The Awkward Movie Challenge: Gremlins
According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their weekly feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs.
Unfortunately, this week Jeffrey is being a very, very small baby, and he says he does not have time to provide his contribution, so Mike is taking over the Awkward Movie Challenge, making it considerably less challenging, but a whole lot more awkward.
Mike:
In many ways, I’m a sad specimen. When Gremlins debuted in theaters 25 years ago this past June 8th (the same day as Ghostbusters, incidentally), my friend from down the block asked me if I wanted to see it with his family. I backed out because… well, I was a great big chicken (for more evidence of that, check out the regular feature Things That Scare Me on my site Psychobabble). I was not fooled by that fluffy Gizmo thing being hawked at the local Toys ‘R Us. I knew that he was just the cutesy-pie bait used to lure impressionable 10-year olds like me into some sort of traumatizing orgy of disemboweling and face-slashing.
When I finally saw Gremlins after it debuted on HBO a year later, I didn’t find it particularly horrifying, although I did find it to be highly entertaining. Still, I wasn’t completely wrong in my initial assumption that Gremlins might be disturbing; I was only wrong in thinking it contained material that would disturb me (I was more frightened of humanoid creatures than the kinds of scaly beasties in this film, and I lived in terror of seeing any kind of graphic eviscerating).
An assortment of Gremlins merch.
