We watched Gremlins again for the first time in more than 10 years. A few things stood out:
- Apparently, back in 1984 you could be 24 and a Vice President of a bank and it wouldn’t be considered a parody.
- Billy Peltzer is… simple-minded? Stupid? Having an aw-shucks-gee-wheez personality is one thing, but an adult behaving like a grade schooler is just being reckless.
- Mr. Futterman comes accross as someone who would, if he were around today, wear a red baseball cap and vote for Trump. Yet back in 1984 his thinking was that anything foreign was broken by default and inferior to American-made. Today, Not my own view, to be clear. it is the US of A that is broken and overtaken by superior Asian and Arab infrastructure. Xenophobia will allways adjust to the current moment.
- Did they shoot the town scenes on the same set as Back to the Future? They did come out within a year of each other.
- Speaking of other movies: the next time we watch I will try and count all the references, obvious and hidden, to other movies. It seemed like every movie Spielberg made until then had a call-out.
- The little green mosters hijacking Futterman’s snow plough as the full Gremlins soundrack blasts for the first time was as thrilling as I remembered it.
It kind of made me want to see Gremlins 2 again, as bad as that sequel was on first (and only) viewing.