Gremlins - little monsters

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Movie
German title Gremlins - little monsters
Original title Gremlins
Gremlins de.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1984
length 106 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Joe Dante
script Chris Columbus
production Michael Finnell
music Jerry Goldsmith
Noel Regney
camera John Hora
cut Tina Hirsch
occupation
synchronization
chronology

Successor  →
Gremlins 2 - The Return of the Little Monsters

Gremlins - Little Monsters (original title Gremlins ) is an American horror comedy from 1984. The film was directed by Joe Dante , who also held the post in the sequel Gremlins 2 - The return of the little monsters from 1990. The main roles are played by Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates . With a budget of $ 11 million, the film grossed $ 148 million in the US alone. The film opened in German cinemas on October 26, 1984.

action

Randall Peltzer from Kingston Falls is the inventor of quirky everyday devices that are supposed to make life easier, but mostly don't work properly. On a business trip, Peltzer buys the Mogwai Gizmo from the grandson of a mysterious trader in Chinatown . It is a small animal that is covered in fur and can sing. The dealer's grandson gives him three rules:

  • never expose the mogwai to sunlight,
  • Don't let the Mogwai get wet
  • do not let the mogwai eat after midnight.

Peltzer gives the cute little animal to his son Billy as a Christmas present and shortly afterwards the first mishap happens: Gizmo gets wet and a multitude of new Mogwais burst out of his fur with twitches. However, these have different character traits and behave extremely anti-social. So Billy goes to the local middle school to show his former biology teacher Mr. Roy Hanson a Mogwai, whereupon the teacher takes a blood sample from the furry creature with a syringe for some tests.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Mogwais at home in Billy's teenage room are nibbling the power cord of his alarm clock. With a look at the stopped hands of his alarm clock, Billy feeds the voracious animals after midnight out of ignorance. The Mogwais pupate and then slip out of the black cocoons as aggressive lizard-like gremlins . The green beasts then attack Billy's mother in the Peltzer family's house, who bursts a gremlin in the microwave. Plus, mom Lynn mashes another gremlin in a kitchen mixer . With a sword hanging on the living room wall, her son Billy, who rushes over, beheads another Gremlin during a scuffle, whose severed head is thrown into the fireplace and burned in the flames. After Billy's mother and he were able to kill the goblin-like gremlins except for their leader Stripe, who wears white irokes-like hair on his head, the latter escapes into a YMCA building. In the swimming pool located there, he multiplies by jumping into the water into an army of destructive little monsters who plunge the tranquil place into chaos on Christmas Eve. The wild gremlins in the Irish pub Dorry's Tavern enjoy themselves with alcohol, tobacco and gambling, while the spiteful creatures, who show a tendency to disguise with hats, sunglasses and make-up, dismantle the pub. In the Irish pub, Kate Beringer, Billy's new friend, works as a waitress who is harassed by the Gremlins. When Kate discovers that a gremlin is afraid of a lighted match burning, the young woman is able to drive away some of the evil monsters with the flash of an instant camera . In addition, Billy drives up in his snow-covered VW Beetle , who frees his girlfriend from the predicament with the bright headlights of his car, whereupon Billy and Kate flee to the nearby bank where Billy works as a banker during the day.

In a gas explosion caused by Billy in a cinema, where the nasty long-eared creatures have gathered to watch the Walt Disney cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , all Gremlins are killed again except for leader Stripe. During a showdown in a department store, Gizmo kills him by pulling up a window blind from the incoming sunlight. So the spook is over. When the Peltzer family found their way back to normal in their living room, the Asian trader from Chinatown came to visit. In an angry plea against the anti-nature lifestyle of the western world, he explains to Mr. Peltzer and his son Billy that they are not ready to keep the Mogwai as a pet because of their irresponsibility, and takes him back with them. It is only in the young Billy that the gray-bearded Asian recognizes the human size, possibly at some point of being able to cope with the care of Mogwai Gizmo.

In the end, father Randall Peltzer, the authorial narrator from the off , who had already introduced the plot at the beginning of the film, admonishes the audience not to call the craftsmen directly if “the air conditioning fails or the washing machine does not work at home the video recorder gives up the ghost ”, first you should turn on the lights everywhere in the house and search everything - because a gremlin could be hiding in the house.

Awards

The film won the 1985 Saturn Awards in the categories of Best Horror Film , Best Director , Best Music , Best Special Effects and Polly Holliday for Best Supporting Actress . He was also nominated for Best Screenplay , Best Make-up and Corey Feldman for Best Young Actor .

In addition, the film won a Young Artist Award for Best Family Film and a nomination for Corey Feldman as Best Young Actor . In Germany, the film was awarded the Golden Screen .

Computer game implementations

Trivia

  • The film features guest appearances by producer Steven Spielberg and composer Jerry Goldsmith, as well as actors such as Kenneth Tobey and William Schallert who appear in Joe Dante's films .
  • The Scottish band Mogwai got their name from the film.
  • The Warner Bros. Movie World parks had a ghost train ride on Gremlins for a while. The theme was a gremlin raid on the studio where the visitors are, where everything is being devastated.
  • While the father is on the phone with the mother at the inventors 'fair, in the background on the right you can see someone starting the time machine from the classic film of the same name based on HG Wells ' novel. After a short cut to the hatching gremlins in Billy's room, the time machine has suddenly disappeared and viewers search the steaming floor in disbelief.
  • Robby the robot from Alarm in Space can also be seen at the inventors' fair .
  • The night Billy accidentally feeds the Mogwais chickens after midnight, the classic film The Demonic , which is about the replacement of humanity with human copies produced by aliens , is shown on television .
  • In the book accompanying the film, we learn that the mogwai (gizmo) was originally created by a pacifist alien scientist to breed the ideal pet for children. According to the book, the "gremlins" are an unintended side effect. While the peaceful Mogwai (one in 1000) is immortal, the lifespan of a Gremlin is very short as they tend to outsmart each other and create enemies. However, it is not known where Mr. Wing got this information about Gizmo.
  • In the film, all of the Mogwais look very similar to Gizmo (spotted white and brown), but in the sequel they are black and white. The color of the Gremlins cannot be distinguished either.
  • The film is set in the small town of Kingston Falls , and the scenes were shot on the same film set as Back to the Future , Courthouse Square in Universal Studios in Hollywood .
  • With its cute appearance consisting of googly eyes and stocky build, Mogwai Gizmo corresponds to the child's scheme and thus arouses feelings of affection.
  • The supernatural feature film Gremlins appeared at a time when cinematic blending of horror and comedy-service gaps was gradually gaining popularity. The horror comedy Ghostbusters , which was released in 1984 in the same week as the Gremlins, follows the same concept , according to the American philosopher Noël Carroll . Eerie film scenes that used to be terrifying are given a humorous undertone in these films.
  • The legendary legend about the Gremlins goes back to the time of the Second World War , when members of the British Air Force, the Royal Air Force, often for fun attributed technical problems to these little monsters. Likewise, the children's book author Roald Dahl established the term "Gremlins" in popular culture with the publication of his book The Gremlins in 1943. Walt Disney considered making the book into a film, but this was never realized. In an eight-minute cartoon episode entitled Falling Hare by Bugs Bunny , produced by Leon Schlesinger , from 1943 (in German: A bunny has flown ), the rabbit fights such a gremlin in a military plane high up in the sky. Director Joe Dante had read the children's book The Gremlins by Roald Dahl and explained that the book had an influence on his feature film. In 1983, Dante's work publicly distanced himself from previous film adaptations of the Gremlins material in that Dante described: “ Our Gremlins are somehow different. They're green and big mouths, they grin a lot, and they do incredible, really mean things with people and have fun all the time. "

Reviews

“A maliciously subtle horror farce about the ambivalence of the wonderful and the downside of technical progress and modern consumer society; caustic caricaturing, at times also trivial and blatant in the means of expression, but overall aptly in their social criticism. "

- Lexicon of international film

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gross profit according to the Internet Movie Database
  2. ↑ Start dates according to the Internet Movie Database
  3. ↑ Nominations and awards according to the Internet Movie Database
  4. ↑ Gremlins - Little Monsters. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used