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‘Gremlins’ (1984) Review

Phoebe Cates in “Gremlins.”Credit...Warner Bros.

Many of the holiday movies we consider classics or cult favorites today did not seem destined for such glory when we first reviewed them. Some we panned. Others were flops. Others just weren’t particularly holiday-focused.

We dug up 10 of those reviews from our archives, which we’ve rounded up here, along with info on where to stream them. Below is how the critic Vincent Canby reviewed “Gremlins” for The New York Times on June 8, 1984:

THE star of “Gremlins” is none of the perfectly adequate actors in the cast but the mogwai, a small, furry, fictitious creature that looks something like a cuddly teddy bear with the ears of a rabbit, a Bambilike nose, eyes as round and deep and dark as glass buttons, a sweet disposition and a physical nature more unstable than hydrogen gas.

[Read about 9 more classic and cult Christmas movies as The Times first reviewed them.]

At the beginning of the film, when Rand Peltzer, an unsuccessful inventor, buys a mogwai in San Francisco’s Chinatown as a Christmas present for his family, he is warned to keep the creature away from direct light, never to allow it to have contact with water and, above all, never feed it after midnight. Bluebeard’s instructions to his foolish wives couldn’t have been any more specific.

Rand returns home to Kingston Falls, U.S.A., a perfect movie set of a town, where the plastic snow never melts and where, you can be sure, they start playing Christmas carols the day after the Fourth of July. In this comically idealized setting, it’s just a matter of time before each of the mogwai prohibitions has been broken, with grotesque results that nearly destroy Kingston Falls as well as the movie.

“Gremlins,” which opens today at the Warner and other theaters, was produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Joe Dante, who was responsible for “It’s a Good Life,” one of the better episodes in “Twilight Zone - the Movie.” This is pretty much the same relationship that Mr. Spielberg, usually a director (“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”), had to “Poltergeist,” the classic spook movie he produced with Tobe Hooper as director.

“Gremlins,” however, has a very different character, being a wiseacre mixture of movie-buff jokes, movie genres and movie sensibilities. It’s as schizoid as the mogwai, which, having been fed after midnight, suddenly reproduces itself, but not in its own sweet, cuddly image, but as dozens of small, demonic creatures - the gremlins of the title.

These second-generation mogwais, which look like the imps of Hieronymous Bosch, are at first funny, having as their only goal the pursuit of mindless mischief. They’re neither good nor bad, just self-absorbed. Then, however, they turn seriously mean. At which point “Gremlins” explodes in an orgy of special effects, which should scare the wits out of very small children for whom, I assume, the movie was made.

Both Mr. Dante and Chris Columbus, who wrote the screenplay, have antic senses of humor, but they are unreliable. They attack their young audience as mercilessly as the creatures attack the characters. One minute they’re fondly recalling Frank Capra’s sentimental classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and the next minute they’re subjecting this Capraesque Smalltown, U.S.A., to a devastation that makes the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” look benign.

I’ve no idea how children will react to the sight of a Kingston Falls mom, carving knife in hand, decapitating one gremlin and shoving another into the food processor, head first. Will they laugh when Billy Peltzer, the film’s idealized, intentionally dopey, 20-year-old hero, is threatened by a gremlin with a chainsaw and then stabbed by a gremlin with a spear gun? Will they cheer when Billy blows up the Kingston Falls movie theater, where the gremlins, now resembling an average kiddie matinee crowd, are exuberantly responding to “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”?

“Gremlins” is far more interested in showing off its knowledge of movie lore and making random jokes than in providing consistent entertainment.

Unfortunately, it’s funniest when being most nasty. The high point of the film comes when Kate, Billy’s pretty girlfriend, admits why she hates Christmas. It seems that when she was a child, her dad disappeared on Christmas Eve, only to be discovered some days later, decomposing, halfway down the chimmney in his Santa Claus suit.

“That,” says Kate, “is how I found out there is no Santa Claus.”

“Gremlins” takes a fairly jokey view of all its characters, including Kingston Falls’s own wicked witch, a wealthy, ferociously mean-spirited woman - nicely played by television’s Polly Holliday - who refers to an impoverished widow’s two small children as “deadbeats.”

None of the other actors, including Hoyt Axton (Rand Peltzer), Zach Galligan (Billy) and Phoebe Cates (Kate) has a chance against the mogwai and the gremlins, made by Chris Walas. These mechanical animals aren’t very lovable, but they are cleverly devised, and one knows where one stands with them.

Rent it on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

“Gremlins,” which has been rated PG (“Parental Guidance Suggested”), may not be ideal entertainment for younger children for the reasons described above. Running time: 105 minutes.

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