“And that’s how I found out, there was no Santa Claus…” (Kate Beringer, Gremlins)
Gremlins is a Christmas movie…a very dark and irreverent Christmas movie.
The whole premise of the movie hinges on the fact that Gizmo is a rare and unique Christmas present from Randall Peltzer (played by Hoyt Axton) to his son, Billy (Zach Galligan), obtained by a little subterfuge. Ran goes into the humid and dark corners of Chinatown and comes back home with the lovable little Mogwai. He also comes back with strict instructions and dire warnings which promptly get ignored, leading to mayhem and murder – who doesn’t love a little creature horror for the Holidays?
The opening sequences of the movie show people shopping for Christmas presents and picking out Christmas trees. We also get some allusions to a Christmas Carol with the side plot about the spiteful and hard-hearted Ms. Deagle (Polly Holliday), who threatens to put Billy’s dog to sleep and has very little sympathy for some tenants that are short on the rent. She meets an abrupt end when the gremlins rig her chair lift to behave like a rocket.
Christmas music plays throughout the film, often to great comic effect. (“Do you hear what I hear?” plays while Billy’s mom fights for her life using kitchen knives). The gremlins (naughty elves?) attack Santa on the street. Stripe (my favorite gremlin) makes a mockery of Santa by wearing his signature hat while he does the opposite of spreading Christmas cheer.
Kate (played by Phoebe Cates) tells a haunting story about how she hates Christmas because her father died of a broken neck while hiding in the chimney while trying to play “Santa” and instead traumatizing his family (and the rest of us along with them). The story is based on a popular urban legend (much like the story of Christmas perhaps?). The Gremlins themselves are also an urban legend – mischievous, gleeful little creatures that wreak havoc and create chaos when they are let loose on an unsuspecting populace, leaving destruction and dead bodies in their wake. Christmas is a chaotic holiday, a mashup of religious and cultural traditions, with forced togetherness, and a farcical undertone throughout.
Kate really gets all the best lines in the movie though; her disdain and fascination with Christmas is a bit morbid but wholly justified, “You say you hate Washington’s Birthday or Thanksgiving and nobody cares, but you say you hate Christmas and people treat you like you’re a leper.”
Want more from our Hostage Holiday Collection?
Catch up on the Although Things Explode It Really is a Christmas Movie series
