Yipes! Stripes!

Gremlins (1984)

Rating: PG

Runtime: 106 minutes

Box Office (in today’s dollars): 332 million (approximately)

Characters: Billy Peltzer, Gizmo, Kate Beringer, Stripe, Pete Fountaine, Mr. Hanson, Randall Peltzer, Lynn Peltzer, Mrs. Deagle, Gerald Hopkins

Cool Stuff: The Bathroom Buddy

Cool Music: “The Gremlin Rag”

Cool Quote: “Bright light!”

Three simple rules: keep him out of the light, don’t give him any water, and don’t feed him after midnight. Yet nobody could do it. I guess it would be almost impossible to keep the Mogwai away from all these things, but the old man who owned the store was able to find a way. It is by far the scariest/grossest ’80s movie I have watched so far for my blog ... but it is great! Gizmo is cute and funny, and Stripe is not cute and not funny. My favorite scene with each is when Gizmo is driving the Barbie pink Corvette and when Stripe is smokin’, drinkin’, and watchin’ Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Billy is a bank teller (like me!) and Kate works at a bar (like my girlfriend ... wishes she did!). The rest of the cast is good, but is mostly just there to fill in when Gizmo is not.

There are no cool cars in this film (Billy has a piece of junk), so the cool thing in this film is the Bathroom Buddy, a travel-sized invention that was an all-in-one toothbrush-razor-comb-nail-clipper-mirror. And by cool I mean it didn’t work ... but it was a good idea. As for something that did work: “The Gremlin Rag” is a catchy tune. When the gremlins were up to no good, this seemed to be the song that was playing; much like the song that followed Darth Vader around. Cool quote for the film ... definitely “Bright light!” which Gizmo says on numerous occasions. And by Gizmo I mean me, and by numerous occasions I mean I say it all the time.

This movie (along with Temple of Doom) is responsible for the eventual invention of the PG-13 rating. It was a bit scarier than a cute cuddly PG, but not a disgusting frightful R. Nerd fact: Red Dawn was the first movie to have a PG-13 rating ... for extreme amounts of Swayze. So be careful, parents who follow Salty Chewbacca; this might be one you don’t let your kids watch ... or if you do just be ready to explain to them the dangers of putting things in blenders and microwaves.

Next movie to review: The Karate Kid