Joe Dante directs Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates and John Glover in this horror comedy sequel where “the rules” are again broken and Gizmo’s unwanted offspring take over a NY skyscraper with a TV studio and a science lab within.

If they just let Joe Dante make this (and I mean this) a couple of years sooner it might have been a different story. The appetite for more Gremlins wained while executives fiddled and diddled. Warner Bros. went around the houses trying to cash in on the success of their 1984 smash hit. Many writers uninvolved in the original film were drafted in to try and feed the franchise after midnight with no real progress. In need of a summer tentpole for 1990 and with a potential brand going to seed, they capitulated and offered Joe Dante the chance to return to his own well. His demand – complete creative freedom. Final cut? Warner Bros. ended up with a sequel that was aggressively anti-business, chaotically meta and off its meds. It didn’t make nearly as much money as Gizmo’s first outing but the console game licences, Topps trading cards and mogwai toys probably still turned a tidy profit.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch is a work of looney tune virtuosity and counter culture sensibility. It feels nihilistic. Up against everything except physical effects and anarchic movie references. It is Joe Dante at his most narratively untethered and also his most childlike gleeful. Gremlins sprout wings, get doused in cement become gargoyles, the projection booth is taken over and the movie has to be saved by a heckling Hulk Hogan, the puppet musical parodies are even grander. It isn’t tidy but it is a blast. Gizmo, the flagship brand mascot, is bullied and traumatised. There’s no sensibility Dante doesn’t unravel to get to the joke that is within it. Not only a stronger film than its progenitor but possibly Dante’s best. It is neck and neck between this, Matinee and Innerspace. This is the least neat, most idiosyncratic. The only one that only Joe Dante could make.

Amid all the mania, animatronics and mutated call backs the humans become cattle. It is very much a case of go big or go home. Our returning bland small town kids in the big city are given very short plot shrift once the chaos is unleashed. Cates possibly deserves better but she is at least manhandled by a hundred little green arms in a plummeting elevator and gets to self destruct her iconic “The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas” monologue. Christopher Lee gives good extended cameo as a memorable mad scientist. John Glover’s spoof of one Donald Trump is a lot of laughs and he really goes for it. Someone who definitely gets the memo is Haviland Morris whose cold blooded middle manager is a flame haired resurrection of a Kate Hepburn / Rosalind Russell in a power suit. If the sequel was a bigger hit I reckon her career would have went on a far wilder trajectory. It is Tony Randall’s “Brain Gremlin” though that steals the show. He’s one suave, erudite motherfucker.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Gremlins (1984)

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