ITS CHRISTMAS!!!! This is movie about creatures taking over a town and destroying it just before Christmas. MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY. Released in 1984 back when I was ten and this movie along with Ghostbusters took over my world. Terrified to watch it I managed to get through it and loved it. It was a great story and loved by many even Rotten Tomatoes gave this one an 85%. Not so keen was IMDb who gave it 7.3 out of 10. Written by Chris Columbus and directed by Joe Dante, music by Jerry Goldsmith what you will see missing in all of that is the name Steven Spielberg as this was labelled another Spielberg classic where he was the Executive Producer for this movie. He must of made a mint as you couldn’t move in 1984 without a mogwai being involved somewhere. You had two sides of the coin which the nasty and scary gremlins and the lovely and cute mogwai’s and they were literally everywhere. A marketing campaigns dream, the movie itself was made on a budget of $11m it went on to recoup $212.9m and I assume that doesn’t include the merchandise sales. The positive gem at the centre of all of these products was a really good movie at the heart of it and to prove the point a sequel with all the same merchandise and creatures was horrible. Shall I get to the plot? Yeah why not.
Randall Peltzer is an inventor but not a very successful one he is in Chinatown trying to sell his ‘bathroom buddy’. Rather than selling he finds a strange creature in a box and wants to buy it for his son Billy. Offering $200 he is turned down initially but the boy in the store does the deal whilst he has to wait outside. He hands over the strangely cute create called a mogwai with the three legendary rules of
Do not expose the mogwai to light, in fact sunlight will kill it
Do not let it come into contact with water but the important one is
Never ever feed it after midnight
Taking the mogwai him he gives it to his son Billy who loves it and looks after it well despite trying to hold down a job at the bank and living next to an evil old woman called Mrs Deagle who hates his dog. You already know where this is going as accidently he fails in all three tasks of looking after the mogwai. Firstly, a friend of Billy spills water on the mogwai which produces five new mogwai’s which one is given to the science teacher at school to investigate. He is then tricked into feeding them after midnight and the whole town turns to sh!t now he needs to use the sunlight to get rid of them.
Another great 80’s movie, you should be ready for a host of them coming in this list if you haven’t noticed already. These things took over the world back in the 80’s and you couldn’t move with out them. Gizmo was the name of every other pet in this country. These took over the world. They slowly pitted out over the years when they come up with a sequel which missed out on the 80’s tag coming out in 1990 and it was awful!! It’s not on my list as I have not brought it and I have returned to it in recent years and no it is not a good movie. It bombed at the box office as well losing $8.5m at the box office, save yourself the time and don’t watch it. Particularly when you have this gem to watch in its place. This is scary, funny, happy, sad, action packed and silly. Everything you want in a movie and set at Christmas it has to and I mean, HAS to be classed as the Christmas movie. Set at Christmas the little nasty ones cause havoc attacking Santa’s and people trying to celebrate alike. Its so good! The special effects are a bit dated but it uses the animatronics method so what you see on screen is what the actors see and react to making a better interaction rather than trying to act in front of a green screen where they pipe in a ‘monster’ later. This is just a good movie, if you have missed this one go watch it but maybe not with the kids…
Next up is a comedy that very little happens as the budget for this one was zero and it went on to become a huge success which then allowed the director to have a career in movies which simply wouldn’t of happened without this movie…
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