Cult 101: Gremlins (1984)
Director: Joe Dante Run Time: 106 min. Rating: PG Release Year: 1984
Starring: Corey Feldman, Frances Lee McCain, Hoyt Axton, Phoebe Cates, Zach Galligan
Country: United States
Language: English
Presented as part of the 2023 edition of Cult 101.
About the film:
Don’t get him wet, keep him out of bright light, and never NEVER feed him after midnight. When Billy Peltzer is given a strange but adorable pet named Gizmo for Christmas, he inadvertently breaks the three important rules of caring for a Mogwai, and unleashes a horde of mischievous gremlins on a small town.
Gremlins (1984) is a delightful blend of humor, horror, and holiday mayhem from The Howling (1981) director Joe Dante, The Goonies (1985) writer Chris Columbus, and executive producer Stephen Spielberg.
“Like some evil twin of its producer’s earlier film ET… a wacky, satirical spectacle of chaos”
—Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
About the filmmaker:
Joe Dante is an American film director, producer, editor and actor known for witty genre films and television shows. He began his career at Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, where he edited Ron Howard’s directorial debut Grand Theft Auto (1977) and co-wrote the original story for Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979). He made his solo directorial debut with the camp classic Piranha (1978), and followed up with The Howling (1981) and the landmark horror comedy film Gremlins (1984). His other feature films include Explorers (1985), Innerspace (1987), The ‘Burbs (1989), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), and Small Soldiers (1998). More recently, his projects have included the feature film Nightmare Cinema (2018) and episodes of Salem (2015-2017) and Hawaii Five-0 (2011-2017).
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