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07/18/2008: X-E’s ‘08 Summer Megaparty: Drunk Gremlins.

Gremlins is one of my favorite movies ever, and that’s been a fact since the first time I saw it, on a cassette rental from a long-closed Mom & Pop video store. The dichotomy was to die for: Gremlins boasted the cutest thing I’d ever seen in a movie and the most terrifying things I’d ever seen in a movie. Hell, I was only five.

The film’s world firmly seeped into mine. I was completely obsessed with Gizmo, and dreamt of owning my own mogwai on a nearly nightly basis. And the gremlins? I totally heeded Rand Peltzer’s voiceover warning from the end of the movie, becoming unnaturally wary of washing machines in dark rooms, kitchen cabinets…the whole nine yards.

I clamored for anything and everything Gremlins. I had a Gizmo plush doll, plastic figure, the cereal, the books, the audio books, the sticker books, every other possible version of “the books,” and even posters. Anything I could get my hands on. The film didn’t pave way for an incredible heap of toys, but there was enough out there to bring Gremlins into my life in ways far more tangible than those frequent daydreams about covering my new pet mogwai with bandages.

It’s likely my love all things Gremlins that’s made me unable to forget what I’m about to show you, but make no mistake: Running horrific shots of marauding gremlins during children’s television was going to leave a mark even if the particular kid wasn’t a Gizmo nut.

Yes, after years of talking about it, a reader sent me the famous Gremlins drunk driving public service announcement. (Probably yanked from YouTube, but hey, there’s plenty on YouTube yanked from here.) Like that skeleton-themed drunk driving PSA I wrote about some time back, this one was aired super often and burned permanent scars into every organ of my body capable of being affected by it.

While the aforementioned “skeleton spot” made me afraid to drink any liquids period while inside of an automobile, the Gremlins version was just flat out scary. In it, Mr. Wing and Gizmo (happily reunited despite my eternal protests that Billy should’ve kept the damn thing) are hanging out in Wing’s dank antique shop, and Gizmo’s in for a lecture about teen drinking and drunk driving. Man. I could think of plenty of decent target demos for a lecture like that, but I just cannot count mogwais among them. Still, Gizmo seems interested enough, offering cute yelps to let his mutant grandfather know that he totally gets what he’s saying.

As Mr. Wing talks about teens drinking and driving, we cut to several scenes from Gremlins, which coincidentally featured a few sequences where the gremmies drink, drive, crash and die. It seems impossible that I was ever afraid of these guys, but I was. Especially when they popped onto the television from out of nowhere while I was watching weekday afternoon cartoons. When it came to Gremlins, I needed time to prepare myself.

The old man decides to up the ante with a declaration against teen drug use, and to footnote that, we get the scariest shot from the whole movie: Stripe, post-sunlight attack, flopping out of the fountain with his flesh melted and his eyes transformed into picked eggs. Whatever courage that old blanket of ours provided when I first watched Gremlins on video was completely eradicated by that shot. I hated that shot. And I really hated it having it thrown at me during commercial breaks for Bugs Bunny or whatever the fuck I was watching.

The PSA ran fairly frequently and, to a five-year-old, it was a complete mindfuck. Even by today’s standards, it wouldn’t be typical to see gremlin-related gooey carnage on afternoon children’s television. I can only imagine how much scarier this must’ve been for kids who hadn’t seen the movie, and thus had no way of knowing that the little monsters’ destructive outbursts generally led to violence of a more off-screen kind.

As was the case with many of the PSAs I watched as a kid, the message got lost. Drunk driving and drugs were bad, sure, but all I really came away from this with was the reaffirmation that Stripe was scary and that Gizmo had to be mine.

Gremlins-era Gizmo was so much more adorable than Gremlins 2-era Gizmo.

Click here to watch it!

I got traumatized by Gremlins at age 4, it’s one of the factors that made me a shut-in and forged my Geekiness.

Yeah, the melting Gremlin bothered me when I was a kid too. Hey Matt, did you ever go to a Warner Brothers store back when they were open and see that life-size Gremlin statue they had hanging in the rafters. I always thought that was such a nice touch. I miss those WB stores….

Yeah I was totally traumatized by Gremlins. I was TERRIFIED of them.. I had the books on record (the read along ones?) and I couldn’t be in the same room with them.

The commercial does seem pretty intense for today’s standards. PSA’s tend to be pretty softball, anyway. The best one I can think bof was the PSA reminding kids to buckle up by using footage from the movie Cars. And nobody had to melt to sell the message. Then again, it may have been too soft for the message to be effective.

How did the Maryland Public School System get that insane thing?1 I never saw it - grew up in New England, thank god.

I remember when Gremlins 2 came out I became obsessed with Gremlins trading cards. Actually, it was the same way with TMNT movie trading cards as well. Oh, to be young again. To tear open the foil on a pack of Gremlins 2 trading cards and come face to face with such memorable characters as…George. And Lenny. And the she-gremlin.

The descriptions of the gremlins (I’m not allowed to capitalize that word according to the novel based on the film) on the back of the Gremlins 2 cards were hilarious. Daffy the Gremlin was fleshed out more in seventeen words than he was in a two hour movie.

Yea, the same shot grossed me out as a kid, and still does today. I’m surprised they didn’t have a skeleton gremlin toy that you could pour slime and goop on.

I know what you mean about bein obsessed with Gremlins Matt! I was so obsessed with both flicks that I named one of my pets after Gizmo. One of my male ferrets. Infact I nicknamed my Wii Gizmo. But that is in honor of my former ferret, not the Mogwai.

Cat, I also was not a fan of ET when I was little. I remember having a small rubber ET ball and not wanting to look at it.

My first encounter with the Gremlins came when my mom (for whatever reason) bought me a Gremlins tin lunch box (and thermos!) for my first day of kindergarten. I had shown no interest or even knowledge of the movie at that point so it remains a mystery why my mom went with that particular theme. The same as with you Matt, the Gremlins both terrified and fascinated me. Most of the art on the box was made up of adorable Gizmo in his Barbie car but then just when you think all is pleasant to look at there’s evil Spike staring at you in the background.

Haha, the Gremlins 2 novel! You read that too? Man oh man. They take over the author writing the book, instead of shutting down the theatre (or on the VHS, your TV)!

Holy crap, I’m glad I don’t do illegal drugs; it looks really messy…. Unfortunately, I was born a few years too late to be able to find any of that kick-ass Gremlins merchandise when I was a kid, which is a shame because it was a weekly late night movie with my cousin at Grandma’s house.

Personally, I like Gremlins 2 the best. Don’t know why, because the first one is clearly the better movie.

The second one is clearly better because of it’s FAR superior variety of Gremlins. Plus it has Grandpa Fred! GRANDPA FRED!!! I rest my case! I’m sure Matt undertsands.=)

I was scared of ET a little bit when I was younger too mainly because of the scene when Elliot first runs into him in the field or wherever and the flashlight shines on ET and he makes that really scary noise with that really scary face. That always freaked me out back then.

Can you imagine the number of complaints they’d get if PSA’s were still this brutal? I mean parents complain about stupid shit anyway I can only imagine what they’d say about a Gremlin skeleton popping out during the middle of little Timmy’s Power Rangers!

My girlfriend and I just saw a pretty awesome Gremlins action figure set at Suncoast. You get 2 Gremlins,their movie theater snacks,Gizmo,and the balls that hatched out of Gizmo when he got wet.

That last sentence might be a little strange for those of you who haven’t watched the film.

I was also afraid of E.T., mainly because we saw it at a drive-in, which would’ve pretty much made me a toddler. Most toddlers don’t want to see aliens on screens that big, even if they’re friendly.

I totally had a stuffed Gizmo from the WB store. Also…there is a comic shop in the same mall as where the WB store used to be…it has a 1980’s Gizmo in a packing crate and it supposedly TALKS! its like over a hundred bucks…

I loved Gremlins when I was little — we even owned the video. I was pretty much raised on it; my mom dressed me as a gremlin for my 2nd Halloween, and it’s gone down in family history how afraid I was of the gremlin mask she made of papier mache.

Anyway, the melting gremlin didn’t scare me all that much though — nowhere near as much as the ghost that melted the Nazis heads in Indiana Jones.

When I was a kid, my dentist’s office was on the second floor of a building. They had one of those powered chairs that would take people up to the second floor, no elevator. We used to play around with that thing and ride it up for fun. After Gremlins I would not go near that thing.

The Gremlins scared the ever living crap out of me when I was a kid too. Of course, I was of a younger generation, so I got to have the crap scared out of me by Gremlins 2 while still being a somewhat young kid as well. Though I loved the Bat Gremlin and the Spider one, that was Mohawk before he mutated, yes?

I’ve never seen that PSA before, but I have fond memories of Gremlins. I went to Kindergarten with a Gizmo backpack that my grandfather bought me for my birthday. I felt like I was the coolest kid in the world.

The best part about Gremlins is that I wasn’t “supposed” to watch it. My mom bought it, thinking it was a tame kid’s movie and was horrified at all of the different violent deaths in the movie(the gremlin exploding in the microwave seemed to bother her the most).

I, of course, thought it was awesome. She’d always point out that I really shouldn’t be watching it…but since I’d already accidentally seen it all, there was no point in holding it back from me. So I watched it all the time.

Boy I wish they’d make a third one. They’d probably tame it down and make it terrible, but I’d still go see it.

Ho man, I remember this. Matt, you have a way of placing me back in my livingroom at 1412 Heritage Glen in 1986.
On a different note, Matt, have you heard any news on the movie MEG? I am getting impatient.

Was anybody else having trouble downloading the commercial? Anyway, I can’t recall I ever seen this PSA, and as far as Gremlins go, I didn’t see it until it came out on videocassette and I think that was about 1986 or so. I guess my mom never took me because she thought I would be scared of the Gremlins. Well, that could be possible considering at this age (5 in 1984), I was afraid of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. Anyway, I do rememebr owning a couple plastic figurines of Gizmo, Stripe as a mogwai, and Stripe as a Gremlin. Of course, having these characters before seeing the movie got me confused as thinking that Stripe the mogwai and Stripe the Gremlin were two different characters. Another early merchandise product I remember early on were these Gremlins storybook and records. It was a series of five records and books telling the story of Gremlins. My cousins in Minnesota owned them and we used to make trips up north to visit them and we’d ALWAYS play those records. In fact, it became a traditon that every trip to northwest MN, we would play them for years.

I never read the Gremlins 2 novel, but I read the first one. Actually, I didn’t know there was a sequel book until now but always thought there were. Question: Is Futterman alive in the sequel book since he supposedly dies in the first novel? It seems that sequels to novels never have to follow exactly its predecessor. I guess that’s mainly because the sequel books follow the concept of the movie and the first novels are either from working scripts or they were the original ideas that the movies are based. I know that in Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”, the Ian Malcolm character dies and yet in “Lost World” he’s alive again. I’m not sure if Crichton wrote “Lost World” after Jurassic Park the movie came out, but if he did, I bet that’s why the Ian Malcolm character is alive again. Also, in the E.T. novel sequel “The Book of the Green Planet” ( a supposed idea for a sequel that I don’t think was official since Spielberg had something else in mind, much like what became “War of the Worlds” years later), it was mentioned that E.T. ate Reese’s Pieces and missed playing dress-up as a girl with Gertie which were both from the movie. The original E.T. novel (which was also written by William Kotzwinkle who wrote the sequel) says that he ate M&Ms (which was to be original candy of choice until Mars Candy backed out claiming that E.T. was too scary for children and sales wouldn’t help the candy) and when he’s trying to communicate to the children, he puts a raincoat on. There is one nerdy character named LAnce that does make a cameo in the sequel book that is not in the movie. I guess that was the one person Kotzwinkle couldn’t do away with from his first novel. He probably was under protest since Spielberg did not have him (the character Lance) in the movie.

Anyway, enough babbling since I got off-topic again, time to move on. Once again, I’m sorry I haven’t been around to comment. The last couple weekends I was busy. Well, two weekends ago I was home in Chicago for the 4th of July weekend and I went to three ballgames: two White Sox games at the Cell and a Milwaukee Brewers game. Last weekend, the White Sox were in Arlington, TX playing the Rangers and I went to all three of those games. This will feel weird being the first weekend in two weeks I will not be going to a ballgame. All I have planned this weekend is to see “The Dark Knight.” I probably will not be at another game until next month sometime.

Anyway, there’s not much else for me to report for now. I’m a little behind on the Megaparty. Read the first couple of posts and the last few so I can some in the middle to catch up to. Hope everyone has a great weekend! Looking forward to SNT!!!!

Ah, Gremlins II: The New Batch=Best Film Ever!
I remember seeing the Gremlins at the WB store, and just thinking that it seemed to be a tie in for Gremlins II: The New Batch, the store wasn’t made for people.

Also, am I the only NY’er who walks into the time Warner Center, and thinks of the Clamp Building?

Neg: As a matter of fact, no, I haven’t been drinking. I kind of wish I had been though, because this is turning out to be a pretty sucky Friday night. X-E was my saving grace.

Weird…I’m watching Ghoulies II tonight after watching Ghoulies last night. First time for both.

Ghoulies II is a lot more entertaining than the first one. Well, not really true, but it’s more fun. Not sure if that’s true, either.

Much of it takes place at the carnival, and there’s a bigger-than-usual Ghoulie. That’s definitely true.

Matt: Good to hear from you, too! haha Don’t worry, I’ve been lurking on the blog this whole time, just haven’t had the brain power to comment until now. We moved three weeks ago and school is eating me alive. On a more confusing note, I am officially an adult. The 25th birthday was particularly difficult.

Back in the 80’s, we had HBO, and it was through the good ‘ol Home Box Office that I got to see Gremlins for the first time. My family sat down to watch it, and I made it almost all the way through. I don’t remember the rest of the violence bugging me, but Holy Hannah when that melted-down bugger popped out of the fountain I screamed and freaked out like I never would again. I don’t really know why, but then, I was like three.

Seeing that shot folded into the commercials for my Saturday morning cartoons would have probably turned me off of television for good!

I’m probably on Colonel duty, now that I think about it. Haven’t seen him online since he got his new place. Might have to call his mother and track him down.

Gizmo The Pillow is doing okay, a little worse for wear, but this is to be expected considering the nightly pressure bestowed upon him by my head.

I never saw Gremlins or Ghoulies. Never thought they were “cute” and they didn’t seem to be “cool” enough at the time (I was more into fantasy than horror).

Although I can COMPLETELY feel a kinship with those that were terrified of E.T. E.T. freakin’ SCARED me more than any fictional character I can think of. Most of this was because of the title screen for the E.T. Atari game, that music and that image of the alien and the boy done in Atari pixels is just… burned into my memory and still makes me a little quakey all these years later.

Ages ago Warner Brothers used to let you request catalogs for the crappy movie related merchandise they would sell. I got on their mailing list after calling the 800 number at the end of one of their movies. It was filled with a lot of random junk you didn’t really need, but was really fun to look at. You could buy director’s chairs, denim jackets, stuffed animals, and all sorts of other stuff with the embroidered logo of whatever movie Warner Bros. was pimping at the time.

I bring it up because I distinctly remember one of them having a big spread on Gremlins 2 merchandise. Matt… if I still had those catalogs, I would send them to you. You could have done a great article on them.

Given my “collector’s” personality I still don’t understand how I managed to lose them over the years. *slaps self in face*

Strangely, I never saw Gremlins (1 or 2) when I was young. I think I finally, finally saw the first one when I was about 22. However, I saw Gremlins STUFF all over when I was a kid, and the sight of anything Gremlins or E.T.-related brings up very strong memories of the 1980s. That PSA probably would have scared the crap out of me if I’d seen it back then, and still seems vaguely disturbing now.

I did see E.T. back then, and hated it solely because of that one scary scene Bob K. mentioned, with E.T. squealing in the tall grass. Oddly though, the face-melting scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark that Talia mentioned didn’t scare me at all back then, and Raiders remains my favorite movie to this day.

Adam: Ah, Home Box Office! That network brought to my viewing pleasure such great classic 80s films like Goonies, Back to the Future, Short Circuit, and Stand By Me for the very first time! Those were also the days of Disney Channel being a pay channel which I think was MUCH better than it is now. Of course, when it came to movies, their edits were worse than showing a movie on network TV. The plus side is you sometimes got to see deleted scenes that were not in the original picture. I remember watching Goonies on Disney several years ago and they had the scene where the kids go to the store and get bullied by Troy, the son of the father who was forclosing all the houses in the area. They also showed a cut scene from Gremlins that I saw when the movie was on NBC and that was when they were in the bank and they open up the vault to find the Judge Reinhold character Gerald locked in. Of course these scenes can be easily accessed now with the DVDs, but back then, seeing different scenes not in the theatrical version was obselete! Oh yeah, and who can forget the Pig Face sequence from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” that CBS showed in the network premiere of the movie back in 1991? Classic days those were!

Matt, with all the hype surrounding the Dark Knight, and knowing that you’ve covered the first two Batman movies on X-E, maybe you could review the Joel Schumacher Batman films in the future? Just an idea.

I don’t remember the first time I watched Gremlins. I think it would of been on network tv because I have watched it several times on network tv. You all are talking about being terrified of the wet exploding gremlin pssfffttt. I mean no disrespect to you all it’s just I remember my best friend from kindergarten until 5th grade would bring over tapes her dad recorded three movies per tape onto from HBO and other deluxe cable channels and he had a big collection of them. A lot of them were scary like Child’s play, Hellraiser, Friday the 13th, rarely a kids movie or something tame. My Grandma would let us watch it if she wasn’t in the room. She would say it’s alright as long as I don’t have to watch it with you. When I was 10 I started watching lots of zombie movies with my older cousin that moved in during that time but that’s another story. Point is, I probably thought the exploding gremlin was cool.

The spider gremlin still creeps me out though. Spiders in general and bees, bugs etc. freak me out. I just don’t want to get stung by a bee or bit by a spider. I have a general fear of things that can hurt me. Like heights. I used to be slightly afraid of automatic sliding doors, just about 5 years ago.

Matt, your mega-party was so “teh wesome” untill that first line typo: “Gremlins is one of my favorite movies ever, and that’s been a fact since the first time saw it, on a cassette rental from a long-closed Mom & Pop video store.” I am sure you meant “… first time I saw it…” anyhow, I am ttally rrolling. Man, grammar. I know I’m knew and all, but really. I was so horrified by your gramar, I hope you redeem yourself tomorrow, um I didn’t read the rest of it? Fruit Islands Cereal?

Ha ha. I like that the clip was from Maryland. I probably saw that exact one at some point on Captain Chesapeake. “Four bells, time for He-maaaaaaaan.”

Well, good news on the gremlins front in the UK, apparently despite our children being freakin’ wusses about seeing the little bleeders running amok, they won’t be taking the new BT ad down! Yay.

To be honest, I’d be more scared to work in an office with Peter Jones than be surrounded by gremlins.

Good going, SkinnyPate. Now we’re going to finally get that Karen Ross Congo figure update that I’ve been secretly wishing for.

Are there any TV executives here? I want to pitch a Gremlins animated series to you. Ok, here I go: “it’s a Gremlins animated series. Think Gremlins meets [some crappy cartoon that's popular these days]“. Kids will love it. Any takers?

Gremlins didnt really pique my interest as a child, i was too busy being force fed shirley temple movies for a good part of my childhood. i had curly hair as a child, and i took tap dance classes so i guess my mom thought i would love it….she was wrong. the only positive thing about it is that the three stooges would be on before it, so i would watch that with my dad. ps- Special K I dont know if you saw my post a few weeks ago, but happy belated birthday.

Back in the eighties, I missed the movie’s metaphor that cute, stupid, harmless mogwai babies turn into ugly, stupid, destructive gremlin teenagers.

I wasn’t a huge gremlins fan I think I was too young when it came out and it always scared me. Although I did like cute little Gizmo.

I can’t say I ever remember when I actually saw either of the movies but I do remember the gremlin that gets stuck in the TV. for some reason that one I was afraid of. Now ET again I can’t recall ever really watching the movie but but I was (according to my mother) scared as hell to be in the same room with a stuffed doll of him. They would sit this stuffed doll in a chair in the living room , and I would not enter the living room.

Of course I was also afraid of the pink panther, because of some insulation commercials where the pink insulations rolls out and he pop’s right out of it….I was five or younger, if he could pop out of insulation then he could pop out of the TV. Five year old logic is the best logic.

The reason that Billy can’t keep the Mogwai at the end of Gremlins is because it’s a coming-of-age fable. Rand Peltzer buys his son the pet to teach him responsibility - by the end of the film he hasn’t learnt any, and so back to the shop Gizmo goes. It’s not until the end of the second film that Billy gets to keep the creature, having moved out of his parents, obtained a well-paid, creative job and become engaged to the girl of his dreams. Thus, responsibility has been achieved, and is proved to be a valuable asset. Billy’s journey is essentially Joe Dante’s way of telling studio executives to give filmmakers more creative freedom, as he was given on Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

Many thanks both for posting this video - I feel so sorry for Keye Luke saying such bad lines in that PSA; he’s a proper Hollywood actor! - and for all the other Gremlins pieces you’ve uploaded over the years. I’ve been a longtime fan of both the Gremlins series and your website, and am always delighted when they overlap. Gremlins 2: The New Batch is probably my favourite film of all time, and you can read my lengthy comparison of it to a classic work of literature on my blog, if you dare: http://smarterthantheaverage.tumblr.com/post/38048594/

Speaking of Gremlins making apperances in commercials, here’s the news about a recent one from here in the UK that may not have reached your conciousness yet: http://www.btplc.com/news/arti...8eaf-453f-a82f-844034050942%7D . It’s an ad for the telephone company BT, for whom ET had appeared in some ads a few years earlier. The little rubber sell-outs.

Hey, Casual Jeff - Gremlins: The Animated series was indeed planned by Warner Bros around 1990 at the same time as Batman: The Animated Series and Beetle Juice: The Animated Series. All three were announced as being in production in the 50th anniversary Bugs Bunny celebratory magazine, along with Rover Dangerfield and some Quncy Jones music videos featuring a character called “The Dude”, but, well, you don’t me to tell you that the two Tim Burton films became cartoon series while Dante’s didn’t.

My experience with Gremlins is limited, but my dad has a Gizmo Furby that’s the cutest thing ever. Way better than those other dumb Furbies (Furbys?).

That was a terrific PSA. I actually remember that one. But, when you are so young and do not know why drinking alcohol makes you a bad driver, you (or I at least) just kinda think that the devil must be inside of beer.

I was 5 when E.T. came out, 7 for Gremlins…wasn’t scared by either…what I do remember scaring me was the end of Silver Bullet, after they kill the werewolf…he’s laying there all dead in the corner, then he jumps back up…scared the piss out of me.

Also,nice going Skinny Pate,you managed a typo in your post making fun of a typo. I think we can forgive this free blog for not having an editor,it’s not like this is the Wall Street Journal,it’s just one guy making the site as a hobby.

I’m still waiting for my debut. It’s really unfair to be bumped by Gremlins PSAs.

I remember that PSA scaring the daylights out of me, but nothing beats the nightmarish Bugs Bunny kitchen safety commercial that Matt wrote about a while back *shiver*

i live in Maryland and remeber that being played constantly durring Captain Chesapeakes 2 hours of cartoon shows on weekday afternoons . For some reason i always remeber it airing after G.I Joe best part was it made my sister cry

Gremlins over Critters 100%. Oddly though, I bet people who haven’t seen Gremlins expect it to be like Critters.

Gremlins is a better film, but Critters is surprisingly fun, especially when you get a bunch of horror kids together to watch it.

I have Ghoulies 4 because your blurb is on it, Matt, but I haven’t seen any of the movies. I haven’t seen any Critters either. I’ve seen Gremlins I and II, of course~

I was thinking more along the lines of who would win in a fight, although I think the Gremlins would win that, too.

Does anybody else pop in Gremlins during the holiday season… right along with movies like Christmas Vacation, Elf, and A Christmas Carol? It’s always going to be a classic kids monster movie, but I think it also doubles as a holiday classic!

Here’s “Siskel and Ebert” reviewing Gremlins and Star Trek 3. It starts at about 1:40.

If you go to 5:50 seconds here, you’ll see a classic Cheetos ad along with their review of “Critters”

I’m trying to imagine these benighted people who are unfamiliar with exactly how Gremlins is not like Critters. What a sad life that must be. Not that there’s anything wrong with Critters. Though the grems would win in a fight for sure.
At this point in time, I think a Gremlins cartoon would be more likely to work than a movie. I mean, I’d be over the moon for either but I think the time isn’t right for a movie, whereas a show could really go somewhere.
Bradd, we’ve actually discussed Gremlins as being the perfect movie to pop in just after Halloween, as a way to ease the transition into the holly jolly season

JLAJRC: thanks for the head’s up about that DVD release.. - pretty epic.. - i’ll have to add it to my rather extensive collection of old school toons on DVD.. - now if I could ever get time to watch all of ‘em..

my wife must have been frightened by The Gremlins as a child, too.. because of all the movies I own that’s the one she’ll always refuse to watch with me..

I can sympathize with everyone who was afraid of that beginning scene of ET…I apparently had to be dragged out of the theater kicking and screaming just after that scene because I was so terrified. I was also just a toddler as I was born in 1982. In fact, I am still creeped out by ET…I watched the movie for the first time a few years ago with my then-bf and I was still really weirded out. His fun little childhood ET story was that he thought instead of ET saying “ET phone home” he was saying “ET bite toes.” If I had thought ET said that when I was a kid, I’d have probably asploded.

Just turning 16 last month, I watched Gremlins waaaaaaaay later than everyone else: 1996. But no matter. Stripe scared the shit out of me when I was 5 years old, and I was terrified of Gremlins until I finally forced myself to watch the movie at age 12. Thus, I became hooked. I rented the movie from BlockBuster so many times that I eventually just bought it in a cheap two dollar set at Wal-Mart. I now love Gremlins today, and, to agree with Matt, Gremlins Gizmo is a hell of a lot cuter that Gremlins 2 Gizmo.

Well, Beckner, I too wish for a third movie. But if they came out with one, it would be shity because the new millenium would modernize it. Plus, Billy wouldn’t be the same actor!

Great discussion of the flick, but NO ONE mentions the best thing to come out of the mid-1980’s? I could watch Phoebe Cates pick out paint at Home Depot for hours…

1. Seeing Battlefield Earth on the first show of opening day, a few blocks away from Boston’s Church of Scientology and proceeding to berate the movie, throw food, and otherwise entertain myself and the other bodyThetan-ridden filmgoers. At one illogical point (of which there were many), I actually stood up with outstretched arms and asked “WHAT?”

2. My friends and I getting some guy and his wife to act as our “guardians” so we could buy tickets to a latenight showing of Wayne’s World. The entire audience of the sold-out showing headbanged during the “Bohemian Rhapsody” scene. Still brings a smile to my face

I’m not exactly sure why, but I love your movie reviews where you chronicle your Mom & Pop store experiences. I guess because the mom & pop rentals were always so much more comfortable than the big time, ultra corporate, sleek Blockbusters, Movie Galleries and Hollywood Videos.

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