Gremlins

4.20
    Gremlins
    1984

    Synopsis

    When Billy Peltzer is given a strange but adorable pet named Gizmo for Christmas, he inadvertently breaks the three important rules of caring for a Mogwai, unleashing a horde of mischievous gremlins on a small town.

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    Cast

    • Zach GalliganBilly Peltzer
    • Phoebe CatesKate Beringer
    • Hoyt AxtonRandall Peltzer
    • Frances Lee McCainLynn Peltzer
    • Corey FeldmanPete Fountaine
    • Keye LukeGrandfather (Mr. Wing)
    • John LouieChinese Boy
    • Dick MillerMurray Futterman
    • Jackie JosephSheila Futterman
    • Polly HollidayRuby Deagle

    Recommendations

    • 100

      Empire

      A delightfully offbeat reminder of how inventive and witty blockbusters seemed when you were a kid.
    • 91

      Christian Science Monitor

      In many ways, though, Gremlins is ingenious. Gizmo yanks at your heartstrings with both furry fists, then sits out a few scenes while suspense builds, then plunges back with more vim than ever. The small-town setting, right out of a gushy Frank Capra movie, manages to be timeless, nostalgic, and slightly ridiculous all at once.
    • 88

      Chicago Tribune

      A horror-comedy about cute little Christmas toy/pets who turn into murderous monsters wreaking havoc on a Norman Rockwellian town. There's a moral there someplace.
    • 80

      Time

      Gremlins has enough style and savvy to stand on its own as the summer's most original Hollywood picture.
    • 80

      Time Out London

      A jangling, lunatic sugar rush of a movie, in love with everything it satirises and bursting at the seams with psychotic energy
    • 80

      The Telegraph

      A welcome reissue of the 1984 creature feature in which a Capra-esque idyll is besieged by ravening beasties.
    • 75

      Chicago Sun-Times

      Gremlins was hailed as another "E.T." It's not. It's in a different tradition. At the level of Serious Film Criticism, it's a meditation on the myths in our movies: Christmas, families, monsters, retail stores, movies, boogeymen. At the level of Pop Movie-going, it's a sophisticated, witty B movie, in which the monsters are devouring not only the defenseless town, but decades of defenseless clichés. But don't go if you still believe in Santa Claus.
    • 70

      Chicago Reader

      What's confusing yet ultimately illuminating is the way his gremlins function as a free-floating metaphor, suggesting at separate junctures everything from teenagers to blacks to various Freudian suppressions.

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