707 N Franklin St, Tampa, FL 33602-4400, United States
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About the event
REWIND: Gremlins (1984)
Part of December's Holiday REWIND series
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1h 46m / PG-13 / Horror-Comedy
VENUE: Historic Duncan Auditorium
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It’s almost impossible to believe this, but Gremlins was kind of marketed as a kids’ movie on its release. If that doesn’t sound crazy to you, you haven’t seen Gremlins recently, because Gremlins is a straight-up horror film. It’s also funny, full of solid gags and smart little pop-culture parody moments, and the gremlins themselves are moderately cute (especially in their pre-mutation Mogwai stage) but the movie itself is violent, paced like a slasher film and packed with jump scares. Gremlins is so messed up that the MPAA created the PG-13 rating for it (and some other contemporary shockers).
There’s a Cronenbergian body-horror element to Gremlins that recurred a lot in film in the 1980s; maybe special effects had reached the point of making it possible, but everything is worn and slimy and putrid and … just gross. If you were to plot Home Alone and Aliens on opposite ends of a line, the exact middle point would be Gremlins. One of the little monsters dies in a blender, for heaven’s sake. And there’s the infamous microwave scene, launchpad of a thousand urban legends. Why did our parents let us see this movie? Anyway, come revisit your seasonal childhood trauma with the rest of us. Thanks, REWIND!
