“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.”
GREMLINS plays midnights this weekend (May 5th and 6th) at The Tivoli Theater as part of the Reel late at The Tivoli Midnight series.
It’s Christmas in American picture-postcard town Kingston Falls. Billy Peltzer is given an unusual present; a cute little furry creature called a Mogwai. He is delighted with the gift until he accidentally gets it wet and it quickly multiplies. Worse still is to come when the new creatures are fed after midnight and transform into horribly mischievous Gremlins …
GREMLINS (1984) is a fabulous flick, because it somehow manages to be both a sentimental good-natured modern-day fairytale, and an uproariously riotous comic horror film that stomps all over the nice wholesome image of Christmas and small-town America. The script by Chris Columbus is simply fantastic – all the characters are nicely drawn, the Three Rules Of Gremlins are brilliant, and there are whole scenes which are simply priceless – the evocative Chinatown opening, the Peckinpah-esque kitchen massacre sequence, Kate’s phenomenal “Why I Hate Christmas” speech, Mrs Deagle’s grisly demise and the Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs spectacle, to name but a few. This is one of those rare examples of a film where everything just gels together perfectly – Joe Dante’s gleefully insane direction, Jerry Goldsmith’s alternately soothing and teeth-grating score, wonderful camera-work by John Hora and eye-popping special effects puppetry by Chris Walas – Gizmo and Stripe are not just props in this movie, they are real characters who give performances with more depth than a lot of A-list actors I could name. The rest of the cast shine; Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates (one of the cutest young actress of the eighties) are extremely appealing, Hoyt Axton is terrific as the hapless inventor dad, Miller hilarious as the xenophobic neighbour Mr Futterman, and Luke is unforgettable as the wise old grandfather. Look out also for an unbilled bit by Dante alumni Kenneth Tobey and executive producer Steven Spielberg in a rare cameo appearance. This is a brilliantly made, wonderfully wicked horror comedy, in equal parts intriguing, funny, gross, touching and scary, so don’t miss it when it plays midnights this weekend at The Tivoli as part of their Reel Late at the Tivoli Midnight series.
The Tivoli’s website can be found HERE
http://www.landmarktheatres.com/market/st.louis/tivolitheatre.htm
Here’s the Reel Late at the Tivoli Line-up for the next couple of weeks:
MAY 12TH AND 13TH – MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO
MAY 19TH AND 20TH – THE DARK KNIGHT
