The Greatest Generation - Swiss Army Bathroom (Gremlins Holiday Special)

Episode Date: December 17, 2019

This is a special release of our previously donors-only 2017 holiday episode. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah and happy Kwanza from Adam and Ben! When a bumbling inventor gives a live animal to his son as a present, obeying the strict rules for its care becomes a challenge. But when the town is overrun by the animal’s mutated progeny, it’ll take more than breaking the rules of flash photography to save the town from their mischievous wrath. Is Gremlins in the Back to the Future cinematic universe? Which film achieves "Peak Cates"? Is the provenance of Mrs Deagle’s ceramics evil? It’s the episode that chooses the fun path to death! 🖖GET TICKETS TO GREATEST GEN KHAN II: STAR TREK III🖖 Support the production of The Greatest Generation. Music by Adam Ragusea & Dark Materia  Follow Adam and Ben on Twitter, and discuss the show using the hashtag #GreatestGen! Facebook group | Subreddit | Wiki Sign up for our mailing list!

Priority 1 message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Hey friends of Disodo. Before today's episode, we just wanted to take a moment to talk about the historic labor actions being taken by writers and actors in the American Film and Television industry. If you're a fan of the work done by the people who make Star Trek, we hope you'll join us in standing in solidarity with the folks who actually bring these adventures to life. Over the past several years, the AMPTP, the organization that represents the American Film and Television Production Studios, have reduced the profit from movies and TV going to workers. And in so doing,

they've attempted to weaken the labor unions that represent those workers. They wouldn't even engage the unions on many issues in their negotiations. And so a strike was the only course of action to take. Adam, Wendy and I have been having a lot of internal discussions about how best to stand with the unions and we are continuing those conversations in a dynamic situation. We're doing our best to understand where the picket lines are in these digital spaces,

and we would never intentionally cross one. With the information we have, we feel like we can do more good talking about and supporting the strike and continuing our show as planned. We'll keep you informed about what all this means for greatest trek specifically. Today we're making a contribution to the Entertainment Community Fund. This fund exists to help all the people whose livelihoods have been put on hold because the AMPTP refuses to negotiate

in good faith with the unions. It provides financial support for writers, actors, and all the thousands of laborers who make the shows that we talk about here and without whom we wouldn't have Star Trek to cast pot about. Those folks are all out of work because billionaires, company shareholders, and the executives of these companies don't want to compromise on the length of their yachts. We hope you'll join us in supporting entertainment workers in a challenging time, especially after they've already endured several years of challenges brought on by the pandemic

and season two of Star Trek Picard. We've set up a page where you can also contribute. It's at friendsofdecotoforlabor.com. That's friendsofdececoto for Labor.com. That's FriendsOfDecoto for Labor.com. Link in the episode description. Okay, now holiday episode, of the greatest generation. It's a Star Trek podcast, but you guys are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. I'm out of pranika. I'm Ben Harrison, and this is not even going to be about Star Trek podcast, I'm out of pranika. I'm Ben Harrison and this is not even gonna be

about Star Trek, is it? I think it's canonical us in the way that this is sort of a, this is an embarrassing and mission of mine. This film that we're about to cover is my favorite holiday movie, Ben. And it, and I'm not sure if many people know that it's not a very popular choice it makes me wonder what your favorite holiday movie or

movies are for the month of December do you have any? Die Hard 2 obviously. The best of the Die Hard movies I'll die on that hill. I feel like diehard too is when diehard realized it was diehard. Diehard too also canonical trek for the involvement of one column meany. As random airline pilot. Yeah. We have started a tradition of watching a very merry Christmas on Christmas day. Do you see what I see? In my newly formed family, me, my wife, and my dog.

And it only occurred to me a week ago that it's a pun on a very merry Christmas. Like that just totally went past me and it just popped into my head like, oh, that's what that is. Wordplay that's so tack sharp, it just goes through you completely. I don't know, it's good because it's not sentimental

in a schmaltzy way, it's sentimental in an affecting way. And... I've yet to see it, maybe I should see it. It's terrific, there's like the highlight is when Clooney shows up and sings a song called Santa Claus wants some love in. Oh boy. It's a real treat. You just sprinkle on a little Clooney, makes everything better. Yeah, I mean, we do as much Hanukkah as Christmas, if not more, in my family now.

So, it's kind of like the one really Christmasy thing that my wife will buy into. Right. I've prepared myself a holiday beverage here, Adam. I'm having some delicious spiked eggnog with some kind of fancy spiced rum called Bukman. Oh yeah? This is a spiced rum from Haiti. So it's the French kind of rum and then it's spiced with wild spices from around Haiti, or a piece of sovage as the bottle says.

And it's kind of a cool company because they're like getting Haitians back on their feet after a long series of natural and man-made disasters have inflicted themselves on that country. You and I on a very similar wavelength, W-slash-R-slash-G, holiday cocktails. I'm also drinking a spice eggnog, though far lower in class than yours.

Not going to come as a surprise that I don't consume that, which is dairy. So I have a tasty almond milk eggnog from the Califia company, which makes a very good almond beverage. And I have used Costco-spiced rum as the mixer. Maybe, you know, because our drinks are using such difference in quality ingredients, we can talk about the preferred ratio, Ben. I like a straight half and half rum and eggnog.

Is that the correct dosage in your mind? You really got to stir a half and half eggnog, by the way, like it's a little salad dressing you. Right, I just put like a ounce and a half pour of the rum into the bottom of my mug and then topped it off with eggnog, so I don't really know what the ratio is, but it's nowhere close to half an half. Have you ever made your own eggnog?

I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but you seem like a man whose culinary prowess would make that an on the table proposition. Oh, sure. You would make it to McDonald. I was a little bit embarrassed not to be making this particular eggnog, but I just couldn't justify all the ingredients for me sitting by myself at 1.45 pm on a Monday. Which is one we were recording this show.

Well, I think the spirit of this show, this one's going out to everyone out there by themselves on maybe a Monday or any other day during the holiday season. Yeah, I think that this is something we wanted to do because we are filled with warmth by the generosity of our viewers and wanted to do something special for them. I think it doesn't take much of an excuse for me to want to do a weird show with you Ben.

It's been a crazy year for us. I think there's been a lot that we could say that we're thankful for. I think there's been a lot that we could say that we're thankful for. But I think one way that I have enjoyed and otherwise an enjoyable year has been doing weird shows with you. So with that in mind, what do you say we get started on a funny little horror comedy from 1984? It's Gremlins. Ben, the horror comedy genre, not exactly stocked with a ton of great films, but one of the films in the genre was released on the exact same day. And that movie was Ghostbusters. They both came out on June 8th.

Really? Why would you ever release Gremlins on June 8th? That's my question. That is a release date that I would never have ever guessed. Yeah. Gremlins came in number two at the box office with a bullet. Pretty brave showing, I thought. I don't think the studio expected too much out of this one.

Yeah, I mean, it's a weird movie. I mean, it does have a lot of DNA in common with ghost busters, I think, the kind of evil that is more mischievous than terrifying. Right. Aspect, the kind of like practical puppet based special effects. But yeah, like the idea that it came out in the middle of the summer is pretty astonishing. One of the things I really appreciate about this movie is that there is nothing sacred in it at all. Like it is almost totally nihilist. It makes fun of everything. And I really enjoy that. You know, like in a holiday season

that's full of schlock and saccharine. This is a hard right into the bushes, I think. It's also the rare like studio Christmas picture that isn't trying to push a specific idea of like the meaning of Christmas or any meaning at all. Right, right. This film opens on a scene that might as well have used all the same sets as big trouble in little China. It's kind of like film noir private i-vibes too, because we've got a voiceover from Randall Peltzer. Let me introduce myself. My name is Roller.

St. Peltzer's the name. Which all is like, is that because we already know this character and love him and that's kind of like his catchphrase or like why did you do this to introduce him that like movie? This movie is basically bookended by Peltzer's captain's log. But like, is he working on his own documentary? Like, throughout the film, it really changes things. If you consider Peltzer sort of the narrator of his own story, and maybe he's writing a book or something. Well, nobody's got a story like this one. Nobody. The voice work of Hoy Axton here is amazing.

He, I love his voice. I love him on camera. He looks like a spiral cut ham sho Sheldon to like a flannel suit. He's just a beautiful like family patriarch of the 80s. Yeah, he's canonical 80s dad. Yeah, yeah. This is a set in Chinatown, New York Chinatown, I think, to be specific. It's the kind of like fever dream of white people who are scared to go to Chinatown version of Chinatown It's it's the hustle and bustle of a city that rural people fear. It's the Neon signs that can't be understood by only English speakers and then for some reason a car crash like It do a sign

Yeah, is that really necessary? So Randall meets a young boy who takes him down into his grandfather's shop. And this is kind of a a store in name only. It's just a room full of Curiosity's from the far east and Rather than do much shopping Randall Peltzer leaps right into the pitch for a device that he's invented the bathroom buddy See invention of the century friends that eliminates the need to carry heavy luggage because he is not the private eye that he reads as in costume. He's trying to hawk his Swiss army bathroom. I think he says the name bathroom buddy before it is revealed

what the bathroom buddy is and my mind really raised in a lot of different directions. I should, I don't know if I said this, but this was the first time I'd ever seen this film. I don't know if I said this, but this was the first time I'd ever seen this film. That is a fact about you that continues to shock me. Well, now I've seen it. As this is a foundational movie for me, I think as soon as I was old enough to see a movie, I saw this movie.

Wow. There's some things in this that would be upsetting for a little kid, I think. Oh, yeah. Were you scared of it before you loved it? Yes. For reasons we'll get into later, mostly that for a Christmas movie, really any other movie, it's almost unspeakably violent. Yeah.

What do you think about the viability of the bathroom, buddy? Ben, I feel like on the surface, great violent. Yeah. What do you think about the viability of the bathroom buddy? Ben, I feel like on the surface, great idea. Yeah, I think that the problem that it ignores is that if you are shaving or brushing your teeth, you don't want a brick of shit attached to the tool that you're using to do that. You ever drive a rental car where they have like the big fat steering wheel?

Like, like steering wheels are varying in gauge now. And how much hand it takes to hold it? Yeah. I'm with you, man. This is like, if your toothbrush was a rolling pin. Like the toothbrush is a concern. The razor blade is a showstopper. Like that is not gonna work.

So the proprietor of this shop is Mr. Wing. Is this the actor that played the grandfather in the three ninjas or whatever? I think so. He is very much of that guy. Yeah. He's in a ton of stuff. Yeah. Like this whole scene is super racist, right?

The fact that every time the camera pans and lands on something, there's a gong hit is astonishing to me. Like even in the 80s, I can't believe it. Look, it's not right. And I think you and I agree about that, but I'm asking this is devil's advocate, not necessarily because I believe it myself, but can you front load enough positive stereotype into a depiction to offset the more awful stereotypes that may also be depicted in a film or anything else? I think we should put a pin in that

because this guy comes back, spoiler alert, and I feel like the time to talk about that might be end of movie part of the podcast. I'm into that. But the thing he finds is a box, and it is like not revealed, or does in the box initially, and he offers $200 cash on the barrel head.

And a Casio. For this box with a cooling creature living inside of it. And the grandfather says, I'm sorry, Morguei not for sale. And so, Daddy Peltzer leaves and the little boy that brought him in runs out and catches him in the alleyway and says like, hey dude, my grandfather fails to recognize is that

we have to pay rent. So I've made an executive decision to go ahead and sell you this mysterious box with a creature in it. And you give me that 200 bucks and we're going to be good. It makes me wonder if Little Wing doesn't quite understand the danger that's inside the box if he's so willing to sell it to, I mean, they don't even try to hide the fact that Mr. Peltzer's an idiot. No.

He's basically the most dangerous person to give this to. I gotta have him. He's incredible. Yeah. I mean, the scene ends with the boy explaining the three rules to the dad. And the dad really just kind of blows him off. Like, yeah, whatever kid. Like, don't forget him after midnight, got it. You get an image you don't get too often, which is the slowmo effect applied to a piece of film that wasn't shot to be slowed down.

Yeah, this is a shot, the post-production slowmo is something you see a lot in, especially movies of this era. And I always wonder if it's done intentionally as like an aesthetic choice, or because they wish they had it in slow-mo, and this is good enough. The other quintessential example of this for me is the scene

in Empire Strikes Back, where Luke goes into the cave and is fighting Vader in the like, in like the imagined, you know, the place that is strong with the dark side or whatever. Yeah, and in that scene and in this one, there's a dreamlike quality to it that makes me think that it was intentional. But, you know, I mean, I'm sure I'm sure you've run into this problem just like I have, like when you think after the fact that, oh yeah, that would look better in slow motion and you decide to apply that effect to it, you get this effect instead a lot of times.

Yeah, it's some process where they create in between frames for, you know, because you shoot film at 24 frames a second. If you want slow-mo, you have to shoot more than 24 frames a second and then play it back at 24 frames a second. If you want slow-mo, you have to shoot more than 24 frames a second and then play it back at 24 frames. So this is maybe half speed, so maybe they're just doubling each frame or something like that. Hey gang, you're going with Rockin' Rikki-Ri-Outel, the voice of Kingston Ball USA! One thing I really like about early 80s movies of any genre is like the big song splash title moment.

And this movie really has that with I think my favorite Christmas song of all time. Darling loves Christmas baby please come home. I think you could do a lot worse with your time than look up every David Letterman Christmas episode where he has Darling love played this song live for him. It's amazing and she's amazing. And what a great holiday song choice for this movie. It's almost entirely the opposite feeling of what is to follow. Yeah. Truly.

And it reveals Kingston Falls, the town of Kingston Falls, which is the exact same studio place as Hill Valley. Yeah. From the back to the future movies that will come a couple years later. It's really like hard to ignore how much Hill Valley it is. Ever since I noticed that for the first time, I've thought that Grandlands was canonical back to the future and you can easily make the case for that if you think that during Marty's time travel adventures adventures he's not only traveling

through time but also traveling through like alternate dimensions. Like it's easy to conceive of a of a world in which Marty changes the past in such a way that he introduces the Gremlins universe to Hill Valley. That's what I think anyway. The problem with this theory is that there wouldn't be the time travel paradox where his sister and brother start to disappear on the photograph if he's in a different dimension, in addition to a different time. What my theory of presupposes is,

maybe that doesn't matter? So this is a real like a real hard tone change. And we are introduced to Billy who's trying to get his his flocked VW Beetle started. And unfortunately Billy can't get his car started. So he and his dog Barneyney are gonna walk to work, but not before their neighbor, Mr. Futterman comes by and explains that it's because... God damn Barron, God, he always reads up on you. Dick Miller, another classic that guy, just Dick Millering this whole thing up. That's a Kentucky law, mister.

With his Futterman vibes. God, he's so great. Our introduction to Billy in this scene is that he's sort of a bumbler. He's sort of a tryhard. By introducing a guy who's late to work right off the jump, you're sort of asking an audience to root for an underdog. And that's who Billy is throughout. So he hustles his way to his bank job, and it's there where we meet Kate.

He's played by Phoebe Cates. Oh man. In what is clearly peak Kate then? Yeah, like Phoebe Cates is so much Phoebe Cates in this movie that she is still distractingly attractive despite the fact that she's wearing a T-cousie instead of a shirt. She's so hard to look at at times that like,

Billy has a hard time looking at her. Like she totally devastates him just with her company and her kindness. Yeah. Cross your teeth. I think there are a few moments in this film where like real nice love is shown. And the relationship between Kate and Billy

is one of those examples. Like the people who love each other in this movie really love each other. Yeah, it's true. The feelings are heartfelt and you don't ever feel like the love has strings attached or whatever. This bank scene unpacks a lot of shit on us because we get the introduction of the SMARMY judge Ryan Holt, Gerald character, and we also get the intro to Mrs. Degle, who on her way to the bank with her broken snowman

figurine runs into some townspeople, who ask her for a little bit of relief. I think she's their land lady, and they're asking if they can pay the rent a couple days later, something like that. And she is just not even fucking having it. If the wicked witch music that is playing when when the camera pans up from her feet as she walks to the bank wasn't enough to to tell you that she is the villain of the movie, this this not letting somebody get a little break on on the rent being due really drives that home.

And then she cuts in line at the bank. So she's three for three on being a bad lady. And somebody who will definitely see their come-up ends by the end. Mrs. Degel's musical theme is written by Primus. That's what I think. That's what I think. She's pissed at Billy because Billy's dog, Barney, broke her imported lawn ornament of a snowman.

I'm terribly sorry. Almost perfectly decapitated is this snowman. Yeah, but it really begs the question, why import a snowman when you can just make a snowman? Mrs. Degel cops to ordering it from Bavaria. What are the chances that this is a Nazi snowman bin? And that the darkness in Mrs. Degel is far more dark than has ever fully illuminated.

I want your dog. Yeah, I guess we'd have to like look at it frame by frame when it crashes on the floor. If there's a stamp with a swastika on the inside of it. She threatens the dog in a way that is like totally insane, right? Like you would be not just asked to leave the bank, but also like they would say, sorry, we don't want you as a customer anymore. We're closing your accounts.

You just came in here and threatened the life of one of our employees, dog. It's a scene that tells the viewer how much power Mrs. Degel has in town as the big rich widow sort of messed up The law doesn't apply to Mrs. Degel. No, she's above it The other hang that we have in this movie is that is that The other hang that we have in this movie is that everybody likes this Irish pub for after work hangs and Kate, Phoebe Kate's character, has a second job working as a waitress there when she's not working at the bank.

Dory's informs everything that I ever wanted in a dive bar after this. Like I was too young to understand how comfortable Dorees would be to any adult who would be a patron of it, but God, every time I watch this movie, Dorees is it. Dorees is the only place I want to go to have a drink. It's kind of the platonic ideal of a town watering hole in a lot of ways. Yeah, it's unfortunate that they rep Killian's red in the neon sign on the window. I'm not going to hold that against him. It looks like they have a number of taps. You don't have to just drink Killian's if you don't want to.

Well, Killian's is like one of the only really good Irish beers. Really? No, I think we might disagree on that. What Irish beers do you like? You know me, man. What do you got? Heart blogger. I am.

Because I'm a quantity beer man. Give me four harps to your one killions. Killions is the only one with any taste in it I'm not gonna argue with that. I think we're on the same side of that argument You've changed man This is a scene that like for whatever reason Gerald has followed Billy to Dorees afterwards and is like just flipping him shit about his life like Hey, Billy, you know, I'm VP at the bank and I couldn't help but notice that your career

is a garbage pile. You still live at home. Cates never gonna love you because I have cable TV at home. Judge Reinhold is like putting Julian Bashir style, Smarmi moves on Phoebe Cates. Cate, you haven't seen my new apartment.

I haven't seen your old apartment. And she's not into it. Come on, we're talking cable. One of my core beliefs, Ben. I don't know if I've told you this before. Is that Judge Reinhold and DB Swini are the same person? Yeah. And no one has ever been able to dispute that.

You've never seen them in the same room at the same time I think DB Swini can cash judge Ryan holds checks and Okay, this movie definitely takes a side against the wealthy in in a way that I more by the day admire more by the day admire. So after this we get to see a little bit of Billy's home life. And because his dad is the inventor we met in the first scene, the kitchen especially is full of time-saving devices like egg breaker and orange juice sprayer all over the place. Um.

Um. These, uh, what Randall Peltzer has effectively done is weaponize the kitchen. It is a nightmare. Every inch of the countertop is taken up by something that just wants to take your finger off so badly. We made his mom, Lynn, who is a real sweetheart, and then Pop comes home and gives him the magwai, the mysterious creature that he was buying at the Chinese store

there at the beginning. And I would say that the way that Billy interacts with this creature really, really jumped out at me because he has a very like nurturing and loving affect with it, like right off the bat. Yeah. Which struck me as being kind of like adventurously counter to the kind of prevailing ideal

of what masculinity should be at the time. Well put. Cuddling it like a baby, which just doesn't, you know, like that's not what dudes do, kind of thing. He also totally innocently has a kid friend in Pete, played by Corey Felden, like, I don't know, I had a little neighbor kid when I was growing up and your friends with the little neighbor kid. Yeah, you got to be friends with that little neighbor kid. Exactly.

So, much more seriously, and with, you know, much more gravity, the dad explains to Billy the rules of Maguay ownership, which is don't expose it to bright lights, never let it get any water on or near it, don't even let it drink water, and never feed it after midnight. And he really drives these points home in no uncertain terms as Billy to follow these rules. And the movie is just like winking at us. Like I wonder what will happen when all of these rules get broken in succession. To underscore one of those rules almost immediately,

Lynn pulls out a flash camera. No, no. No, no. What happened? Look, while it on the one hand breaks one of the cardinal Gremlin rules, it also breaks a major photographical rule bend. There's no way that picture's gonna look great.

No. It's a garbage picture, Lynn. It's gonna be a garbage picture. You know, it was an era where we didn't have immediate feedback. I feel like everybody is on board with these with these rules now, but because of even the amount of time that a Polaroid took to develop, like it seemed like a just very large percentage of the population was a little unclear on what what good photograph technique meant. Yeah.

What good photograph technique, man. Yeah. So many lessons in this film. The scene that follows is the pelter orange juice scene the next morning, which is tantamount to putting a claymore mine in your kitchen. A claymore mine filled with oranges. Poor Billy gets up in the morning, readying a delicious glass of orange juice to go with his breakfast, inserts one single

orange into the hopper of the pelter orange juicer, and his entire kitchen is destroyed. Yeah, it's like a TV commercial for like bounty paper towels or something level of mess in the kitchen. I would burn down my house if this happened in my kitchen. There's no going back from this. Yeah, yeah, it's a real hot mess and it's terrifying. I feel like every movie with an inventor up to an including Pewee's big adventure centers around the idea that the kitchen should be full of ways to break eggs and prepare breakfast foods Right Honey, I shrunk the kid. I feel like has that also. Is that just trying to solve the problem of the not eating breakfast thing

That that we've been conditioned to believe is a thing I'm man Wallace and Grommett have that too right man so many movies Why are inventors so laser focused on solving the problem of breakfast? It's also really inventor shaming in all of these scenes and in all of these examples, like we make the inventor to be this idiot, but we need inventors, Ben, and we need them to see their ideas through the inventor shaming

that we get so often in popular media. I feel like the opposite of that though, whenever Randall Peltzer is on screen. Cause one of the things I love about his character is that he always has a pitch up his sleeve. Even when his son is just coming in to be like, Hey, what's up dad? He's like, now listen, you got a business meeting.

Big, big important pitch to the client. You've forgotten to shave. What do you do? She's the hostage. It's like, what do you do? She's the hostage. It's like... What do you think the sex ed talk is like from dad pelter? Like, do you think he's able to talk in any other language besides inventor pitch? Now look, you've pulled up to a date with Kate. You're about to pick her up from

Dory's. But you're looking to your wallet and you don't have a condom. On the normal circumstances, you are in trouble. That's why I've invented the condom buddy. The condom buddy rides shotgun in your imported German vehicle. Ready to dispense 30 to 40 condoms at a time at the push of a button. I thought you were gonna say that he invented coming on the tits.

Oh, Jesus. I think of anything, uh, Mandel's into facials given how many times he takes that shaving cream gag to the dome. Yeah, and what and what he's subjected his own son to in the kitchen. Yeah, and what and what he's subjected his own son to in the kitchen. It turns out his invention is just his weird, the weird embodiment of his kink. Cory Feldman comes over to drop off their Christmas tree and his, he's been forced by the Christmas tree lot that he works at to wear a Christmas tree costume

which is a super inconvenient costume to wear if you have to do any kind of manual labor which is what his job is so he convinces Billy to let him leave the costume there at the house and he's gonna go back and tell his boss that he got beat up for it or something. This is an important moment to call out because that tree costume is gonna come in handy later. It's so cruel what Pete's boss makes him do. It's not gonna to sell anymore trees,

having a kid in the tree costume. No, it's just going to make people laugh at that kid. Yeah. Corey Feldman's great in this, by the way. Yeah, I think this should be the beginning of a great career for him. It should. It should because he's truly magical in this film. He's really nice.

He's the sweet neighbor kid. He's great. He does a great job. Cory Feldman pulls a real bonehead move and knocking over the jar of paint brushes that Billy has in his 80s cool kid loft bedroom. And a bunch of the water splashes on Gizmo, the Magwai. And a bunch of tribbles pop off of Gizmo's back.

Yeah, it's a process that looks fairly painful. Yeah, the Gizmo is really subjected to some hard stuff in this movie. It's like a really cute character that kids would really connect with. So when it's going through pain, it's like really upsetting in any more visceral way than I think maybe they even intended. You can feel them pushing Gizmo out front as a possible toy and mascot for the movie. He shot very close up, he shot very cute.

You're right, subjecting him to pain is super painful to watch. These troubles start growing as Gizmo recovers. And weirdly, they're like totally transfixed by the troubles and not trying to comfort Gizmo or like see if he's okay or anything. Yeah. Like assumption is that Gizmo is gonna bounce right back.

But these troubles kind of like grow and grow and grow until they open up and we have five more magwai on our hands. This scene does a great job of a real squick out. Like a contemporary squick out in horror movies is wet hair. And they really goo up these tribbles in a way that is especially squeaky. Yeah, I wondered if they had a couple of of Magwai faces that were built like 2x the size of the ones that the actors appear on screen with, because they go up for close-ups of these guys that really fill the frame up and they look amazing.

Like the creature effects are unparalleled at this point in history, I think. I agree. It's unfortunately, I don't think it's aged well, but if you watch it within the appreciation for keeping a movie in its time, I think it's really impressive. When I saw that the dog was gonna be a character in this movie, I was like, this is not

necessarily the smartest filmmaking because if you've got a real animal that's super expressive and charming the way this dog is, and then you're, you know, cutting from that to a fake character that's, you know, made out of polyurethane and fake hair and shit. Like, it's gonna bring into relief how bad the effects are, but I don't think that it suffers from that, really. I think that while technology has moved on, and they could do more and better with characters like this now, it's still super impressive and doesn't really

suffer from being up against the dog in this context. For all the times I've seen this movie, I hadn't really thought about it that way. This is a film that's totally confident in its creature work because they will cut back and forth between them. Yeah. So these new magwai are kind of more mischievous than the previous one. And so Billy decides to do something that stranger things also decides to do, which is bring the high school science

teacher in on this. See what he can make of it. Here's another that guy in the film. It's Glenn Turman, who plays Mr. Hanson, who has been in a thousand other movies. And he plays really big, I think, in a way that is just a foot away from too big. He's great. Yeah, I don't quite know how you direct this character because the bigness of it is a real, it's another real tone shift where you're like, oh god, like this is almost cartoonish, but not quite. And somehow it's like exactly what this character needed

to make these scenes interesting. He's a little arch in a way that I can't quite... Like, I don't know how we know that about him at any point in the film. But I get the sense that as a science teacher, he may not be on the up and up. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like the big Lebowski, you know, the dude is the chillest character you've ever seen, never be chill for a single moment in an entire movie. Right. Billy does a weird thing in this scene where he's like, hey, teach, check out this new

animal I've got. I think it might be a great discovery and he totally drops some water on the magwai he brings. Yeah, that's not a great choice. I don't think so either. I think he was told very explicitly by his dad, not to expose it to water. And he is doing it for the sake of science. And he's already seen the consequences of that. He was so obsessed with the idea of whether or

not he could. He didn't stop to think about whether or not he should. And I think we should like say at this point that we're like maybe like 25% of the way through this movie. Like this is a real slow burn. This is a jaws we have not seen the shark yet. Situations. Yeah. And so just like it's like a date between billion Phoebe Cates and like more interactions with Mr. Futterman who has more time to spend on how much he distrusts foreign things.

Do you think it's strange that for an 80s horror movie that the love between Billy and Kate is so chased? 80s horror movies are filled with fucking. And, and well, they'd be doomed if they were fucking, I think. Yeah. Is the 80s horror movie logic? I guess that's how we know they're gonna be survivors. Yeah, and what Mr. Futterman explains as he, like, is being drunkenly persuaded not to drive himself home,

is that foreign companies put gremlins in their products so that they break down. That's the same gremlins brought down our brains in the big ones. And that's why foreign things are bad and cheap and US made things are good. Oh, Mr. Fuderman, enjoy your Irish beer. You fucking asshole. I mean, I think that the real asshole was that judge Reinhold ordering a vodka martini in that bar?

Shaken that stirred. Yeah. Thanks Gerald. What a dick. Everyone knows you look. I'm not going to drink shame anyone here, but I think at certain dive bars, you know what you should and should not drink. And I think a shaken that stirred martini is the order of a dick at this particular bar. There are very few bars that can pull off a shaken martini. In fact, many fancy bars will dissuade you from ordering a martini shaken because they don't know that you're an international spy and you need to keep your wits about you by

having your drink a little bit watery. Sure. Well anyways, these back at home, Billy is like hanging out with his new menasherie of Maghla. And the new ones, the ones that popped off of Gizmo's back are begging to be fed and he looks over at the clock. It is not before midnight. So he goes down and finds a plate of bird meat in the fridge that he just gives to them. And we're intercutting between that and the one that was taken to the high school science lab,

like stealing a sandwich by dragging it across the desk. I think the most unbelievable moment in this entire film is the idea that Lynn Peltzer, one of the great moms ever in movie history does not cover the fried chicken before putting it in the fridge. Yeah, you gotta cover that bird meat up unless you're, unless you're like doing a dry brine and it hasn't been cooked yet, you gotta cover that bird meat up. Yeah, but this is already cooked fried chicken. Yeah. What are you doing, Lynn?

Get it together. Get your shit together, Lynn. It could be the kitchen PTSD of just being surrounded by things that could kill you. Like, maybe she just wants to get the hell out of that kitchen as soon as possible after dinner. So the next morning, the the mogwai have disappeared. Everybody but everybody but Gizmo has disappeared disappeared and they have been replaced by alien xenomorph egg looking pods and the one at the school has you know the egg has formed within the bird cage that the science teacher

was keeping it in. They're just all over the floor in Billy's room. And so that's not a great situation. Billy wakes up and his room over the garage apartment looks like LV426. His mom is like, his mom and him, him are trying to figure out what the hell happened. He, after grabbing the frayed ends of his clock radio, sees that he has accidentally fed them after midnight. Mom, it's coming out here. The Magwai.

The Magwai can tell time at him. The Magwai slash gremlins know a lot of things that you wouldn't think that they know about then. Yeah, they're really too. So we've got like a middle 15 of this movie before the fun really starts where these eggs are just hanging out and they are, you know, the movie is pregnant with Mayhem. But we get to do do some check again. For example, Randall Peltzer has gone

off to a convention to try and move his pocket bathroom or whatever. If you think close your eyes and thinking about times of year when you would want to have a big convention, you know, like rent out the Las Vegas Conference Center and have tens of thousands of people come from all over the country and world to hawk their wares, it's Christmas Eve. Like in any other household in America, Randall Pellitzer would be served divorce papers, upon his return, the homestead. This is not right. Another piece of conflict in this scene is like,

God, I am so feeling Randall at this moment. Like you go to a thing and think you're gonna make a big splash with your invention and you realize that you're totally overmatched by everyone else who's there. That's basically why he calls. Like he calls his wife and he's like, Lynn, I think I've made a terrible mistake

by going to this convention. No one's interested in my pocket bathroom. Everyone's making like full-size robots here. I made a terrible mistake. Yeah, I went to the talent show with a song that I wrote at home, not expecting to be going up against sparkle motion. I feel really bad for him. I feel less bad about that he's a way on Christmas, even more bad that he thought he was

going to be seen as a conquering hero. And again, he is seen as the fool. Yeah. The science teacher has to has to kick all the kids out of science class, the bell rings, and that's like a save by the bell moment, but the, but the egg is hatching. And, and so he blows in a call to Billy. Just hatched. And so he blows in a call to Billy. Just hatched. I'll be right there.

And Billy starts to race home. But yeah, the Mayhem has commenced. And the science teacher comes very close to being the black guy that dies in the movie, but is in fact just knocked out by being injected with a hypodermic needle. I think you and I read this scene differently. I feel like Mr. Hanson's the first kill on a murder spree. You think so? I totally interpreted it as being passed out because of some like knockout drug.

I thought the Gremlin filled the hypodermic needle with air. And then... Oh, gave him like an embolism? Yeah. Jesus. You can kill a person that way. Poor Mr. Hansen dies face down after feeding the Gremlin. What looks to be like a Snickers bar.

Yeah, these magwai have transformed, and they are not the fuzzy cute little guys that we've come to know and love. I guess it wouldn't be an 80s movie without an egregious death of a black character. What may or may not be the death of a black character is followed by a r-rated killing spree that Ma Peltzer does in her own kitchen.

Lynn Peltzer as Ellen Ripley, like running around the house, putting gremlins and blenders and fucking stabbing them. And shit. This scene is impossibly gory for a holiday film, for a children's film. If you want to call it that. Yeah.

There are four different deaths that happen here to these gremlins, Ben. Yeah. Let me enumerate them. There's the bull mixer in which a gremlin goes in head first and then sprays and trails around the kitchen. A kitchen that was just cleaned, she then goes hand-to-hand combat with a kitchen knife and full on psycho-stops,

the next one. After... This might be a good time to ask another question. Like, what's more monstrous, spend the amount of frosting on these gingerbread cookies or the way in which Lynn Peltzer murders this Gremlin for eating them? It's too much frosting, Ben.

Yeah, that's really excessive, Lynn. Adam, if you could decorate your kitchen counter with a Gremlin knife block, would you not? I think you'd have to. Yeah, that would be a great knife block. Why hasn't somebody come out with one of those? Now when you're setting up a home kitchen, one of the things you're going to want to do is have a nice big can of bug spray at arm's reach. That way you can take care of any offending ants on your countertop. Spray your gremlin straight into the microwave and then turn it up on the popcorn setting. We've set up microwave on a custom table we built by taking some beam wood that we had left over from the expansion.

Putting it through a mited chop saw to make floor corners. And we put a nice coat of lacquer on top so it's really quite attractive. And we did it for cheap. This scene is the realization of like, what would happen if you put an animal inside a microwave? Yeah. It's so awful. It's a great effect too.

Like they really like figured out something that really blew up perfectly. Like Mrs. Pelzer is so brave. She is not taking any shit at all. She is defending the homestead. People are so freaked out by even a single Gremlin and she's in her kitchen like going hand-to-hand combat with them. She has nearly solved the problem when one of them gets her

around the neck with some Christmas ribbon. And she's about to succumb to being throttled by this guy when Billy rushes in, grabs like a baseball bat and knocks it off her back, squar into the fireplace. And we get to see it burn up. But the like leader of the of the Gremlin gang stripe, the Gremlin, who's extra bad because he has a Mohawk, narrowly escapes. He's also extra bad because he monopolizes the arcade machine. No one likes that guy. Yeah, what a jerk. So Billy takes his mom over to the neighbor's house. I guess their neighborhood is also their family doctor because it's a small town with an

insular community. And he goes back to the house to like clean up, I guess, and see if Gizmo is still there. And he finds Gizmo in the laundry shoot. And he starts tracking the Gremlin to the Kingston Falls YMCA. This, these Gremlins have multiple innate abilities that just seem baked in to their intelligence. One of them is geography. Yeah. Unless Kingston Falls is so tiny that you can find your way to the YMCA pool very easily, like he manages to go on a direct route there. Yeah, and they've gone from being a furry creature to kind of a reptilian creature and it can't be easy

for a reptile to get anywhere in that amount of snow, right? I sure thought so. But Stripe sort of has an essential motivation, and that is to reproduce. The best way for him to do that is to jump into this pool at the YMCA. Yeah, and they really got that pool boiling. It's a great practical effect. You get your green lights from inside the water, you get a ton of dry ice,

you get some boilers going yeah it looks great looks great and like really unnerving yeah they layer on some some creepy sound work here too like in addition to the visual I think it's a really great package it really horrifies Billy who can do nothing else but just sort of back away from the pool and horror. Mm-hmm. We get Billy goes to the sheriff and begs the local police department

to do something, anything about what's going on here. And they're too busy drinking while we're drinking. Well, no, how are you doing on your no, buddy? I'm almost down to the bottom. I could go for another maybe. Oh, I'm almost down to the bottom on my second. Oh, shit. I thought we came here to party at them. I've been drinking doubles, though. So I can, I guess, I guess the amount of booze you're putting in, you're probably about on pace with me Let's drop in an interstitial here and then we'll have refreshed beverages. Let's go to Dory's been

So predictably Billy gets laughed off by these cops. I kinda wish we'd gotten Brian Denny, as the cop here. Character actors, who gives a fucking weird fat. Yeah, we do get Jonathan Banks, who's a frequent Star Trek universe actor, as the deputy. Yeah, we gotta, there's a DS9 episode in season one that he's in. Yeah, but some Denny he gravitas here.

It would have really put a nice spin on this scene? And so now the fun and games really begin, because the funermans are home trying to watch some Christmas time television programming and they start to lose reception on their TV. I thought you were sure to got a Zenith. Mr. Futterman does the prelude to almost every suburban dad's death, which is still in his jammies and bathrobe puts on an overcoat and goes outside to climb up a ladder. When you direct Dick Miller, you don't even have to say act like you are growing increasingly

frustrated with your wife. Frustrated with your wife is Dick Miller's resting state. Yeah, you just introduce him to the character that's going to be the actress that's going to be playing his wife and then shoot in sequence and he will get increasingly frustrated. Mrs. Futterman, another like great grandma's wife, like who is impossibly patient and nice. With a TV. You have the thingy. Yeah, it doesn't mind that she's being treated like shit. shit. Yeah, and like the Gremlins are at this point revealing themselves to be like not rampant animals, but like intelligent creatures with an agenda of mayhem and mischief. Like everything they do from here on out is essentially a the hapless prank of a drunken fraternity.

This movie is like 15 years before Jurassic Park and this is the introduction of like Velociraptors can open doors. This is like when you put a Gremlin behind the wheel of a Kentucky harvester, that's Velociraptor opening door in in 1984. Yeah. And the thing is when you look at a Gremlin, it looks like they should be able to slice you into ribbons. Yeah.

But instead they choose the more fun path to death. Yeah, everything is like the most cartoonish version. It's like sending the lady up the... Uh... of the uh... of the stere elevator at super high speeds the do you feel like miss is deagle got appropriate come up and

hers is the most spectacular death right it's so amazing yeah like i think that there's like kind of often in a horror film, an internal logic to which characters buy it and which ones don't and it's very Greek, you know, it's like the characters that are acting in defiance of the will of the gods get suffering and punishment

and the ones that are righteous make it through. And that's sort of what's at play here, I guess, is that she's like a bad person that we're meant to hate. But man, it's, it's, it seems cruel, you know. Oh, I didn't think so at all. I laughed and laughed as she took that, that stair machine for a spin and it shot her out of her top floor window. Also, the editing of that scene, like they the take of the close-up of her screaming with the wall whizzing by in the background so many times that it's like, is she in a six-floor house?

And then just as that thought crosses your mind, she flies out the second floor window. I love that they took it from the police POV also. The policemen are in the car and they see Mrs. Degel get spit out of the house, landing like feet up in the snow and they're like, holy shit Mrs. Degel. And then they look out the other side of the car where like Kingston Falls favorite Santa is being like,

taken down by three grimm when it wants. And fucking Jonathan Banks is like, is so horrified by this. He's like, we gotta get outta here, man. There's nothing we can do for our town's favorite Santa. Your fighter arms are you sick again, Tom? He's like, hey, listen, I'm more than half in the bag from all those eggnogs, I drank back at the precinct.

Let's get outta here. Let's get out of here. Let's be honest with ourselves, we are not in a position to fight crime. At least in aliens, the law enforcement, quote unquote, had the, had the will to kill the person who was being killed by the enemy. Yeah. Instead, they, they just leave Dave Myers

to become the third human kill of the gremlins. Yeah. I think I think that is awful. Police work. It's inhumane. Cory Feldman's having an okay time fighting the gremlins. He's like, he's like, he's got like a wrist rocket and he's shooting them and then uses some giant, some giant shears to cut the Christmas lights that one of them is dangling from. I was delighted that he wasn't electrocuted. We also have an extendocene. After having been not in the movie for,

I'm gonna say like half an hour, Phoebe Kates is back and frantically tending bar for gremlins who are just there to drink and smoke. Like the premise of this scene at the beginning is that she's just trying to keep up with all the demand in the bar. You look at this scene and like the customer service at Doris is amazing. Like, they will serve everyone. Phoebe Cates is like poor and beers, she's light and cigarettes.

It also is totally emblematic of like the assimilation that the Gremlins have done to the town. Yeah. Like, they've not only taken it over, they have become townspeople in which I guess this is a world where they become patrons of the local shops and bars. They're like in the corner doing bottle service, one of them is break dancing. I mean, they are also swinging from the chandeliers and causing destruction and death, but they are for the most part doing the bar as a bar. They are doing much worse than Murray Federman was

a few scenes ago in his drunk, almost drive the combine scene home, you know? It's now a bar full of Federman. Hehehehe. Phoebe Kates, maybe the smartest character in the movie because she discovers that the bright light thing works on the Gremlins just as well as it works on the Magui, and she starts flashing Polaroid at them to try and escape, and she's working on it when a Gremlin comes in in a robber cap With a revolver to hold the bar up

She runs out of she runs out of flashes and it's looking touch and go there for a second But Billy pulls up in his piece of shit German car just in time headlights shine through So she runs out she hops in billy to the rescue Adam this next scene is uh is really something you're talking about the story? The story. So a couple times so far in the movie, Kate has expressed to Billy that not she's not a big fan of the Christmas. What are you into or something? Come on, Billy. She has personal reasons for that. Tells this story about her father failing to come home for Christmas. Days going by, where she and her mom can't sleep and the cops lose interest in the case because they can't

find any clues. The house is freezing, she goes to light a fire and they discover that her dad freezing she goes to light a fire and they discover that her dad attempted to slide down the chimney in a Santa costume and give them Christmas presents but he slipped and broke his neck. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus. Yeah. It's like this movie makes very little sense to begin with. But this scene is like such a, it is like, I don't know, it'd be like if you had like a ballroom dancing scene, like dropped right in the middle of the fourth act of Jurassic Park,

you know, like, you know, like, like, what is this doing in here? Like, what is the takeaway from this? Like, emotionally, what is this supposed to do for us that this movie couldn't do without this insane scene? This is a scene that is too horrible to live. And yet, and yet, they totally choose to keep it. Like, this, this does not forward any story,

it does not develop Kate's character any further in a way other than being just incredibly graphic and awful. There's a case to be made for the scene in that it is like a quiet, like a catcher breath between the two characters that we like the most and sometimes you do need that scene, but yeah, this like you got to reshoot this scene guys Kingston Falls is a very small town. How does everyone not know this story? Like the idea that this comes as a surprise to Billy is maybe the biggest leap of viewer needs to make in a film about

actual gremlins taking over a town Also, this is a town where there is one thing about every character like Mr. Futterman's only thing is that he hates foreign made products Like his character has as developed as Kate's. Kate's thing is that her dad died on Christmas. That's her whole thing. It is so insane. It is so show-stoppingly crazy that it was written in the first place, much less shot.

The fact that, you know, like scripts don't, you don't write the first draft of a script and go into production. Like scripts go through development and like Steven Spielberg read these lines and was like, didn't have anything to say, you know? Joe Dante didn't say like, oh, you know, like we shot that scene today, I don't think it really worked and I'm gonna go back to the producers

and see if we can get some money to like rewrite that part and just re-shoot it because there's got to be a way to have those characters chilling out like catching their breath and expressing feelings with each other without it being that specific story. I like it as an artifact. It's an amazing thing that it even exists. Too weird to live, too rare to die. A famous urban legend is referenced in the film in which Kate reveals in a speech that her father died at Christmas when he dressed as Santa Claus and broke his neck while climbing down the family's chimney. After the film was completed,

the speech proved to be controversial and studio executives insisted upon its removal, because they felt it was too ambiguous as to whether it was supposed to be funny or sad. Is there any ambiguity in the scene do you've been? Here's the thing, Joe Dante stubbornly refused to take the scene out saying it represented the film as a whole, which had a combination of the horrific and the comedic. That is that a bad point. Like it is, it is the tortured mixture of funny and, uh, and sad and, and emotionally fraught that this movie is. Yeah. Spielberg did not like the scene, but he viewed Grand Lenses down to his project and allowed

him to keep it. Wow. Unbelievable. I can, hey. I mean, that scene goes down in history as like one of the most incongruous moments of incident in history. I think more than the housewife

killing all those Grimmlens in her kitchen, that's the scene that makes this film not good for kids. That's the scene that sticks out in my mind as a kid as going holy shit. Like, ugh, like dad dying in the chimney was the most horrible thought that this film evoked. I would also say, like, tonally, I think Phoebe Kate's really kicks ass in this scene.

Like, somehow Phoebe Kate's knew exactly how to play it. She totally does. She sort of large marches this movie. Like as in congruent as the large march story is in Peewee, like her dad's story in this film has the same effect. Well, the town is quiet because the gremlins have all decided to take in a movie at the local movie palace, and some of them have even figured out how to use the rewind table and load up a real from Snow White

and the Seven Dwarves on the projector. As a previous projector professional in a movie theater, I found the scene insulting. And insulting to projectionists everywhere. I don't know that I knew that you were a projectionist at some point, Adam. I was, it was one of my first jobs, and my favorite job. And a job that I had hoped at the time, I would be able to retire in as an old man,

but it seems more and more unlikely that that would be a thing. But yeah, I built and broke down films. I I showed them for an entire year was the best job I ever had. It was it was my USS Hood of Jobs, Ben. I Loved it. Man, that's awesome. I I have projected film but only in an academic context. I have no idea what the gig is like. I was a projectionist for the year 1997.

And 1997, Ben, you will remember is it was a banner year for film. I watched Titanic more times that I could count. I watched that 007 movie with Pierce Brosden, Golden Eye. I think that was the Golden Eye year. A face-off was that year? I think Boogie Nights. Yeah, it was actually a great year to be a projectionist.

Like those are movies of varying quality and taste. A centurizing? Oh man, Anaconda. This is one of the reasons why Event horizon is so scary for me is because often as a projectionist you are one of the last people in the theater and when you're spooling up that 10 or 10 30 or sometimes 11 o'clock screening of event horizon And you're in a dark theater and maybe you know for instance due to scheduling

That's the last movie to end for the night. And so you're sort of babysitting that projector until it ends. That's a bad way to end a nightmare. And when you do that for like a week straight, I think it changes you as a person. Yeah, I could see that. Despite of that, truly one of the great jobs I've ever had. And I think about it all the time. It's those days.

Yeah. These gremlins though, able to access the projection booth, which is really like a hardened target inside a movie theater. Yeah. The fact that they were able to get in there, very difficult.

They spool up snow white and like they play it in order, which is another challenge. Like you can't just walk into a projection booth and know how to spool in. All the reels of Snow White together in order, they do that. They also know all the words to the songs. My favorite line reading of maybe the whole movie is that Gilligan like peeking into the theater and going watching snow white And they love it

Like that's the surprising part So great This serves to feed into a murderous rage that drives Billy to by turning on the gas, going into the valve room, unspooling the gas, throwing a flaming rag into the back of the theater, and blowing that thing up. It's intense. It's a it's a veritable Gremlin Holocaust here at the movie theater. It's incredible. They blew up the movie house set a year before they used it for Hill Valley. Like, it made me wonder how much rework they had to do to get the theater exterior back into shape for that.

I mean, they're controlling anytime they do an explosion. They probably have it set up so that they can do it more than one time in a given day of shooting. And if you're doing it on a set, the way they're doing it on this back lot, then you're basically made for reproduction. Yeah, I imagine the ball of fire is like the most destructive part and they can just reset, put a new marquee on or whatever

and then go again. Stripe being the heavy of the film manages to escape the inferno. Yeah, he's gotten distracted by the promise of candy beckoning from the drugstore across the street. There's a neon sign that he is able to read. Because if we establish that the gremlins have learned to read, he's reading at a level that's probably higher than the Corey Feldman character at this point. So I think the day is saved and it is not Adam.

No, Stripe goes into a Montgomery Ward which is like a less upscale Sears. Yeah, I guess my Montgomery Ward probably doesn't really exist anymore, does it? I don't know. Man, wards.com. Is it a thing? It's still a thing. How about that? They're selling PlayStation 4s and KitchenAid Mixers and amazing. What's fun about this setup in a movie like this is because is you avail yourself of everything in a department store to use as a weapon and that really affords you the chance to get creative with attack and defense.

And this is something the film does really well here. Yeah, I mean, they rise to this challenge in the same way that Bill and Ted's excellent adventure rises to this challenge. It's like, you know, like, oh, what can we do with the sporting good section? What can we do with the garden section, you know? This film does Kate a disservice throughout, but like they sort of stick Kate up in the attic

in like the office manager section to sort of run the switchboard from here. But I think Kate is just as capable of like swinging a baseball bat and fighting off a gremlin at this point. Yeah, she's been through some shit, but it is up to Billy to like, to like, fend off the chain saw attack with the baseball bat. And I guess the dad is like just getting back to town at this point.

So he, he comes in and he, he becomes a factor in the attempt to put the Gremlin problem to bed once and for all. Gizmo gets in a remote control car that is steerable in the attempt to put the Gremlin problem to bed once and for all. Gizmo gets in a remote control car that is steerable from its internal steering wheel somehow. This film does a little dropping of hints throughout. The idea of Gizmo really enjoying pop culture is a thing that's introduced early on. He likes watching old movies on Billy's television. Yeah, obviously Corey Filmmon dropping off that Christmas tree costumes

every pregnant moment. It's a plant that is totally paid off later. In watching this movie, Gizmo is able to steer his vehicle toward the climax of the film in which he jumps a snow shovel into the home and garden section of this department store where Stripe is about to dunk himself into the fountain and reproduce into something that will start over this whole horrible situation in the town. It's not good. He crashes his car into a wall,

conveniently near the cord for the skylight's been. Yeah. And so little gizmo jumps up into the cords, pulls them down, opens the skylight, and exposes stripe to the light in a vampiric, disgusting, death scene that takes him down into a... Quivering waste, a piece of jelly.

Special effect was amazing. I thought so too. It's like a skeleton that we see lose structure before our eyes. And I don't know how they do that. It must be made out of something that they can pour water on and melt or something. I don't know. There were a few scenes in this movie where I feel like, oh yeah, I know how they do that. It must be made out of something that they can pour water on and melt or something, I don't know. There were a few scenes in this movie where I feel like, I know how they did that, but this is one where I was completely stumped. The whole hard bone to soft bone, deconstruction here, I thought looked great and so believable. The Gremlin puppets themselves were like $40,000 a piece.

They were incredibly expensive to produce. The reason they're so good is that they are super duper expensive and high spec. But the melting the skeleton is a totally amazing special effect. This film really had a great amount of self-awareness about what it could do and what it wasn't going to try to do. Like, you don't see Gizmo try to walk around. He doesn't walk from place to place. There's a scene where you see him crawling for like two seconds.

But they do a great job in like sticking their, sticking gremlins and magwai into vehicles or having them stand and gesture. Like there's never that scene that breaks the spell where they're like, oh, well that's a dumb puppet. I said, like even, like they'll stick them in a backpack or they'll cover the bottom so that the puppetry is obscured. Yeah, it's the thing that like practical practical effects understood for years that it took

Digital effects like two decades to figure out is don't do something with it that it's not good at It's so frustrating. You see this all the time like by obscuring part of the whole you make it so much more believable. It's really well sold and what a cool way to end a movie with a bunch of really impressive visual effects and it with like the most impressive visual effect. I mean, one of the most unbelievable parts of this film to me as a newly minted dog owner is the moment where Stripe is reduced into a pool of pulsing stripe juice? That Barney doesn't try to eat it. Or roll in it.

You have a dog and I have a dog. There is no chance that Barney wouldn't get up in that juice. Well, yeah, dogs are very interested in that juice. Like a lot of alien visitation type films, this film ends in a news report depicting a sort of mass hysteria, sort of writing off the idea of the Gremlins as a thing that never happened. This is the post script of the film, Ben. Yeah, and they're sitting around digesting that and in walks the grandfather, Mr. Wing from the from the store at the beginning of the film. And he's there to like, like say, like you took this, you took

this mug away under false pretenses, you can have your fucking money back. I figured out another way to pay rent, presumably. And on top of all that, I am here to shame you for the crass and callous way your culture appropriates the gifts of nature. Mr. Wing delivers the essential message of the film. So often people destroy the thing that they don't understand. And they don't even try to learn about the thing before doing it. And that's what Mr. Wing's trying to say here. It's like-

So is your conjecture at him that a character can't be a racist caricature and also have a good message? No, that's not my message at all. I guess it's unfair to... Like, we can't defend what they do with Mr. Wing. What they do with Mr. Wing is indefensible, but in painting him as an indefensible depiction, do you undo the good that Mr. Wing does and his message at the end?

No, I don't think you do. You have to take him or leave him. I think that the, like, to the extent that this movie has a message at all, which I think it's arguable that it doesn't. We're really trying to find one. It is that, it is that that like this was the inevitable result of like white Americans being careless with with a natural phenomenon and it coming back to bite them on the ass.

Like that happened whether or not Mr. Wing comes in at the end to like explicitly say it out loud, you know? Yeah. I don't know. I just like, like I don't know how you, how you rewrite his scenes to make it less offensive or whatever, but yeah, like I don't think that you lose that message. You just lose the explicitness of it. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's satisfying to me that Mr. Wing delivers his condescension at the end as sort of the button on the movie. Right. Because he is depicted the way that he is,

like I find it shocking that they would allow that, you know, in a film that is full of awkward depictions of race and class, that they would give Mr. Wing the gavel here. That he's the high status character that is passing judgment on everybody else at the end. It doesn't forgive anything, but I think it helps. Is that fair to say? Okay.

Look, I'm pro Mr. Wing. All right. Okay. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha weighing a somehow found his way from Chinatown to Kingston Falls. The mystery of that travel is completely untold. Yeah, it appears that he did it on foot. Yeah, with absolutely no help from his grandson. Yeah. I think if you're an old, and you're going to travel for the first time in many years, I think you're going to need a grandson help you navigate the the mass transit system. Sure Did you like this episode, Adam? I love this movie, Ben.

There is no reason to love it, too. It is awful in a lot of places, but much like the depiction of Mr. Wing, it has so many great counterpoints to its own awfulness. I return to it every year. I only watch it once a year. It has become the main holiday tradition that my wife and I have is watching Gremlins on Christmas Eve while I make a tomato bisque

and grilled cheese sandwich dinner for us. Oh. That's the thing that we do. And it's got sentimental value to me. It's a totally flawed movie, but fuck man, it's 1984. It's a holiday film unlike any other holiday film. And that's why I returned to it every year. How about you, Ben? I really liked it. Yeah, I'm glad that I have this cultural reference now, because it was like Gremlins and Goonies are the two that when I mention that I haven't seen,

it really floors people. I enjoyed watching it. I mean, there's parts of it that are amazing, and there's parts of it that don't really hold up that well, but overall, I like a movie that is fun and doesn't feel the need to justify the fun that it's having. That much. It's not making excuses for the fun.

And like the second you see the gremlins like essentially doing hapless pranks rather than being like a, like they are not xenomorphs. You know, they are not there to like eat and reproduce. They're there to be mischievous and silly. And yeah, they're there to personify the thing that Fuderman describes, like the thing that just fucks with your life and frustrates you.

Yeah. Yeah, so that, like once that is revealed, it's like that really won me over for this movie. It's flawed, but it's so nihilist that you almost can't judge it on a normal scale. Yeah. Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda in this movie? Drunk Shimoda! I'm gonna give my drunk Shimoda to Randy Peltzer. And the reason, the specific reason,

I mean, I think he does a bunch of things that are Shimoda worthy,, the specific reason, I mean, I think he does a bunch of things that are sure-moto-worthy, but the specific one that I want to give him this citation for is, as he is leaving the shop, he gets the like three rules of Gremlins, or the three rules of Magui from the little kid, and really is really blasey about it and really does not appear to give two shits about what this little kid is telling him. But then when he gives it to Billy, it is like the most important thing. Like he has come 180 degrees on the issue of the three rules. And to the extent that I was like, he has had a bad experience W slash R slash T breaking one or all of these rules already. Like that's the only conclusion you can draw from how he

plays the the reading the ceremony all reading of the rules. Do you have a drunk Shimoda Adam? My Shimoda is rocking Ricky Rialto. Like he sort of serves as the K-billy super sounds of the 70s figure in a thing that I think reservoir dogs totally cops. Yeah. Rock and Ricky sounds like he eats it on the radio.

I think, uh, do the right thing also stole this. Right. He's on the radio and he's doing a live song break and he's like, people are calling the station talking about, uh, about these grandlands. I'm here to tell you, this is Christmas time guys. This isn't Halloween. I'm getting pretty sick of it. At which point the door to the recording booth opens and we hear rock and rickie get taken down

by gremlins. His his last words being I love that moment. Yeah. Well, that will just about wrap up our special holiday episode this year, Ben. I'm really glad I got to share one of my favorite movies with you, and you got to see it for the first time. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Thank you so much to the kind, kind folks who support our show on a monthly basis, we can't thank you enough because it has really changed both of our lives this year that we could like actually kind of throw ourselves into this project and make it like the greatest thing we can possibly

make it. Right, it's that sort of thing that makes it possible for us to have the time and ability to make special episodes like this. I personally, I want to do as many weird episodes as we can do, Ben. I think the format of Ben and Adam cracking wise about X is pretty exportable at this point and I'm looking forward to experiencing that with you in all of its forms. Well I am really glad that you invited me to do this episode with you Adam and to everybody listening whatever holiday you celebrate around this time of year. We wish you the best and we we

really appreciate everything and you know all the best to you and yours it's been it's been a tough year and we hope that this makes it a little tiny bit brighter. Yeah that's the whole idea. Thanks a lot for everything guys we will see you in the new year. Later. Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Art and Stone Listen or Support it. hearted down. Listen or support.