Game #54: Gremlins

Known to My Generation as "Evil Furbies"

A Happy New Year to you all! I hope you had a wonderful time, full of presents, good food, family and friends. As for me, I got some pretty great gifts, but one of my greatest gifts was seeing "Gremlins" for the first time in my life.

I'm one of those unfortunate souls who missed out on some classic 80's films. Basically, I've only seen films that Chris Columbus has directed, never ones that he's written (the first time I saw "The Goonies" was when we made our pretty stellar drinking game). I've heard the quotes. I know you're not supposed to feed them after midnight. I was not prepared for how fun and dynamic this movie is. It's a perfect example of the best of 80's entertainment; ridiculous, at times raunchy, cheerfully offensive and carefully crafted.

In other words, perfect for Christmas. Come drink with us as you recover from your holiday, as we gaze upon a film about fighting monsters, the dangers of over-reliance on technology, and the constant fear of a Red Invasion.

Yeah, you heard me.

"(I Wanna Get Drunk With the) Gremlins:" The Rules

There's a drink called the Gremlin, and it's made with Crown Royal and rose of lime. Unfortunately, Crown Royal is fucking expense, so I made up an evil version of this drink using Seagram's Seven and Rumpleminze (lime schnapps). It was terrible.

"This tastes like nail polish and sadness." -Bride of Buggerlas

All was not lost. I dunked the mixture into some coke, and the result was something not unentirely like coca-cola lime.

"I like how adding the soda was like when you take the glasses off the girl in an 80's movie," said Velma Jinkies.

"Really, it's only like that if you took the glasses off the girl and say, 'passable'", corrected Bride of Buggerlas.

Easy Mode
1. Title drops: drink whenever someone says the word "Gremlins". You can drink for the singular too.
2. Drink when they drink.
3. Drink for Daddy Issues. There's one monologue that's alllll daddy issues.
4. Drink when something breaks. Ah, my favorite rule. It continues to serve me well.
5. Drink when someone watches something on TV or a projection.

Medium Mode
All the above rules apply. Also...
1. Drink whenever the dad's inventions get used. Drink again when they break.
2. Drink when someone says the word "Mogwai". The correct term for the creatures.

Hard Mode
All the above rules apply. Also...
1. Drink when Christmas or Christmas paraphernalia is referenced.
2. Drink for every new Mogwai that appears.

When this scene happens, you better fucking CHUG.

The Players

Our players for this game are:

Krissy Pappau: Fearless Leader (Medium)
Pooh Daddy: The Kid (Easy)
Bride of Buggerlas: The Mom (Medium)
Velma Jinkies: The Creature (Medium)
Some Guy: The Mentor (Hard)
Champjagne Austgin: The Love Interest (Hard)
Big Moose: The Fake Antagonist (Hard)

The Red Menace

Let's address a statement I made in the opening paragraphs. Do I think that "Gremlins" is about fighting the Communist threat? Not exactly. BUT, I do think it's about fear of a foreign takeover from within the U.S, specifically from Asia, in the form of immigrants intent on changing the culture.

Think I'm reading too much into this? Okay, let's break this down. One of the very first scenes of the film is between our main character, Billy Peltzer, and an old coot named Mr. Futterman. Futterman notices that Billy is having trouble getting his car to start and blames the car's problems on its foreign origins. He brags about his Kentucky Harvester and how it gives him no trouble; he knows where it comes from, and he knows America makes dependable machines.

"Those damn foreign cars...taking our jobs, taking our women..." "...taking our hearts." -Some Guy and Big Moose

Because it's placed so early in the script, and because Chris Columbus's sense of structure is impeccable, it's safe to assume that this is a thematic scene, and that the film is going to be revisiting this idea of foreign imports again. And it does, repeatedly, with the most important import being the Mogwai themselves.

The Mogwai are strange creatures of Chinese origin; clearly they're meant to be pets and Gizmo, our trained ambassador, seems docile enough. However, they have a strange set of nonsensical rules you need to follow when you're dealing with them. If you break these rules, they become gradually wilder, more feral, until they gather en masse and attack everything you hold dear. The only way to then defeat them for good is to use their rules and customs against them to drive them back.

I'm not sure how this could be more of a straightforward metaphor for foreign diplomacy. Gizmo in particular is presented as a socialized, tame Mogwai. He's gentle and polite, and he fascinates Billy and his friends with his otherworldly singing skills. While the other Gremlins, once they appear, constantly try to cause mischief and trick Billy into breaking the rules, Gizmo decides that he enjoys the comforts that Billy and his family can offer him and sticks to their codes of conduct. He treats the other Mogwai with suspicion and fear, and even helps Billy fight against them in the movie's climax. There's also a small throwaway scene when Billy tries to get the local police to help him where the officers call Gizmo a "patriotic little guy" because he starts waving around an American Flag.

Gizmo sleeps in Billy's bed, while the rest of the Gremlins sleep in a box on the ground.

Or, you can approach it from this angle. Critics have been eager to call Gremlins an "anti-technology" film, noting that the first thing the Gremlins do when they prepare to strike is cut the phone lines and make several pieces of machinery go haywire. However, with some exceptions, technology is always used to drive the Mogwai back, technology with decidedly American connotations. One of the most important fight scenes in the film involves Billy's mother facing off against five Mogwai alone in her house. In an amazing feat of badassery, she manages to kill three of them singlehandedly, using among other things an electric mixing bowl and a microwave. What's more patriotic than the American Housewife defending her kitchen using domestic tools?

This scene got so many letters from horrified parents.

This theory falls apart a little when you take the final scene of the film into account. Ye Old Chinese Shop Owner, Mr. Wing, arrives to take Gizmo back to his shop, and he's horrified by the fact that the Peltzer family let him watch television. He tells them that they're not ready for the responsibility of owning a Mogwai, and until they are, he's taking Gizmo back. 

I dunno, this seems to be more about isolationism? Or the aftermath of a war, where everyone wants to go back to their sides and rest up? Daddy Peltzer gives Mr Wing a smokeless ashtray as a gift and Wing accepts it, so diplomacy seemed to go well enough...

Dammit, I felt like I started out so strong. There's so much red in the movie, guys! It's all a conspiracy against the Chinese! I know it!

This moment of senseless carnage brought to you by Coors.

Holly Jolly Christmas

Reason number one why this isn't considered a Christmas movie, even though it takes place around Christmas, is that the movie was released in June.

Reason number two is that there's no Christmas spirit in it. The film isn't about family coming together, or about reexamining what's important in your life, or about any of that stuff. It's about monsters attacking your loved ones. Your loved ones and the Capitalist Consumerist culture represented by Christmas and...

No, Krissy. We're talking about something else now.

What's genius about this movie is that it lets you think it's a Christmas film until the Gremlins show up. You have a bitchy, grinchy antagonist who's constantly threatening to kill Billy's dog and denying poor people government money, you have a family who's trying to make ends meet (until they meet a magical, self-replicating animal), and you have a potential love interest who doesn't believe in Christmas, who can't get into the spirit of things even when the streets are lined with carolers.

"They're not really carolers, they just want to sing at some people." -Pooh Daddy

Actually, Phoebe Cates' character Kate might be the perfect symbol of the tone of this movie. She's pretty and soft on the outside, very approachable, and then the longer you talk to her the more you realize there's some seriously fucked-up shit below the surface. Kate's monologue near the end of the film about why she hates Christmas (her dad "got caught in a chimney" when she was little) is completely unnecessary to the story. So why is it there? To let you know that things aren't going to get any nicer.

"This is what Mamet would call a "my puppy died" monologue." -Bride of Buggerlas

This movie got a lot of flak for being too dark when it was released. Parents took their children to this PG rated film hoping for a lighthearted Christmas movie with puppets, and instead they got veiled suicide references and explosions. The kids, I imagine, weren't traumatized, but excited by this blatant refusal by the creators to tone down their impulses for the sake of making something palatable for kids. Kids don't like to be talked down to. They like to be challenged and shocked, and that's probably why Gremlins has so many people still speaking fondly of it today. It's good dirty fun, regardless of whether or not there's any deeper meaning involved. 

Also, the animatronics are still amazing. Champjagne Austgin kept cringing whenever a Gremlin appeared. Maybe that makes her a scaredy-cat, but I'd like to give credit for the realistic robot Gremlins made with Spielberg money.

"It's fine, they're kind of funny, but I don't like it when things jump out." -Champjagne Austgin

The Results

As far as the game goes, with this version you'll want to play at least on Medium Mode, or reshuffle the rules. The Easy Mode rules get very little play, but once you jump up to Hard Mode you'll be knocking back drinks, especially in the later half of the movie. I give most of the credit to the "drink when things break" rule, since that's almost EXCLUSIVELY what we were drinking for during the last half hour.

If you want to add some new rules, might I suggest these?

Drink when someone is an asshole for no reason.
This covers any scene that takes place in the bank or in Kate's bar. Keep in mind, this should be reserved for people who have no possible reason to be jerks in that moment other than the fact that they're mean people.

Drink when a Gremlin attacks a person.
If several Gremlins attack one person...yeah, go ahead and drink for each Gremlin.

Drink when someone mentions a foreign import, or foreigners in general.
Once you're paying attention, this kind of thing is everywhere. Mrs Deagle has a Bavarian snowman out on her front lawn, for instance. It breaks, of course. Cheap foreign snowmen.

"Why would you have a Christmas ornament that's fragile?" -Bride of Buggerlas

With this review, we've reached year three of For Your Inebriation! Our next game is going to be a musical theater classic, as we're so fond of covering, a story about a magical land called Oz filled with witches, wizards, and talking scarecrows.

What? You were expecting the one with white people?

Like what you see? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, at For Your Inebriation and @KrissyPappau respectively. You'll get weekly updates, behind the scenes drunk talk, and other chatter!

For Your Inebriation is written by Krissy Pappau (Hollis Beck). All "Gremlins" images and videos are owned by Warner Bros.