Gremlins/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Both Movies

The First Film:

  • Breakthrough Hit: For Chris Columbus as a writer.
  • The Danza:
    • In a bizarre example, Kate is played by Phoebe Cates.
    • Mr. Jones is played by Chuck Jones.
  • Deleted Scene: The following scenes were cut from the film:
    • Mr. Peltzer is looking in a store in Chinatown, with a shopkeeper who doesn't know a word of English, when he is greeted by the Chinese boy, who leads Mr. Peltzer to the boy's grandfather's shop.
    • Billy is lectured by his boss Mr. Corben for being 17 minutes late.
    • Billy looks at his drawings, for a comic strip, in his room.
    • Billy sees the reverend on the street. The reverend tries to give Billy his Christmas card, but he can't find it in his pile, so he just tells Billy he will mail it to him.
    • Kate shows Billy Mrs. Deagle's plans to sell their houses and build a Nuclear plant. They are then discovered by Gerald, who says he will let them out easy if Kate will go out with him. Kate refuses, and Gerald notes she is tough, just like him.
    • Stripe listens to a bunch of carolers, while hidden in the snow (actually, according to the commentary, he is singing along and making the carolers wonder who's off key, but there is no audio for Stripe).
    • Mr. Futterman tells his wife that Mrs. Deagle has closed down the noodle factory where he worked for good. His wife then reassures him that there is more to life than macaroni.
    • Billy and Kate find Mr. Corben with a clock smashed on his head. They then find Gerald in the vault. Billy tries to free Gerald; however, Gerald thinks that Billy wants to free him just so Billy and Kate would get promotions (Gerald presumably would now have Mr. Corben's job). Billy then closes the vault and tells Kate that Gerald will be better off in there, and they will come and get him later.
      • This scene has been shown in at least a few television edits of the film.
  • Enforced Method Acting: At least one of Phoebe Cates' screams in the scene at Dorry's Tavern is genuine. An enormous cockroach crawled out in front of her during one take.
  • Harpo Does Something Funny: Though he followed the basic outline of the script, Hoyt Axton is said to have improvised nearly all of his lines.
  • Never Work with Children or Animals: Inverted. In the commentary, Joe Dante calls Mushroom (the dog playing Barney) "the all-purpose cutaway" because if Barney is in the scene, and Joe doesn't know what to cut to, Mushroom has a priceless facial expression that'll sell it. Highlights include: Looking worried and offended when Mrs. Deagle is threatening to kill him, looking curious when Gizmo first appears, looking frightened when Gizmo first multiplies. He even moves in synch with the Gizmo puppet in several shots.
  • Those Two Actors: The Futtermans are played by Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph, cast as a married couple specifically because of their frequent acting collaborations in Roger Corman movies.
  • Throw It In!: Gerrold orders "vodka martini, shake don't stir" from Kate at Dorry's in an attempted Shout-Out to James Bond. However, Judge Reinhold kept fumbling the line, seemingly unable to get out the correct "shaken, not stirred". Eventually, they decided to just let the line stand, since it made Gerrold seem even more pretentious and clueless.
  • Troubled Production: Post-production of the first movie was a nightmare due to the Gremlin and Mogwai animatronics never working properly. On the DVD commentary, Chris Walas (the creator of the animatronics) calls working on Gremlins the closest thing he's had to a complete mental breakdown.
    • Even more so, using animatronics was the preferable plan. They initially planned to use stop-motion animation but found it too time consuming, then tried to use live chimpanzees, but found this costly and difficult.
  • What Might Have Been: Gizmo was originally going to be the villain, assuming Stripe's role. Eventually, they changed their mind for some reason and made Stripe a seperate character.
  • Word of God: According to Joe Dante, the Mogwai/Gremlin (Earl) that Billy left with Mr. Hanson later met up with Stripe's gang and joined in terrorizing the town before being blown up with the rest.


Gremlins 2

  • Actor Allusion: During the Bat Gremlin's transformation, stereotypical vampire music starts playing while the camera zooms in on Christopher Lee's reaction shot.
  • Deleted Scene:
    • The Gremlins release all of the animals in the "Splice o' Life" lab. During the filming of this scene, the monkeys in the lab set were genuinely so terrified of the Gremlin puppets that they refused to leave their cages when their trainers called for them.
    • George, Lenny and Daffy sneak into Grandpa Fred's studio and "help" him host, which worked because Grandpa Fred's show was supposed to be scary. A still from this scene was used on the video cover.
    • A voice says "You know, I've been thinking, Mr. Clamp would make a great President."
  • Doing It for the Art: Legendary Oscar-winning special effects artist Rick Baker was convinced to work on the sequel by letting him completely redesign the mogwai/gremlins, including making the new hybrids.
  • Playing Against Type: John Glover is best known for playing villains and changed Clamp to more friendly because he disliked being exclusively cast as bad guys.
  • Production Posse: It's a Joe Dante film... Dick Miller and Kevin McCarthy can't be far behind.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: It shows how it's a 1990 film with references to Batman, The Phantom of the Opera, Donald Trump and Marla Maples' affair, colorization jokes and so on.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Daniel Clamp was originally intended to be just as greedy and ruthless as his reputation made him out to be, but after Dante discovered that Glover was so nice on set, the part was specially re-written to show it.
    • The original script featured Randall Peltzer making a Cameo at the end of the movie with his latest invention: a wetsuit-type device to prevent Gizmo from ever getting wet again. Also, the original script called for the Brain Gremlin to wear a black tuxedo and tie while singing "New York, New York" as a further homage to Frank Sinatra. It was scrapped.
  • Word of God: Mohawk is effectively a reincarnation of Stripe.
  • Working Title: The film's working title was Monolith.
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