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by Yonatan Klotz
| published
Christmas movies tend to be heartwarming feel-good movies about the true meaning of Christmas or a small town girl who moved to the big city to be a talented lawyer has to return home for some reason and meets her old high school crush who is now a grown up sculpting cents out of ice imported from Sweden and they bond over their love for christmas But one Christmas movie stands alone, and nothing in 40 years has come close to its perfect blend of holiday cheer and black comedy: Gremlin. The 1980s horror comedy is still a part of pop culture today thanks to the mischievous gremlins themselves, but it’s a dark and traumatic monologue that makes the film impossible to forget.
Roast Santa
Gremlin About a gizmo, Mogwai, given to Billy Peltzer as a Christmas present by his father, and after breaking the first rule given to his father by the mysterious Mr. Wang, “Don’t get it wet,” disaster eventually engulfs the town of Kingston Falls as a horde of evil gremlins wreak havoc. But no matter what the evil Stripe and his associates do to the townspeople, from crashing a valuable truck into a bedroom to turning a cable car into a launch pad, nothing compares to the terrible tragedy Billy’s friend Kate shares a little more than halfway into the film.
Played by Phoebe Cates, years after the infamous Fast times at Ridgemont High scene, Kate launches into a monologue About when her father disappeared when she was nine. He missed Christmas, and the family had no idea where he was until a few days later, when they lit a fire in the fireplace, and the smell alerted them that something was wrong. Her father, dressed as Santa, tried to climb down the chimney with presents but broke his neck and got stuck, dead, inside their chimney. The story relies entirely on Kates monologue which makes it seem like Kate is fighting to finish as soon as she starts. It may seem out of place, but it is the perfect summation of Gremlinof dark humor
The fine line between tragedy and comedy
The first time I heard this story was while watching GremlinAnd it has haunted me ever since, but it preceded the movie. Urban legends of Santas getting stuck have persisted since Coca-Cola invented the modern Santa, and while some stories are tragic, like Kate’s, others poke fun at grown men who get stuck and need to be rescued. Director Joe Dante stuck this story in the middle of the movie to provide some background for Kate and her PTSD around Christmas, but it fits the movie perfectly, because it’s something so absurd that people might chuckle nervously over it and find dark amusement. Outside of that, but if it happened to you, it would be horribly tragic.
dancing between comedy and horror like no other film before it, Gremlin Pushed the envelope so far that it, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doomcaused the MPAA to create the PG-13 rating. Most of the deaths don’t just happen off-screen, but in the film, there are only 15 people who die, and most of them are nameless background bystanders. Arguably the most horrific moment of the entire film is the death of Kate’s father, who only wanted to make his daughter happy and paid for it with his life.
A unique Christmas movie
Joe Dante’s masterpiece has stood the test of time thanks to the extreme risks he took in bringing the script, written by alone at home and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone Director Chris Columbus, cheers with the encouragement of Steven Spielberg’s production company. Gremlin It’s such an extraordinary success that Dante never wanted to make a sequel, and when he did, he made the most wacky, insane, franchise-killing movie possible by throwing black comedy into straight-up slapstick comedy. Gremlins 2: The New Batch It’s also an amazing movie and remains one of my favorites to this day, but it’s much lighter.
Gremlin It might not be what comes to mind when you think of upbeat Christmas movies from the 80s, it would be die hardBut it’s been a Christmas classic for decades. Just be careful if you’re watching this with kids, not because of the violence or the murders, but because Santa broke his neck in a chimney.
Gremlin Currently available for streaming maximum.