It’s your old pal, The Primal Root, and to celebrate the holiday season I’ve decided to throw a Trashmas New Year’s Bash over at my pad and everyone is invited! That includes YOU! But beforehand we’re checking out an all time favorite Trash Cinema Slasher film from 1981 called ‘Home Sweet Home’. It’s supposedly a holiday themed horror movie, but a turkey dinner does not a holiday make, gang. In fact no one even mentions what holiday it is! From what I understand I think it’s supposed to be Thanksgiving?
I digress, get prepared for feral children, satanic electric guitar playing magical Jewish mimes, Body by Jake, body builder body glaze, sex with your pants on, spanish racial sterotypes, bribing cops with “bazooms”, roid rage, flattened grannies, disapearing balls, hostage negotiations, the missing peas and so much more! It’s The Primal Root’s Rotten Reviews Episode 27: Home Sweet Home! Gather round and share it with those you love.
Thank you for all your support and for spreading the word! See you in 2013!
If you know me, you know my stance on remakes. It’s not something I am incredibly fond of but I will always give them a fair shot as from time to time I find myself surprised and impressed. This is why I gave the remake of one of the best slasher films ever made, ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’, a run for it’s money. Would it be as heartfelt, tragic, disturbing and filled with campy, inappropriate jet black humor as it’s original source material? I had my doubts. I took a deep breath, popped this sucker in my DVD player and braced for impact.
. Seeing as the movie has little to nothing in common with it’s source material outside of it’s organizing principle (Christmas) the killer’s disguise (Santa Claus) and two of the original film’s most notorious and popular set pieces this thing hardly registers as a remake. It’s more of a springboard for an altogether new slasher film. ‘Silent Night’ adopts the narrative structure of Wes Craven’s ‘Scream’ franchise with a “Who-done-it?” premise and written in the often imitated style of one of cinema’s most acclaimed screenwriters, Rob Zombie. We are introduced to a crazed killer dressing up as Santa Claus in a urine soaked, filth caked bathroom as he puts together his Santa Claus mask and clips his finger nails, which I assumed at the time would be some clue to the killer’s identity and kept looking for some with well manicured nails. By the film;s end realized this shit had nothing to do with anything, really.
Our killer takes care of business, dispatching of a screaming woman in an adjoining bedroom and then unceremoniously electrocuting a man tied to a lawn chair with festive Christmas lights down in the basement. The guy shakes, screams, his eyes explode in geysers of blood…and our movie begins. Who were those people? Why should I care that they’re dead? Next thing you know, it’s Christmas Eve morning and it turns out the guy who just got electrocuted in the previous scene was the local deputy and a young woman is called in to work his shift by the over confident small town America British crime Sheriff, Malcolm McDowell, who plays his character for laughs and it just doesn’t work.
As bitchy, spoiled little girls are butchered, men are stabbed in the testicles and large breasted, half naked women are sent slowly through wood chippers, this crack team of police investigators zero in on large people in Santa suits, this being Christmas Eve, the town is overrun by fellows in Santa suits and several of them are disgruntled assholes and violent offenders, so they have their work cut out for them. Why do they not bring in some outside help? Because the Sheriff wants to solve this on his own. Eh, stupid is as stupid does, I suppose.
Just about every character we encounter is brutally slaughtered which I am sure will send us gore hounds off to bed with visions of woodchippered meaty chunks of nude photography models dancing in our heads. There’s not much of a moral compass present in this new Christmas slasher, but I guess that’s just fine fo0r the approach they;re taking. It’s a full speed ahead train of pain where buying a ticket insures a perversely gruesome ride. Mean spirited and full of self interested slime balls, ‘Silent Night’ is actually a fairly good modern Christmas horror, even if it pains me a little to admit it.
Jaime King as Deputy Sheriff Audrey Bradimore does a damn fine job of trying to give her character the gravity she deserves, but it’s all for not, as ‘Silent Night’ has other fish to fry and body parts to hack off. The rest of the cast play this film as the hamfisted piece of garbage it is and yuk it up with a wink and a nudge as they await their paychecks. You can literally feel the apathy these performers bring to the film.
The film even cherry picks two of the original ”Silent Night, Deadly Night”s most memorable moments. you know, the one where loony bin Grandpa warns his Grandson that ‘Christmas Eve is the scariest damn night of the year!”, only this time Grandpa’s voice turns demonic and is delivering this warning to a character who only has one other scene…where he receives some obligatory Holy Night oral before having his head pulped by one well placed whack of an axe. Also, extracted from the original ‘Silent night, Deadly Night; is the notorious ‘Antler Kill’, which seems puzzlingly less effective here. Oh yeah, and there’s a reference to it being “Garbage Day”. WOKA, WOKA, WOKA!
All in all, ‘Silent Night’ delivers the sloppy, gooshy, gory goodies but severely lacks the underlying message and heart that made ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ such a memorable and dare I say, classic of the 80′s slasher period. As I have mentioned in The Primal Root’s Rotten Review for ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night;, it is a film about the cycle of violence, the lack of care for the mentally ill, and the failure of our system and religious fundamentalism. Is it shocking? yes. Violent? Of course. Over the top? Most certainly! But it was all for a purpose as opposed to this remake which is happy to deliver nothing but carnage. Gore drenched kills and a town populated by halfwits, unapologetic assholes and sociopaths that serve no purpose other than axe fodder.
‘Silent Night’ is a bloody hot mess of a stocking stuffer. If you can get passed the annoying, unlikable cast of characters, there’s a wonderful mix of nasty kills (including one little cuntface of a child!) and gratuitous Tits and Ass for the old schooler purists. It’s trashy to the core and about as dumb as a box of coal but just might make a good stocking stuffer for the gore hound on your Christmas list.
Valentine’s Day is a strange holiday. Unlike Christmas or Thanksgiving, no one gets Valentine’s Day off. It’s not like Halloween which is renown for it’s fun frights and sugar fueled excess, St. Patrick’s day with it’s green beer and date rapes, but what of Valentine’s Day? There’s no way to avoid it. You take your special lady friend over to the pharmacy to pick up her birth control and you are greeted with aisles upon aisles of heart shaped, overpriced pieces of cardboard stuffed with enough tooth decaying sweets to put the entire population of the east coast into a diabetic coma as well as grotesque stuffed animals that play Marvin Gaye’s “sexual healing” when you squeeze the shit out of them. Like anyone wants that kind of sentiment coming from a furry friend such as a bear or a cat. The whole notion is sick! JUST SICK!
But, I digress, ANYHOO, with our collective taste in cinema, Valentine’s Day is a tricky day of the year, especially for us Trash Cinema Connoisseurs. Which is why I am compiling this list of movies that we might watch on Valentin’s Day, but might ruin any shot you possibly had at getting some Valentine’s Day love friction.
However, if you do watch these with that special someone and they still glance at you longingly as opposed to sheer terror before bolting out a closed window (ala: any 80′s/90′s action flick) followed by a restraining order arriving in the mail 30 days later…you’ve found a keeper.
On with the awkward, grueling and stomach churning!
5) Street Trash (1987) dir. J. Michael Muro
Because if there’s a batch of thing you want to think about when you’re groping your lover after dinner at 4 star restaurant, it’s the aroma of a career New York City hobo. Street Trash tells the tail of the internal strife and trouble of the immense Hobo population of NYC who live in a sprawling metropolis of filth and shit puddles down at the local dump. A new threat has been introduced into their world in the form of a long lost batch of booze known as Tenafly Viper which turns anyone who drinks it into a thick, brightly colored puddle of glop. The very first unlucky victim end up slowly, horrifically and semi-comically melting into a toilet and inadvertently flushing himself down it.
Street Trash is a sick and twisted little film that comes off feeling like one of Peter Jackson’s long lost early works. the film features necrophilia, an fairly nightmarish group rape, police officer’s beating people within an inch of their lives and then puking on them, and a moment where a lovely young woman nearly gives a bum a blowjob…a filthy, stinky bum who hasn’t bathed in months and has been sporting the same pair of crusty B.V.D.’s out in the summer heat. Who in the world would put themselves through that?
As hobos melt, women get repeatedly raped and fat guys explode, Street Trash is sure to douse the flames of burgeoning passion pretty f-ing fast, my friends.
4) The Brood (1979) dir. David Cronenberg
Ah, David Cronenberg. The master of body horror and making us not only feel intense anxiety regarding our physical being but basic human interaction in general. Which could be the reason he appears TWICE in my Top 5 Valentine’s Day Mood Killers List. The man have a panache for pulling the rug out from under the typical sappy cinematic notions of love, romance, sex (that’s for damn sure) and the notion of a classical happy ending. Hence, his 1979 classic embittered divorcee film, “The Brood”.
Speaking from a experience, unless you are with a partner that is incredibly confident, bringing up an old relationship or flame is a sure fire way to throw a bucket of cold water on any kind of romantic moment. I know many guys and girls are guilty of that whole past relationship jealousy trap. It’s ridiculous when you boil down, hell, you’re with this person now but for some reason you can;t get over the fact that *gasp* your lover had a life before you! You should be thanking your lucky stars their ex (girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, gimp, dominatrix, stalker, etc.) isn’t manifesting their intense bitterness and hatred into child sized, hoodie sporting, murderous minions born through saggy, goop filled abdominal pulp sacks…Really. You’ve got it good.
The Brood is one of those films that’s going to do little else than make you and your closest companion feel uncomfortable. You’ll end up watching and imagining a few psycho ex-partners and how if they could make little midget killer sacks pawns grow out of their gut fat and come after you with malicious, creeping rage and a meat clever in hand, they would not hesitate to do so. And who in the world wants that shit running through their head when you’re laying on the cough with your lover in your arms? And nothing brings on a make out session like a woman gnawing open some grotesque, dripping belly goiter and then licking the living contents clean with her tongue. No amount of smooth talking is going to get the mood back after that kind of viewing experience.
3) I Spit On Your Grave (1978) dir. Meir Zarchi
Oh boy…yeah, I guess this one really goes without saying, but if you REALLY want to obliterate a sweet, lovey-dovey evening beyond the point of no return? Meir Zarchi’s quintessential rape/revenge epic is your weapon of choice. When you absolutely, positively have to turn off every mother fucker in the room? Accept no substitute.
But, in all honesty, rape is probably the last subject you want to bring up with perspective girl/boyfriend let alone an established relationship. I Spit On Your Grave features one of the longest gang rape sequences ever committed to film. Just when you think our victim/avenger, Jennifer (the stunning and talented Camille Keaton) has escaped she runs afoul of another rape happy redneck ready to violate her.
I Spit on Your Grave is the purest antithesis of the Valentine’s Day mood setter. Between the jaw droppingly vicious rape sequences to the well deserved revenge of Jennifer’s, which reaches it’s pinnacle during a bubble bath castration sequence that just made my genitals recede into my abdomen at just the recollection of it, I Spit on Your grave is pound for pound the heavy weight champ of the awkward evening with your sweetheart. Which might be why I Spit on Your Grave has become a tradition on Valentine’s Day in the Root household. I’m kind of a weirdo, gang, it’s time you learned this.
SO! Unless you want to watch this thing out of some odd, twisted, trash cinema sense of logic like I do, I would keep I Spit on Your Grave OFF your Valentine’s Day viewing itinerary.
2) Cutting Moments (1997) dir. Douglas Buck
Ahhh, the American Dream perpetuated by the constant rotation of the Hollywood conveyor belt. The beautiful wife, the kids, the quaint house in the suburbs with the white picket fence. These are the measures of success as prescribed to us by society at large. It’s a common, cliched romantic notion that so many of us buy into hook line and sinker. But, as we have gathered through our own experiences of watching relationships and people around us fall apart due to the constant struggle to attain these perceived obligations, the dream more often than not, fails.
But on Valentine’s Day no one wants to believe in unhappy endings! that things won;t all work out for the best! One things for certain, if you do decide to get hitched, produce some hell spawn, get a mortgage and dwell int he suburbs there’s a good chance things will never reach the level of bloody desperation chronicled in Douglas Bucks’ short film, “Cutting Moments”.
I’ve seen a lot of sick, dark, depressing, stuff, gang. But never have I seen a more harrowing portrayal of an American nuclear family marred by repression, guilt, shame, secrets and lies. My god (Cthulhu) watching this not even 10 minute long short film is just about all you’ll ever need top swear off marriage forever! The majority of the film is spent in silence with nothing more than the empty sounds of cutting. Whether it’s trimming the hedges, or cutting up carrots. Hardly anyone speaks.These people are so dead inside already it’s like they live in a tomb. There’s no passion, no love, no spark and there’s even the insinuation of child molestation. My god, did that rhyme? It’s like they live in a vacuum. It’s only when wife and mother, Sarah, takes drastic measures to put the intimacy back into the relationship with her husband that the blood finally flows back into their lives reminding them once again of the flesh and blood that makes them human.
Too many folks lie to themselves and tell themselves they are with the right person in order to fulfill these empty societal ideals. They get hitched, pop a baby or two out and then either hold all their resentment and bitterness inside or get divorced and use their kids as emotional leverage against their former spouse. It’s all just as sick and saddening as what’s present in Cutting Moments. Watching this puppy on Valentine’s Day is sure to fill your head with enough “What if’s” to have you heading to bed along that night.
1) The Fly (1986) dir. David Cronenberg
Alright, now this is a love story! It really is! When watching Cronenberg’s masterful remake of The Fly it’s easy to forget about the love story at hand taking place between journalist, Veronica and Seth Brundle, the brilliant young scientist working on a breakthrough in matter transference. Veronica falls hard for the quirky, charming, and intelligent Brundle and they begin a whirlwind romance. Two smart, attractive, young people in love…what could go wrong?
Holy fuck…
The Fly is like a check list of all the things that could possibly go wrong in a loving relationship. Clingy, stalker ex boyfriend? CHECK! Being careless and doing incredibly stupid things in order to prove your love to your partner in a fit of misguided jealousy? CHECK! Inide-Out bloody monkey moosh? CHECK! These two start out as such a believably cute and perfect couple that it makes all the events that much more tragic as Seth begins his transformation from his sweet, adorable, self into a sickly, revolting monster replete with loose body parts and a need to vomit on everything. It’s a terrifying and devastating transformation as we watch, along with Veronica, her love disintegrate and go mad before her very eyes.
The Fly is one of the most epic of all cinematic tragic love stories. Many critics and commentators have weighed in on the film’s apparent HIV/AIDS subtext, and that’s a smart deciphering of the film, for sure. But The Fly is also a testament to how truly heart wrenching and deeply devastating love can be. Veronica is unable to leave Seth’s side and tries to help him, to take care of him, however she can only to end up, with all hope lost, and having to come to terms with losing the one she loved and putting the beast he has become out of it’s misery. Only someone who really feels love and compassion for another is willing to do such a thing.
Upon first viewing it’s easy for the love story to get lost under a puddle of neon green battery acid fly man digestive puke. But once you get over that initial shock and awe you begin to fully realize and appreciate the romantic tragedy that is, The Fly. By the end of the film you and your sweetheart may have a deeper understanding of the obligations true love requires. Well, this is kind of a drastic example, but you catch my drift. It’s not much of a romantic notion, but in some situations, there are no happy endings. Even if you’re in love.
Well, those are my top 5 Valentine’s Day Mood Killers! Keep in mind, these are just my picks. There are about a million flicks out there to choose from and I would love to hear which Trash Cinema Epics you recommend as the true cinematic equivalents of a romance epicac. Please, drop us a line in our comments! I would love to hear some of your favorites.
Until next time, remember to wrap it up every time, don’t name it after me and love the one you’re with!HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!
Hey Gang, The Primal Root, here, wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday season! That is, if you can make it through the evil that is Glen Morgan’s Black Christmas remake… Hang tight with your buddy, Root, as he tries the wade through the numerous subplots, the dozen characters and the non stop flashbacks that explain away our main antagonist(s).
Watch as The Root tries to transform this hunk of coal into a diamond in this, our final Rotten Review of Year Three, here at The Trash Cinema Collective!
Hey Gang, The Primal Root here, and I cannot express how stoked I am to introduce you to our December Devil Girl of the Month, Mistress Zelda! Very rarely does madness and sexiness mingle quite as perfectly as they do in our Mistress’s bound, bloody and bold spread. How can one not identify with Mistress Zelda’s current condition after enduring another holiday shopping season…well, forget all that mess and feast your eyes on what awaits unwrapped beneath the Christmas tree this morning! Mistress Zelda who is sure to get your dradle spinning. Be sure to let her know what you think, and happy holidays!
While Zelda was in lock up I took the opportunity to ask her what her favorite holiday horror film was. Here’s what she had to say:
Mistress Zelda: My favorite Christmas horror film is a tough one. There aren’t a ton of Christmas horror films to choose from, and the kinds of things I like are pretty particular. I’d have to go with Shredder – Although it’s not really a pure Christmas movie, it’s set all on a winter holiday snowboarding trip in the mountains. It’s campy horror at it’s best – Ridiculous stereotyping, over the top deaths (the movies opens with a line of string tied between two trees – A snowboarder goes through it and is beheaded.) It has every cheesy cliche in horror movies to the point of absurdity. Watching the movie, it’s impossible to know for sure if it was meant to be campy, or if it was meant to be taken seriously – The movie has the perfect blend, it doesn’t go too far in either direction. I also hate the snow, so setting a horror movie there is a good way to catch my attention. Ha ha. Thanks, Shredder, I think I’ll stay away from the skiing lodges this year! I know that’s where all the bored rich over privileged crazy murderers with nothing better to do than kill tourists hang out!
Valentine’s Day, a day so many of us put our hearts on the line looking for the one we can call our own. Well, the Devil Girls have saved you the trouble and have found you that woman to worship and adore… We proudly present to you, our Valentine’s Day Devil Girl, Christine. A long time friend of ours here at the Trash Cinema Collective, Christine is a dark vision of beauty perfectly fitting this bitter-sweet holiday. Enjoy Christine’s spread and be sure to give her a warm welcome to The Collective. Try your best not to lose your heart …she might just rip it out of your chest anyway…
The Primal Root, here, and delivering a very special Christmas package to my fellow collectors! That’s right, I’ve gotten your e-mail’s and facebook messages and I am reviewing one of your most highly requested movies, Christmas Evil! You’ve all been Trashy little boys and girls all year so you’ve earned this one!
Get ready for Santa Cunnilingus, Oedipal Complexes, Shitty Toys, Holiday Trickery, Church Step Brutality, Caroling, Smothering, Throat Slashing, Doll Snapping, Child Slapping, Child Peeping, Kid Slapping, Guilt Tripping, Silk Santa Jammies, Plenty of Slang for Oral Sex, and even a couple Dance Sequences!
This is Christmas Evil. One of the trashiest, strangest, most off kilter and scatter minded horror films I have ever witnessed. Enjoy with the ones you love!
Halloween night is here and what better way to celebrate than with Athena Hollow as she hacks up a poor, ol’ jack-o-lantern. It’s messy, it’s malicious and it’s pretty spooky. If you ask me, I think this is exactly how the festival of Samhain should be handled. So share some of your Halloween fun with Athena this year, but be warned, she’s not just into carving pumpkins. Enjoy!
“JESUS IS SATAN!” – Jenna makes a startling revelation in Satan’s Little Helper
Well, it’s that time of year again! My favorite holiday, Halloween, is just around the corner and I felt it would do the season justice to bring you a review for one of my favorite new films to take place on my favorite day of the year. We’re talking about the 2004 warped, jet black Halloween horror comedy, Satan’s Little Helper. A film that explicitly details the highs and lows of befriending someone who is pure evil and doing everything hey ask you to do. It also illustrates how easily lead and stupid children are. And how hot your sister is. And how creepy Amanda Plummer is. And how much hipster drama majors suck. All in one action packed movie! Let us get down to business.
Our hero, ladies and gentlemen, Satan.
Satan’s Little Helper begins with our little kid star, Dougie (Alexander Brickel) riding in the family sedan wtih Mom (Amanda Plummer) on their way to pick up his sister Jenna (Katheryn Winnick) who has come back from college to celebrate Halloween with her kid brother. Dougie is dressed up as Satan’s Little Helper, the main character in the violent horror video game his father bought for him. In the game, Satan’s Little Helper follows Satan around and murders people for points while avoiding detection by God and getting killed by an Avenging Angel. Now, if only this film had become more popular, every kid in North America would be playing this game. Including me.
Now, when Dougie and Mom pull up to the ferry to pick up Kathryn (she had to take a ferry because this place is small and secluded and could be an island or something) she has brought along a fellow theater major and possible suitor in the form of scrawny hipster, Alex (Stephen Graham) who won’t shut up about his abusive father and is never once likable. Needless to say, Dougie is pissed because he wanted to spend his Halloween with his super cool sister but now has to share her with El Douche Bag Theater Major.
Dougie mopes about his neighborhood before coming across someone who may or may not be the devil murdering someone on their front porch in broad daylight and arranging this corpse as a Halloween decoration. This is the exact same behavior Dougie has come to idolize in his favorite video game so, of course, he’s gotta introduce himself to this silent, masked killer and offer up his services. Satan instantly approves after Dougie mentions the fact that his sexy, melon chested sister and slightly neurotic Mother are both home alone and Dad won’t be home till later.
Dougie and Satan, BFF!
The two embark on an awesome and constantly hysterical adventure together running over elderly blind men and pregnant women with shopping carts, crushing cats against houses to write Halloween messages in their blood, and kicking elderly women from their walkers and then hanging them out the upstairs window so they can nab her drugs to lace the candy they will later be handing out to children.
Keep in mind, Dougie is not psychotic, he simply thinks this is all make believe and that this is all just like the video game. How could a cild be so damn stupid? I’m not sure. But it does add to the humor to watch a little kid give a murderer a thumbs up as he brutally stabs a grocer to death and toss the body in a dumpster.
The proceedings are all undergone with tongue planted firmly and bloodily in cheek and for those of you with the same sick sense of I possess this is a fucking gem of a Halloween horror movie. The film manages to pull off a pretty believable feeling of a small town Halloween and how easy it would be for a killer to simply kill people and set them all about under the guise it’s simply a Halloween prank or decoration. Half the action takes place in broad daylight with neighbors walking by, and on some occasions, even stopping with the kids to watch and take photos while laughing.
Satan gets acquainted with Dougie's big sister, Jenna.
The Satan figure in the film, in addition to being both hilarious and brutal, possesses an incredible intelligence and insight into human psychology. He manages to put a dozen webs and traps together and manipulate all his victims into killing family and friends for him. Like a more comical version of Jigsaw from the Saw franchise, Satan has a knack for almost clairvoyant forward planning. It’s really kind of remarkable when you watch the film and think about it.
A third of the way through Satan’s Little Helper, the small community falls into anarchy as the five man police team is decimated and Satan changes faces and his numerous plans come together. People rush to get the Hell out of there as it dawns on them what they assumed were harmless Halloween jokes are, in fact, deadly serious.
It is in this final third of the movie that Satan’s Little Helper, I believe, delivers a bit of a message. Satan changes costumes several times towards the end of our film. First, into Jesus Christ (donning an infinitely creepier mask than his Devil get-up.) who Dougie has prayed for to help him after being led blindly by Satan, whom he thought was his friend before he gutted dad and tied his lower intestines to a dining room chair. Dougie instantly believes this visage of Christ is here to help, little does he realize, Christ is the same evil he is trying to avoid.
Christ stops by.
By film’s end, the family lets a police officer into their home assuming he is there to help. This authority figure is revealed to be the same killer wearing another mask, another costume, of a figure many of us are conditioned to trust and believe in. Watching the film again I began to wonder if this was a Christian film, but in the end I have a feeling it’s a cautionary tale about trusting authority and those in power. Satan, Jesus, law enforcement, or otherwise you should always question those in power and not just play the sheep who blindly follows.
Could it be? A movie that’s such a brain smashingly nasty bit of comic fun as Satan’s Little Helper could jam a damn message into the proceedings? I dunno. I may be reading way too much into this thing. All I know is it’s just as funny to watch Jesus savagely beat people as it is to watch Satan.
This Halloween season, if there’s one flick I recommend you check out if you haven’t already, it’s the indie sleeper Satan’s Little Helper. You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, and just maybe learn a little something about yourself.
“It is truly, The Muppet Chain Saw Massacre.” – Harlan Ellison, Harlan Ellison’s Watching, Underwood-Miller, 1989 Page 198
It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol, the list of classic, heart warming family friendly Christmas movies is an extensive one. Growing up as a child of the 80’s we were shown such images of Christmas miracles, happy families, the gigantic honey glazed ham dinner served to a smiling family sitting warm around the dinner table. Everyone within the film and the audiences watching safe in the knowledge that no matter how bad things get it will turn out all right in the end. But eventually the movie stops and we have to face the grim reality of the holiday season.
Only one film in my childhood recollection completely broke the image I had ingrained into my head of the perfect family Christmas. What happened to this image? Where did the American Dream go so completely awry? This is the question at the core of Joe Dante’s subversive, goopy, violent, nasty little horror film entitled Gremlins.
The film itself is a satire of mid-80’s consumer America. A time when the yuppies reigned supreme, those of us in the dwindling middle class were screwed as work became harder to find and a dark form of mischief finds its way into the homes of both the wealthy and underprivileged alike in the form of the scaly, razor fanged, red eyed Gremlins. A dark reminder of that our actions and carelessness can have the most dire of consequences.
Gremlins looks to almost take place in an updated version of a picturesque, old fashioned, Norman Rockwell town. An American town where values such as self reliance, independence, and personal responsibility have been completely twisted in our pursuit of easy money. It’s a world where the junior vice-president of the town bank dreams of becoming a millionaire by the time he’s 35 and only finds value in his new apartment (it even has Cable TV!). It’s a place where the nasty, self indulgent rich, preach responsibility but cannot be asked to help save a family about to be evicted on Christmas.
Here, everything is a commodity to be bought or sold. Every resource can be tapped for possible exploitation. Even the Mogwai of which Mr. Peltzer makes the observation, “I bet every kid in America would want to have one of these. This could really be the big one!” looks at little Gizmo in terms of economic value rather than a living being.
Lil' Gizmo. Cute? You bet. Just make sure to follow the rules.
Obviously this is the era of the “Get Rich Quick” scheme. Mr. Peltzer has given up gainful employment to be a full time inventor trying to dream up the next “big thing” that will provide for he and his family the rest of their days. It’s Western civilizations dream of making money without ever truly having to work for it. Only the wise Asian Grandfather, representing non-American values, seems to sadly understand the monetary obsessed culture he is living in.
“Sold?” he asks, after Mr. Peltzer makes an inquiry into how he originally obtained Gizmo. “That’s an interesting choice of words.” His meaning is apparent. That life is not something you can buy or sell and Gizmo, of course, is a living creature.
Gremlins is an incredibly thoughtful horror film in the guise of family entertainment. It even manages to poke fun and ridicule everything we hold dear in Western Civilization. Gizmo is forced to wave an American flag, and the Grandfather is horrified to learn Gizmo has been taught to watch television. After all, isn’t that what passes for culture these days?
Possibly my favorite moment in the movie, the one that altered my take on Christmas forever, is the scene in which there’s a lull in the action and Pheobe Cates character recalls the disturbing and tragic story of her father’s disappearance and demise many Christmas ago. He was found several days after Christmas lodged in the chimney, dead, having broken his neck. Dressed as Santa. In a deeply dark and satirical film this scene alone is hands down the darkest. No Gremlins, no mauling, no chain saw attacks…more to the point, I believe this scene mocks sentimentality itself. A trait Steven Spielberg is all too familiar with. However, to Spielberg’s credit, despite everyone else demanding this scene be excised from the film, he allowed Joe Dante to make the final decision. Thankfully, Joe Dante was able to keep this remarkably powerful and disturbing sequence.
Gremlins also works on the level of a message movie about the use of our natural resources. The Mogwai, Gizmo, is friendly, cute and unspoiled, but when we don’t follow the rules (getting them wet, exposing them to bright lights and most especially feeding them after midnight) you are left with something far more perverted, sinister and harmful. Grandfather tells Billy and the viewing audience that American people would do with Mogwai what “Society has done with all natural gifts.” What he’s talking about is an American ideal. We’d sell them, buy them and make a killing.
Stripe. The Gremlin you don't want to fuck with.
But above all this Gremlins is a hellishly good time! It’s dangerous, gruesome and overt he top. Another favorite scene is when Billy’s Mother must do battle with the recently hatched batch of Gremlins run amuck in her house using all the tools she has around the house including blenders, knives and microwave ovens spewing Gremlin guts all over the good china. This stuff is sick. I remember watching the film as a child and my mind simply reeling at this. People were being ripped, beaten, strangled, bitten and even killed by these malicious little Gremlins. But slowly a smile came across my face as I realized what a joke it all was. These idealized American Christmas traditions. The fact that the final battle between Stripe, Billy and Gizmo takes place inside a shopping center filled to the brim with hollow consumer goodies can’t be a coincidence.
Joe Dante’s Gremlins proudly takes those Christmas traditions so many hold dear and shove them right where the sun don’t shine. Gremlins, you ruined Christmas for a generation of 80’s kids. And I cannot thank you enough.
