“What you see isn’t always what you get” proclaims the tagline for Gremlins. That’s for damn sure. Nowadays, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Poltergeist, Gremlins’ notoriety rests at least partially upon being responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating. And wow, can I see why. How it slipped through the cracks for a geek like me, I don’t know. It’s not something I heard about on the nascent internet in the 90s, despite having Spielberg’s name attached to it, and as I grew, I just never thought about it. As a fan of alternative Christmas tales, Guillermo del Toro-style dark fantasy, and 80s effects movies, it should be right up my alley. Was it? Well, mostly yes, but on the whole, that’s a more complicated question than I’d have thought…

Our story begins when an eccentric inventor with a propensity for creating useless things and trying to sell them visits a local Chinatown during Christmas time. Unable to hock his wares, he asks to buy a Christmas gift for his son, and takes a fancy to an adorable creature in a cage, known as Mogwai (Which, in a little bit of foreshadowing, means “devil” in Cantonese.). The Chinese owner flat-out says no, insisting that western society isn’t ready for the responsibility of caring for it. But his son sells it to the man under the table without his father’s knowledge, and ominously warns him not to violate three very important rules: don’t expose the Mogwai to light, especially sunlight, as it will die, don’t get it wet, even to let it drink, and most importantly, don’t ever, ever, ever feed it after midnight.

He returns to his suburban home and meets our protagonist, his endlessly put-upon adolescent son Billy (Zach Galligan), who’s constantly besieged by a nasty local woman who hates his pet dog and terrorizes him at his dead-end bank teller job. Seemingly pleased with his adorable new pet, the cutest creature design this side of Baby Yoda, he finally plucks up the courage to ask out his longtime crush Kate (Phoebe Cates). When Billy’s friend spills water on Gizmo though, he quickly multiplies into several similar creatures, none of them quite as cute, and all of them with mischievous and altogether darker intentions. When the hungry creatures won’t be quiet, Billy finally relents and feeds them at what he thinks is 11:30, but then notices that his clock was unplugged…. The creatures cocoon themselves and transform into reptilian “Gremlins” which quickly wreak malicious havoc on the town, and it’s up to Billy and Kate to stop them.

There are some major names in the credits of Gremlins: executive producer Steven Spielberg figures prominently in the advertising, which led to considerable controversy (We’ll get to that in a minute.) and screenwriter Chris Columbus would go on to direct the smash hit Home Alone and kick-start the Harry Potter franchise. But the real auteur of the project is unquestionably director Joe Dante. Whereas Columbus’ later MO became Spielberg-lite, Dante is a graduate of B-movie horror maestro Roger Corman’s school and brings a darker malevolence to bear onto the film’s suburban fantasy surface, as well as a subtle strain of satire on rampant consumer culture.

Dante’s style is rather unique; a mixture of 50s creature-feature and violent slapstick. I knew Dante previously; I’d seen his Twilight Zone: The Movie segment, Piranha, & The Howling. So in a sense, I went in partially prepared, although the latter two films are very much not for children, leading me to wonder just how dark this film would get. The answer is quite. For its first half, Gremlins plays very much like a byproduct of the post E.T. series of suburban kids’ adventures like The Goonies, Home Alone, & Back to the Future. Indeed, enough of this hung over that even as a child of the 90s, I found his suburbs with their lilywhite aesthetics and his shopping malls with rows of plastic toys, quite recognizable. But when Dante turns his cards over in the second half, it becomes a blackly comic 80s effects-filled horror film. The question then is, how well do these two halves cohere and what do they add up to?

Some critics were cynical about the film’s merchandise-ready concept-I can’t imagine how many dolls it’s sold and how many pets went on to be named Gizmo. That’s to say nothing of the film’s nearly nonstop stream of special effects, which many thought overwhelmed the story, although I have to say, I don’t agree with the latter assertion at all. Though described as a black comedy, there’s not much in Gremlins that’s laugh-out-loud funny. But apparently Columbus’ original script was an outright grisly horror film. Dante adds a warmer, if darker sense of heart. The film’s characters are surprisingly likable, and Galligan and Cates bring genuine warmth. She even manages to sell one moment where she admits to losing her father on Christmas. This could have come across as crass, but Dante manages to sell it with a shocking amount of pathos.

If I have a criticism of the film, it’s that the movie occasionally feels slightly mean-spirited. A couple of deaths played for slapstick frankly come across as slightly uncomfortable, and the sense of malevolence in the film sometimes seems to overwhelm all else. But then, the original tales of the Brothers Grimm weren’t exactly sunshine either. Many parents were outraged by the film’s violence-a sequence where a Gremlin is stuck into the microwave and explodes still retains a certain shock value-and it led to the creation of the PG-13 rating. If Dante’s slapstick occasionally reaches into outright violence, it’s admittedly still in the tradition of Warner Brothers cartoons or the Three Stooges. The effects work throughout the film is almost always knockout, courtesy of Chris Walas, who’d go on to create the hideous transformation of Jeff Goldblum in Cronenberg’s body-horror nightmare The Fly. Little looks painfully dated, and the creatures have remarkable personality.

Tell me in the comments section, because I’m genuinely curious: how old were you when your first saw this movie? I think I’d have been genuinely traumatized by it before a certain age, but then, I was a fragile kid. A friend of mine first saw it around age eight and has loved it ever since. One thing about kid’s films is that kids hate being talked down to; they like being treated like grown-ups. Even as a child, I preferred Bruce Timm’s darker, more serious take on DC Comics to the cheesiness of old Filmation cartoons or Adam West episodes, so maybe I’m underestimating how much the youth of the world can take. There’s a long tradition of darker kids’ films, from The Wizard of Oz to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and indeed, the twisted fairytale sensibility of Roald Dahl is all over Gremlins. Hell, It’s A Wonderful Life starts with an attempted suicide, and that ur-text A Christmas Carol rewards Scrooge only after putting him through hell. So in a way, it’s quite appropriate.

So, the question of day, did I like it? Yeah. Yeah, I did. I loved its twisted sensibility, even if it was a little too dark for my taste sometimes. The characters, the special effects, and Dante’s dark genre blending are all a lot of fun. It’s a deliciously alternative Christmas movie. If it’s a little malevolent sometimes, well, that gives it a nice sense of personality, and the strain of social commentary is darkly subversive. It’s cool to a see commercialized Hollywood movie which bear the imprint of its director and has such an offbeat sensibility. If it’s a little dark for a kids’ movie, it also respects the intelligence of children and and never, ever talks down to them. It’s darker sensibility proves a deliciously alternative Christmas tale. Rather nasty fun in the best way.