🔗 Share this article

“Well, the situation is pretty dire here. Our recommendation is all of our clients to commit their entire holdings into preserved goods and firearms.” This piece of wise counsel comes from the Brain Gremlin – a lab-engineered, speaking, glasses-wearing member of the oozy monster mob that swarms Manhattan’s ultra-modern Clamp Tower skyscraper in director Joe Dante’s zany follow-up Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Superficially, it’s simply an financial suggestion from one monster to another. However, oddly enough, it’s also remarkably sound life advice. Honestly, hear me out.

When things go bad, the worst thing you can do is view events with undue solemnity. The Brain Gremlin grasps this. Actually, most of the fang-bearing creatures that populate Dante’s unrestrained 1990 movie (arguably his best) possess the same wry, meta comic sensibility regarding the blurry line separating daily routine and pure pandemonium. It’s one element of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that ensures my return – and with the passage of time, it’s the message that echoes the loudest.

An Early Life Fascination

Understandably, my attachment to this movie did not begin on such an deeply thoughtful note. As a child, we were limited to a few scratched-up video tapes at home. Included within that collection were Gremlins and its sequel, the latter housed in a bulky previously-rented case probably bought from an off-brand video shop and boasting grimacing beasts on its knackered cover. I was immediately enamoured and these films wasted no time lodging themselves inside my small, malleable brain. Henceforth, they became an practically routine part of my youthful watching schedule.

Dante’s original commonly garners all the praise, thanks primarily due to its reputation as a semi-scary seasonal fave – and let me be clear, I’ve watched Gremlins an incalculable number of times. Nevertheless, its sequel seldom receives the same level of lofty appreciation, which feels unjust. As a kid, I’d always seize the chance to watch Gremlins 2. During bright summer vacations, I’d retreat into the house and pop it in. When I acquired my personal TV-VHS combo unit, it stayed in constant rotation in my bedroom. With repetition, it etched itself permanently in my mental framework. If my parents observed this fixation, they appeared unbothered.

Hidden Discoveries and Pop-Culture Easter Eggs

As I matured, new revelations enriched multiple watches, heightening the enjoyment of watching small emerald creatures joyously wreck a New York high-rise. I learned the future-focused development mogul and Clamp Tower owner, Daniel Clamp (John Glover), was inspired directly by the eventual commander-in-chief Donald Trump, with his ginger staff member Marla (Haviland Morris) alluding to his one-time partner Marla Maples. Fortunately, Clamp possesses greater compassion than his actual-world equivalent.

The “doomsday” video Clamp plays during the height of creature carnage? I discovered it was based on a actual “Doomsday” video commissioned by the CNN boss Ted Turner should the world truly faced apocalypse. I noticed how Dante took extra pains to film alternate cuts of a meta sequence where Gremlins hijack the actual feature in progress. An edit for movie houses, another for home video and television, each providing a grinning portion of fourth-wall-breaking cultural alchemy before the term was even a thing.

An Enduring Legacy

While it was makeup maestro Rick Baker’s gloriously nasty-looking creatures that drew my gaze as a child, this deeper gold kept me hooked as an adult. Ultimately, I even conversed with Dante about it myself and he had no reservations telling me he made the movie with the express purpose of mocking those who loved its silly-yet-sincere predecessor and wanted more. “We were going to make fun of the fact you came to see it,” he gleefully confessed. This Looney Tunes-esque rebelliousness and determination to not take his sequel as solemnly as his Warner Bros bosses clearly wanted him to, only deepened my appreciation further.

When I went through a unexpected loss in the family earlier this year, I was taken aback to discover that, during my deepest grief, all I wanted to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Odd, no? Possibly not. The soothing reminiscence it furnished was essential to weaken my mind’s mourning mire – but the stuff it had imparted to me as an adult were just as useful.

Like Gremlins rampaging through a genetics laboratory, there’s some things in life you just can’t control. Dante is aware of it. The Brain Gremlin knows it too. Sometimes, you have to follow their example: accept the turmoil, put everything you’ve got into tinned provisions and hunting rifles and try not to approach life with excessive gravity.

It’s powerful existential guidance from a most improbable origin – and it’s why Gremlins 2: The New Batch will forever remain my feelgood film.