As the most enduring monster movie of the 80s turns 40, director Joe Dante and producer Michael Finnell tell Buff how ignoring the rules helped them to create a nostalgic classic...
Avoid bright lights, don’t get them wet, and whatever you do, never feed them after midnight... The rules were simple yet despite these clear warnings, we all learnt the hard way what happens if any of these mandates were broken – and it wasn’t pretty. In fact, according to director Joe Dante, no one was more dismayed at the gleefully slimy chaos that ensued in his 1984 monster-hit Gremlins than the studio that helped make it a reality.
‘[Warner Bros.] just didn’t get it,’ Dante tells Buff, recalling the early days of his Steven Spielberg-produced Christmas classic 40 years after it first hit cinemas. ‘They thought the Gremlins doing stuff like blowing their nose on the curtains was disgusting. At one point they said, “The only thing wrong with this movie is that it’s got too many Gremlins in it.” Spielberg said, “Well, we can cut out the Gremlins and call it People but nobody’s gonna go see it…”’
Based on a spec script by the then-unknown Home Alone filmmaker Chris Columbus, Gremlins has become one of the most beloved movies of the 80s. It follows Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan), a young man who receives a mysterious creature known as a Mogwai as a gift from his inventor father – along with those three all-important rules.
Unfortunately for him but fortunately for us, it’s not long before these are broken, unleashing a gaggle of cackling green Gremlins on his sleepy suburban town. Together with girlfriend Kate (Phoebe Cates) and new Mogwai pal Gizmo, Billy must stop head Gremlin Stripe from multiplying before things get even more out of hand.
‘[Spielberg] was familiar with my stuff,’ says Dante on how directing 1978’s low-budget Jaws rip-off Piranha and 1981’s werewolf horror The Howling convinced Spielberg he was the right guy to helm Amblin’s debut release. ‘My Roger Corman beginnings marked me as a B-picture director and since Spielberg’s view was that this was going to be a B-horror movie, I was judged appropriate for the role. Chris Columbus’ original draft was intended to be a B-horror movie, which is what Steven wanted to do as his first Amblin production because it was a safe bet.’
VIOLENT DELIGHTS
This mixture of sweet Spielberg-heart and darkly funny Dante-danger had Gremlins shaping up to be a family-friendly frightener. But before cameras could roll, a few issues had to be ironed out. ‘It was originally much more violent,’ says Gremlins producer Michael Finnell of Columbus’ original story, ‘which was fine with us, but the other problem was that it was virtually impossible to produce with the technology that existed at that time.’ Dante adds
