Monday 10 December 2012

Gremlins



Gremlins is a curious film. It spends a good deal of its run-time devoted to outlining the dynamics of a dwindling small town. Property owner Mrs Deagle holds financial sway over the community, with the local bank deep in her pockets. The snarl faced harridan swaggers around town jumping queues and making threats. Sick children are deadbeats while cute, mischievous, dogs are to be put to death in the most hideous ways. There seems to be a bubbling sub-plot about duplicitous land grabbing, with the locals on the verge of vanquishing this capitalist pig and securing financial self-determination. When a cack-handed inventor smuggles a cuddly critter into this milieu there's an idea that this will be their salvation, doubly so when this super-pet begins wildly reproducing after being exposed to water.

Thankfully, this twee, heart-warming premise is almost immediately junked. Like the central creature, Gremlins mutates from a cutesy Christmas special into a ruthless little video nasty. Peripheral characters are either explicitly killed off or disappear completely following the varmint's apocalyptic midnight orgy. The majority of the human cast we spent the first act meeting are jettisoned to concentrate our attention on an army of cackling little bastards. It's easy to understand why, the Gremlins are a complete delight. Pure animal mischief calibrated with Looney Tunes violence cues. Everything is hilarious to them. They have zero sense of self-preservation. As a species they think nothing of breaking their bodies for their craft.

Gremlins is completely in love with its monsters, and the possibilities they offer. Massive stretches of Joe Dante's film revolves around time-out sequences where we get to see the Gremlins just being themselves - drinking, smoking and dancing. They perform little skits that usually end in dismemberment, seemingly for their own amusement. Their manic, frat-boy tastes are only calmed by pre-dawn screenings of vintage Disney. Maybe this is why Gremlins is so entertaining? It's not interested in delivering on ramshackle set-ups and boring arcs. Instead it's obsessed with puppetry and sight gags. It's a film firmly aware that seeing Judge Reinhold stumble around a reheated yuppie b-plot is about a millionth as engaging as seeing a three foot tall demon gobble up a handful of glass.

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