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By Jonathan Klotz | Published
Christmas movies tend to be heartfelt, feel-good movies about the true meaning of Christmas or about a small-town girl who moved to the big city to become a high-powered lawyer has to return home for some reason. and runs into his old high school. The lover who has now grown up and sculpts Santa Claus out of ice imported from Sweden, and they bond over their love of Christmas. But there’s one Christmas movie that stands on its own, and in 40 years nothing has come close to its perfect blend of holiday cheer and black comedy: gremlins. The ’80s horror comedy is still a part of pop culture today thanks to the mischievous gremlins, but it’s a dark and traumatic monologue that makes the film impossible to forget.
roasted santa claus
gremlins is about Gizmo, a mogwai, who is given to Billy Peltzer by his father for Christmas, and after violating the first rule that the mysterious Mr. Wang taught his father, “don’t get him wet,” the disaster ends up engulfing the city of Kingston. Falls as a horde of evil gremlins wreak havoc. But no matter what the evil Stripe and his cronies do to the townspeople, from crashing a prized truck into a dormitory to turning a ski lift into a launching pad, nothing compares to the horrible tragedy that Billy’s friend, Kate, share a little more than half of the way. movie.
Played by Phoebe Cates, years after the infamous Fast times at Ridgemont High In this scene, Kate launches into a monologue about when her father disappeared when she was nine years old. He missed Christmas and the family had no idea where he was until a few days later when they lit a fire in the fireplace and the smell alerted them that something was wrong. His father, dressed as Santa Claus, tried to go down the chimney with gifts but broke his neck and was trapped, dead, inside the chimney. The story relies entirely on Cates in a monologue that makes it seem like Kate is struggling to finish once it starts. It may seem out of place, but it is the perfect sum of pixie‘s black humor.
The fine line between tragedy and comedy
The first time I heard this story was while watching gremlinsand it’s haunted me ever since, but it predates the movie. Urban legends about Santa Claus getting stuck have persisted since Coca-Cola invented the modern Santa Claus, and while some stories are tragic, like Kate’s, others poke fun at big men who get stuck and have to be rescued. Director Joe Dante placed this story in the middle of the movie to provide some background on Kate and her PTSD at Christmas, but it fits the movie perfectly as it’s something so absurd that people can laugh nervously at it and find some dark fun. get out of it, but if it happened to you, it would be devastatingly tragic.
Dancing between comedy and horror like no other film before. gremlins he pushed the envelope so far that, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doomcaused the MPAA to create the PG-13 rating. Not only do most of the deaths occur off-screen, but in the film, only 15 humans die, and most of them are nameless background extras. You could argue that the most horrible moment in the entire film is the death of Kate’s father, who only wanted to make his daughter happy and paid for it with his life.
A unique Christmas movie
Joe Dante’s masterpiece has stood the test of time thanks to the extreme risks he took in bringing the script, written by alone at home and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone director Chris Columbus, comes to life with the support of Steven Spielberg’s production company. gremlins is such a unique success that Dante never wanted to make a sequel, and when he did, he made the most absurd, crazy, and devastating movie possible by ditching the black comedy for a slapstick comedy. Gremlins 2: the new batch It’s also an amazing movie and remains one of my favorites to this day, but it’s much more light-hearted.
gremlins It may not be what comes to mind when you think of offbeat ’80s Christmas movies, that would be die hardbut it’s been a Christmas classic for decades. Just be careful if you see him with children, not because of the violence or murders, but because Santa broke his neck in a chimney.
gremlins is currently available to stream on max..
