Gremlins (1984) - 🤯📼First Time Film Club📼🤯 - First Time Watching/Movie Reaction & Review 

Gizmo is the OG Baby Yoda. Big eyes, big ears, cute noises and little hands doing people stuff.

I always love when Pippin puts his paw on Emily's shoulder like "Hush, my servant, all will be revealed in time"

My favorite behind-the-scenes story is that the studio wanted to cut down most of the gremlins scenes, like the bar and the theater. Steven Spielberg sent them a memo that said something like "Why don't we cut out all the gremlins and call the movie 'People'" and the studio backed down.

One of my favorite parts of Gremlins 2 is Phoebe Cates' other speech! lol They were so self-aware in that one.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch is great too. In fact, you really can't go wrong watching any Joe Dante movie (check out Innerspace and The Howling in particular). The Phoebe Cates dad story immediately reminded me of a Gahan Wilson cartoon from the 60s of a woman and a handyman are standing in front of a fireplace with a skeleton in a Santa suit spilling out of it. The caption was "Well, we found out what was clogging up your chimney since last December". I saw a sneak preview of Gremlins. When I saw it again during general release, I noticed the bar scene had changed. They added the gremlin with the puppet and a couple of other scenes. Before it seemed to all lead up to the "She's a Maniac" bit. But the added stuff changed the pacing. It was the second time I saw a film in a sneak preview that got changed for the general release. The other was The Fury.

The trifecta of 80's female action heroes: Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, Mrs. Peltzer.

As a kid in the 80s I had the Gremlins read-along tape and storybook! "Turn the page when you hear the chimes ring like this..."

38:37 Yes it was, Emily: Gremlins, Ghostbusters, Temple of Doom, Red Dawn, Terminator, Karate Kid, NeverEnding Story, Beverly Hills Cop, Footloose, This Is Spinal Tap, Romancing the Stone, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Splash, The Natural, Last Starfighter, Sixteen Candles, Top Secret, Purple Rain, Amadeus, Once Upon a Time in America, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, etc... BTW, during the invention expo scene, H.G. Wells' Time Machine makes a cameo appearance and disappearance.

Damn straight! This *is* a kids movie, just...an *80's* kids movie... That bar scene...imagine an entire movie with that energy and craziness...that's Gremlins 2. Gremlins was played 100% earnest thought while Gremlins 2 is played 100% tongue in cheek meta parody. Both movies are excellent, you just need to be prepared for the change in tone. Yep, the town of Kingston Falls set in Gremlins was used one year later in 1985 (without the snow) to be the town of Hill Valley in Back to the Future. Also, the mom was in Back to the Future too, she played Lorraine's mom/Marty's grandmother. The town was named Kingston Falls as a nod to Bedford Falls in It's A Wonderful Life (also playing on the TV in the background at one point) to help set the mood with the same kind of Capra-esque and Christmas-y feel...until the Gremlins get unleashed. Did you ever watch reruns of the sitcom "Alice" with Linda Lavin? If you did, do you remember Flo the waitress? Her famous catchphrase was "Kiss my grits!" ? The actress who played Flo was Polly Holiday, she also played Mrs. Deagle. A bunch of Steven Speilberg references! At the beginning of the movie you see two movie titles on the theatre marquee there: "A Boy's Life" was the working title for E.T. "Watch the Skies" was the working title for Close Encounters of the Third Kind The billboard for the local Radio DJ, Rockin' Ricky, was done up in the same font as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ricky drawn to look like Indiana Jones. Just after the Gremlin cocoons hatched and Billy is on the phone with his mother, a Gremlin cuts the phone line and says "phone home", a reference to E.T. Then later in the film you see Stripe blended in with a bunch of stuffed animals, yet _another_ E.T. reference, and not only that, there's an E.T. doll among them. When Billy's dad is on the phone in the booth at the inventor's convention, you see a guy drive past him in a little go-cart thing and he's wearing like a shriner's cap. That's Steven Speilberg in a cameo. Also while Randy is there on the phone you see Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet and also, in the background you see the time machine from the 1960 movie The Time Machine. But then the camera switches to a close up of Randy and when it zooms out again the time machine is gone and people there are looking confused like the machine just vanished into thin air, that's what the smoke was from. Joe Dante is a huge Looney Tunes fan. There's a WWII era Bugs Bunny cartoon called "Falling Hare" that pits Bugs up against...gremlins. Based on the Russian myths created to explain the reason why whenever something goes wrong with machinery for no apparent reason. There's another series of Merrie Melodie cartoons featuring a big dog named Mark Anthony and a little kitten named Pussyfoot. In one of those cartoons Pussyfoot is driving around in a pink wind-up toy car. When Gizmo is driving the toy car, that's Dante doing an homage to that. I saw this movie in the theaters a few times as a kid, then many more times on TV. I loved it then and I love it now. But the logic problems with the rules and a few other things would always nag me at the back of my mind. Watching it so many times I've come up with some theories on how Gremlins physiology works just for the peace of my own mind... How did Gizmo get to be good when every other mogwai/gremlin is always bad? Now, what I've heard is the official canon is that with mogwai (which translates into "monster" in Chinese) only 1 in 1000 are good hearted like Gizmo when they are born, the rest are mean terrors like the others. I prefer my own theory I came up with... The water that got splashed on Gizmo was the dirty water Billy used to rinse his paint brushes. The water was tainted, so the mogwai were too. The mogwai that got created by the dropper, I guess the dropper wasn't too clean either. I always imagine Gizmo was born from a drop of water from a crystal clear mountain stream. The mogwai reproduce asexual. I imagine they do this by holding fertilized eggs outside their body but embedded in their skin. It may only take a drop of water to waken them, but it has to be H2O. this is how you can hydrate them and clean them without causing a baby boom. You could give them milk, alcohol, etc, to drink or bathe them in it and they wouldn't multiply. The water has to be within the right temperature range too, close to normal mogwai body temperature. Even though snow is frozen H2O it's too cold to awaken the eggs, even if it melts a little. This is why nothing happens when they are in the snow. They don't have an infinite amount of eggs either. The older eggs eventually die and drop off like dead skin cells and new eggs are constantly being regenerated by their body metabolism. This is why some parts of their bodies seem to get wet but no new Gremlins pop out...the water just happened to hit an area with no eggs, but the water eventually will find some. Or why when Stripe jumped into the pool the chain reaction wasn't even bigger, his body eventually ran out of viable eggs until he could eat and recharge his system some. Am I scaring you yet? The eating after midnight thing... This really gave me a headache as a kid until I figured it out to my own satisfaction. The Sun is the weakness of the mogwai. Direct sunlight will kill them, but I figured even indirect sunlight has an effect. It keeps them too weak to go into a pupa stage. But at midnight the sun is directly behind the Earth and the mogwai are at their strongest. Then they only need to eat to trigger metamorphosis. They hold onto this strength past midnight, it takes the sun rising, turning night back to day, to weaken them enough to be safe to feed them again. So no matter where they are in the world, the no feeding after midnight rule will still apply only to the midnight of the time zone they are in. I know I put too much thought into this, but it's how my brain works... This movie is a 9/10 for me! Best Regards! Happy Holidays!

wife: gonna have to set the building on fire husband: *taking very extensive notes*

"What a good year for movies," can be said about practically any year in the 80's

If you want to hear Howie Mandel using the Gizmo voice some more, try and find some episodes of the 90s cartoon "Bobby's World" on RU-vid. Howie did the voice of both Bobby and his father and for Bobby, he used a voice *very* similar to Gizmo.

I remember when this came out when I was a kid. It was marketed 100% like a kids movie. The trailers never showed the gremlins, but played up Gizmo like crazy (the trailers really played up Spielberg, too, billing the movie as “from the creator of ET”). Lot of parents groups were mad at the tone and violence, but my folks and I thought it was hilarious (especially the microwave scene.)

YESSS! Now you MUST check out the sequel from 1990, "A New Batch!" It has a LOT more humor!

Judge Reinhold is still thinking about Phoebe Cates coming out of the pool in "Fast Times"

Fun Fact: This movie and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) are credited with inspiring the MPAA to create the PG-13 rating. Many felt the movies were too violent for a PG rating, but not violent enough for an R.

It was kind of a geeky moment for us kids who grew up with "Alice" when we saw Flo in a different context.

I love his grin when it cuts to the mother and he knows we're about to see some excellent middle aged badassery

Murray and his wife didn't get killed. Murray appears in Gremlins 2. A little bit of trivia about those two. Those two actors both played in the original Little Shop of Horrors by Rodger Corman. His wife was the original Audrey.

Matthew, maybe you didn't know either, but the voice Howie Mandel used for Gizmo is virtually the same voice he used for Bobby on 'Bobby's World', just with a much smaller vocabulary.

The rules for gremlins that stuck out for me is don't get them wet. So they can't drink water? But they loved their beer while drinking at the bar.

I've worked overnights nearly all my life. To this day, when the lights come on at work, suddenly, I'll sometimes cry out, "BRIGHT LIGHT BRIGHT LIGHT!!!" And I'm 51 years old!

Another connection to "Back to the Future" is that Billy's mom, played by Frances Lee McCain, also played Lorraine's mom in the 50's part of BTTF. Hoyt Axton, who played Rand Peltzer, also wrote the song "Joy to the World" (not the Christmas song, but the 'Jeremiah was a bullfrog' one) made famous by the band Three Dog Night.

"Never feed him after midnight." Fun Fact: The set for Kingston Falls is the same one used for "Back to the Future" (1985). Both movies were filmed on the Universal Studios backlot. Also, Joe Dante as director, Chris Columbus as writer and Steven Spielberg as an executive producer, who oversaw the project? No wonder this movie became a classic.

Very impressed that Emily knew "Drop Dead Fred". 🤣 Rik Mayall was amazing & I strongly recommend "The YOung Ones" to Emily if she has not seen the very short yet awesome, british tv series from the 80s. Only 12 total episodes of 35 minutes each!

I love that you got her to guess Gizmo's voice!! I used to work at a Blockbuster and one of my coworkers and I would play "Connect the Movie". He would pick a movie and then I would pick a movie that had at least one connection (any connection) and the other had to guess the connection and we would go back in forth pretty much every time we worked together. One of my greatest triumphs was connecting "Little Monsters" to "Gremlins". My coworker was floored when I told him what they had in common 🤣 Thanks Howie Mandel! 🤣

I feel like the kitchen scene with the mom kicking ass like a savage was way ahead of its time. Really subversive. Also, please be one of the few to react to Gremlins 2. It's a crime the amount of reactors who watch the first one and don't bother with the sequel.

I can't wait for her reaction to Grimlins 2

This was Chris Columbus' first screenplay to get made (several years before he'd become famous for directing another classic Christmas movie, HOME ALONE). He'd go on to write YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES and THE GOONIES for Spielberg before going off to a directing career Apparently, he'd gotten the idea firsthand from sleeping in a loft in New York and hearing rats scrambling around. When Spielberg got hold of the script, he agreed the idea was a cool one but thought it needed some levity and Dante was picked because Spielberg was a fan of THE HOWLING (which inspired him to cast Dee Wallace in E.T.), but he had also interacted with Dante when his movie PIRAHANA (a rip-off of Spielberg's JAWS) was threatened with a lawsuit by Universal (as PIRAHANA was coming out the same time as JAWS 2), but Spielberg's influence got the lawsuit threats dismissed).

Emily: "Phoebe Cates?" Matthew: "Phoebe Cates." *swoon*

Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph (Mr and Mrs Futterman) were also in the original 1960s Little Shop of Horrors together, with Jackie Joseph playing Audrey. Miller was also in Small Soldiers and The Burbs, among his many films (including Terminator!)

The Mrs. Deagle kill still has to be one of the funniest deaths on film. Ever. Of all time.

I was 12 years old in 1984 and I actually saw this in the theater. My mom dropped me off and came back and picked me up after the movie. Watching the kitchen fight and seeing how you reacted to it makes me realize what a different time it was back then. For whatever reason it didn't scare me though. Now Aliens which came out a couple of years later absolutely scared the living Hell out of me.

12:40 The Realization....... That gave me the best laugh I have had all month. Literally crying from it.

Thank you, Matthew, for saying "Wolverines!" when Red Dawn was referenced. It would have been criminally negligent not to. I award you +4 internets. Gotta go, we've got movie sign!!

Can't wait for you to watch gremlins 2. Also Jerry Goldsmith did the music for both gremlins and gremlins 2. He is one of the gods of movie music

Fun fact: This movie was released on the same day as Ghostbusters, and the exact same date as The Goonies

6:22 "Can we get a mogwai?" Pippin: "Am I a joke to you?"

*POP* - "FUCK!" - Best commentary ever, lol. My eye twitched a bit though when Matthew was talking about Frank Welker and not bringing up that he was the OG voice of Megatron (especially after mentioning that Peter Cullen was Optimus, lol).

This came out the same year as Beverly Hills Cop, which means that Jonathan Banks was in both the #1 grossing film of 1984(Beverly Hills Cop) & the #4 grossing film(Gremlins).

The gremlin in the cinema with popcorn bags on his ears is my wife's favourite scene.

when you say you know Phoebe Cates from a movie that isn't Fast Times and you husband tries to not laugh too hard

Mrs. Diegle is played by Polly Holliday, “Flo” from the TV series Alice “Kiss my grits!”

Emily: "I love this has gone to straight up horror movie now." Insert 'It always has been' meme.

Two things One of the Gremlins in the bar scene was based on Tom Waits and the father was played by Hoyt Axton,, a Country Singer/Songwriter who wrote the hit song Joy to the World

34:30 Pippin looking like he has lack of scritches ptsd 🤣

I remember my favorite scene. "THERE'S A MAN ON THE WING OF THIS PLANE!!!" 😁

Always a pleasure watching your videos! Another 80s film set during x-mas and that's on your list and aligns *VERY* well with Emily's humor is, "Better off Dead".

Yeah, watch "Gremlins 2!" ☺ My favorite behind the scenes thing is about all the horrible stuff that happen to Gizmo, like the dart board (which always gets a reaction from reactors) and getting chucked down the laundry chute. Apparently the hero Gizmo puppet broke down all the time and caused a lot of delays and long hours trying to deal so half way through the movie the crew HATED Gizmo with the heat of a thousand suns. It became a crew pastime to invent awesome ways to torture Gizmo and the dartboard was one of those that made it into the movie. 😄

I've probably said this before, but Joe Dante is one of my favorite directors of this era. Other suggested viewing: * Inner Space * Explorers * The Howling * Small Soldiers * and Twilight Zone, which features segments by not only Joe Dante, but Steven Spielberg, John Landis, and George Miller (Mad Max series, Witches Of Eastwick)

I did not know Howie Mendel did the voice of Gizmo but you can hear a bit of Bobby from Bobby’s World in Gizmos sound

I've a head canon that combines all 3 of the rules. Because they replicate from water, and seemingly come out of nowhere, they're sort of water demons-spirits that come out of somewhere and are given physical form and bodies. (In Chinese superstitions/mythology, mogwai apparently breed during the raining season, which this jives a lot with.) Because they not only hate bright light but will die in sunlight, the sun is their greatest threat. So what's the significance of midnight? If we think about in terms of astronomy and where the earth is facing, that's (roughly) the time when wherever you are on the earth has rotated furthest away from the sun-and thus its light is at its weakest-after which it starts to rotate back. So I'd take the dangerous time for feeding is any time from midnight to dawn, when the sun's light has returned to shine on that spot again.

Loved Emily's makeup and hairstyle. Movie says: "Are You hungry?" Emily responds: All the time!

22:38 "Which makes them not really shenanigans at all." "EEEEEVIL shenanigans!"

This movie sort of reunited Judge Reinhold and Phoebe Cates. They had a fairly popular scene together in a movie a couple of years earlier called "Fast Times at Ridgemont High".

Howie Mandel as voice actor is sooo underrated. He did virtually ALL the dialogue for ALL the international versions. And they researched what to use, including local references and jokes. (Here in the version for Germany, the sing bavarian songs and tell 'Stammtisch'-jokes. Which were all delivered to and by Mandel phonetically.

In 1984 I was eight years old and saw most of the movies you were talking about in the theater. I had awesome parents.

During the discussing, when discussing the voice of Gizmo, your cat was being adorable, reaching out to tap you with his paw, wanting your attention. I love it when mine do the same thing.

This movie brings back so many memories for an 80s kid. Saw it in the theater back when a PG rating could get kinda freaky (Poltergeist, Temple of Doom, Twilight Zone : The Movie, etc). Somehow I specifically remember I got my 1st Transformers toy that same day (Bumblebee, yellow VW Bug). So glad to have grown up in that weird golden age.

Gremlins created the all little monsters from the 80s, and inspired the b-movie classic "Critters".

I have to give a big nod to one of my favorite actress, Polly Holliday who played the salty Mrs. Deagle. She is most known for playing the character of "Flo" the very sassy waitress on the sitcom Alice. She was amazing and her famous line will never be forgotten, "Kiss my Grits!" which she says in most of the episodes.

My favorite tidbit is the time machine vanishing in the background.

The story written by Roald Dahl in 1943 was just called The Gremlins. It was based on mythical creatures that the RAF would blame for malfunctions in their airplanes, Dahl did not originate the idea. The first known written occurence of Gremlins was a 1929 poem published in the journal Aeroplane in Malta. Dahl developed a series of gremlin characters that were supposed to be used for a Disney animated film but it was never made in part because they were unable to establish the proper rights to the gremlin story.

I can confirm... The 80's had AMAZING kids movies!!!! LMFAO!!

My favorite scene since i was a kid. Is the gremlin with the puppet in the bar.

Only Emily would try to pet gremlins 🤣

Time for Gremlins 2 😋

Music trivia. Rand Peltzer was played by the late Hoyt Axton, a country singer probably best known for writing the song 'Joy to the World' (the "Jeremiah was a bullfrog" one, not the Xmas one)? 🤗

80's oranges, I'm done Matt! That floored me.

my god the cat trying desperately to get your attention is killing me by cuteness overload...

Howie Mandel voiced a show called Bobby's World that I watched a lot as a kid/teen in the 90s. If you had seen that show you'd have nailed his voice immediately. Gizmo sounded just like Bobby- or I guess the other way around. Heh. Mrs. Deagle was just a ridiculous over-the-top Grinch. Gremlins became a thing in the 1920s RAF and WWII as referenced by the xenophobic dude- pilots blamed mechanical issues on gremlins. The Twilight Zone first portrayed gremlins in film/tv in "Nightmare at 20,000 feet" in 1963. Disney talked about making the Roald Dahl book into a movie but it didn't pan out.

Gremlins is one of the best movies in the 80's no doubt. Gizmo is really cute.

I got to see this in the theater when I was five. Looking back, I don't know what my parents were thinking.

You really should watch the second one... it leans way more into the comedy aspect of the movie

It does raise a few questions, though: do gremlins have sufficient body heat to melt snow? If yes, why weren't the carolers popping new gremlins from their feet? And how do they determine what "midnight" not to feed them after? Do they take time zones into effect?

"I love that this is just a straight-up horror movie, now." Always has been.

Lol I love how she thinks it’s way more gruesome than she expected. This movie is way toned down from the first script. In that one if I remember correctly the gremlins eat the dog, kill Billy’s mom and there is a scene in McDonald’s where the gremlins ignore the food and instead eats all the people inside. The one thing I did love about the first script is the ending.

13:00 “what is this rated” The blowback about this film was integral and key to the creation of the PG rating between G and R

My favourite movie as a kid. Whenever we rented movies, I always picked this one.

So much fun watching y'all discover this movie! It opened the week I got my driver's license, and the first place I drove by myself was to the theater to see it. One other great Gremlins memory is from a later time when it was playing at the drive-in and I went with two friends of mine. The one sitting in rear seat had seen it too, but the one sitting in the front passenger seat hadn't. Right at the moment where the gremiln pops out of the Christmas tree, my friend in the back seat his the recline switch on the front passenger seat, so it flew all the way back. My friend in that seat just could not stop screaming and laughing.

What is the origin of Gizmo Gremlins? One of the most alluring aspects of Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai is how far back it would go regarding Gizmo's origin. Fans have always been curious where the cute fuzzball came from. Fortunately, the Max Original series revealed he originated in a region in China known as the Valley of Jade

Musical tidbit related to Phoebe Cates: not sure if you two were infected by the pop punk craze of the '00s, but a band called Fenix TX recorded a song titled "Phoebe Cates". Y'all might enjoy it lyrically, if not sonically.

My parents have a cat named Gizmo, he got that name because of his colouring, he's pretty cute.

Howie Mandell was Gizmo, and Frank Welker was "Stripe" the Gremlin. Frank has done 100s of VO over the years including Megatron and Soundwave from The Transformers.. Welker has also voiced Fred in almost every series and incarnation of the Scooby-Doo animated franchise

You did better than me because I immediately started singing REM when I heard "that's me on the corner"

Fun fact : Joe Dante directed the Werewolf classic, The Howling also. Gremlins shares the same universe with The Howling connected by the news caster Lew Landers who was in both movies.

Top Secret (another SUMM favorite) also came out that same weekend. That's why it didn't become a major hit. Going against Gremlins and Ghostbusters (which was still in first run theaters 6 months later) is why Top Secret got little to no attention.

I saw this opening night at the age of 15 and loved it. I remember all of the news reports about uptight parents threatening theaters, because they thought this was a kid’s movie! It was really laughable at how insane some parents got. My parents loved Gremlins as much as I did. My favorite scene was mom vs the gremlins in the kitchen. You have to watch Gremlins 2, it’s much more Looney Tunes-esque and it’s hilarious! It’s competition that summer was Ghostbusters and I didn’t particularly care for Ghostbusters. I tend to rewatch Gremlins every Halloween or Christmas. Ghostbusters not so much, although I’ve come to enjoy it a little more over the years. Great review! ❤❤

There are two Spielberg movie Easter Eggs on this marquee in GREMLINS. "A Boy's Life" was the working title for E.T. and "Watch the Skies" was the pre-production title for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.

The old guy shows up at the end: "I try to warn you, stupid Gwei-lo. You and stupid grandson!"

@JustSUMMReactions you too need to see the sequel asap cause it is HILARIOUSLY OFF THE WALL

Such an awesome Jerry Goldsmith film score, who also starred in the movie. He also scored and starred in the sequel, "Gremlins 2: The New Batch".

Phil Tippett is NOT credited in Gremlins HOWEVER Mark Dodson is the voice talent that provided the voice for Salacious Crumb in Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi. For Gremlins he is the voice of many of the Gremlins and mischevious Mogwais. For Gremlins 2, he is the voice actor for Daffy, George, and Lenny, along with miscellaneous gremlins/mogwai. He continues to voice for films, commercials, video games, and narrate TV shows. if you look at Bobby's World you can hear Gizmo clearly. Howie was also in Little Monsters

The females were the real heroes here. Mom took care of business in the house, and the girlfriend dealt withthem at the bar (keeping them away from everyone else) and had the idea about blowing up the theater.

*just started video* I can already hear Em's squees for Gizmo.

The initial script was a lot more violent. The Gremlins actually killed Billy's mom and threw her head at him when he came home.

This was 300 percent more gruesome than we were expecting when we went to see it. And we saw it because my mother thought Ghostbusters would be too scary for 7-year-old me and my 5-year-old brother. Gremlins absolutely was merchandised to hell and back.

Every time Gremlins have to choose between good and evil, they choose fun.

Is it too early for an Easter Egg hunt? - Prior to 'Snow White', the town theater was showing a double feature of 'A Boys Life' and 'Watch the Skies' (Original working titles for 'E. T.', and 'Close Encounters') - In the bar, Billy is showing his artwork to none other than Charles M (Chuck) Jones (This is a Joe Dante film, after all...) - At the inventors convention, did you spot Steven Spielberg, Jerry Goldsmith, George Pal's Time Machine, and Robby the Robot (Quoting lines from 'Forbidden Planet')? - Bonus exercise - Seek out the Bugs Bunny Cartoon 'Falling Hare' (1943, directed by Bob Clampett) for a little more background on gremlin lore...

"...Frank Welker, who you probably best know as..." Nibbler from Futurama :)