford Dillman as Paul Grogan
• Heather Menzies as Maggie McKeown
• Kevin McCarthy as Dr. Robert Hoak
• Bruce Gordon as Colonel Waxman
• Barbara Steele as Dr. Mengers

A knowing monster movie horror with a delicious sense of humour, Piranha makes for a fast-paced and thrilling make that is fun from start to finish. Prepare for gory delights a plenty in this creature feature.

Maggie McKeown is a determined but often very clumsy insurance investigator who is assigned to find two missing teenagers near Lost River Lake. Once arriving in the area, she enlists the services of tracking man Paul Grogan, who has fallen into isolation and booze since the break up of his marriage. Reluctantly, he helps Maggie and leads her to an old military complex that has been deserted to years. The place looks empty enough and the two commence with a search for the missing teens. While snooping around the seemingly disused facility, Maggie activates the drainage switch to the pool, hoping to find evidence of the teenager’s bodies. Instead, she lets out something a lot more deadly and unpredictable into the river. They are berated by a disoriented man by the name of Dr. Robert Hoak for their actions. He begins to explain his terrified reaction to what Maggie did. She let out a school of mutant piranhas that were originally going to be used during the Vietnam War, before the covert project was scrapped. The fish were created to survive in cold water and breed rapidly. Hoak kept some of the fish and carried on testing, but is now feeling a lot of remorse for his actions. Taking Hoak with them, Paul and Maggie head down the river by way of a raft as the piranha are most likely to head to potential food. And it just so happens that there is a summer camp about to have a swimming competition just down the river. Along the way, Hoak is killed when he saves a young boy from death by piranha. Unfortunately, he perishes before telling anyone how to destroy the fish. The military, who want to keep things under the radar, are soon on their tail in trying to track the fish too before word gets out of what is going on. It’s a full on race against time as Paul and Maggie head down the river to warn everyone, the military gets on their back and soon enough carnage ensues. One thing is for certain, they must think fast before the deadly fish somehow reach the ocean and cause even more bloody mayhem.

Joe Dante and his direction is particularly inspired. Blending a tongue in cheek satirical nature with gory horror, he fashions something that fires on both cylinders with impressive results. It’s like Dante is saying that he knows that the story is silly and outrageous but to hell with logic, this movie is for entertainment purposes. And entertain he does with his command of direction that sets Piranha on a quick-paced journey of tension and glee. It makes no bones that it is coming off the success of Jaws( which came out a few years before this) and lampooning it to an extent, and I loved it for that unapologetic sense of humour and attitude. The pace is handled with great efficiency, with events taking shape from the start and quickly unfolding in gloriously crazy fashion that never lets up. One could almost say that Piranha is something of a chase movie as well as a horror. I mean, you have Maggie and Paul tracking down the piranhas, the military attempting to hush them up and the piranha themselves heading for their next meal. You have some genuine suspense in this film, on full display whenever the eponymous critters are stalking and then making a literal meal of anyone in their way as they continue down the river. The script laces events with plenty of references to old monster movies that will have film buffs watering at the mouth to spot them. And the way that the humour, that usually takes its cues from the clumsy acts of Maggie combines with the bloodshed is yet more than enough reason this is seen as a cult movie. Glorious music is on hand to ratchet up the tension as the man-eating fish grow in number and power.

The cast of Piranha is pretty good with the parts they are given. Bradford Dillman makes for a sardonic and cynical hero who at the start is unwilling to help, but whose purpose is reawakened by the threat of disaster. Dillman exudes a gruff demeanor that is well-suited to the broken Paul, but displays a certain amount of likable tendencies as his mission to stop the creatures is put into action. Then we have Heather Menzies as the clumsy but not completely ridiculous insurance investigator. She spends most of the film trying to make amends for letting the piranha out, but while she could have become annoying, Menzies avoids that with her sense of flawed yet lovable charm. Stealing the show in hi supporting by integral part is Kevin McCarthy as the doctor regretting his involvement with the experiment that has just been let loose. He manages to be both slightly menacing and quite sympathetic in his short screen time. Also present in neat parts are Bruce Gordon as a nasty colonel and Scream Queen Barbara Steele as a marine biologist.

With the layers of cracking humour and effective scenes of terror, Piranha entertains in a really amazing way, packed with the goods for horror and satire on creature features. A real slice of B-movie monster horror at its best.