47 Fun Facts About Gremlins

Who directed the 1984 film Gremlins?

Joe Dante was down to his last few dollars when Steven Spielberg's script arrived in the mail, and he assumed it had been sent to the wrong address.

Which screenwriter sold Gremlins to Steven Spielberg as a spec script, then wrote The Goonies for him?

Chris Columbus wrote Gremlins as a writing sample he never expected to see filmed, inspired by mice skittering around his loft at night; he later directed Home Alone.

Rand Peltzer buys the mogwai as a Christmas present in an antique store located in which neighborhood?

Chinatown is where the shop's owner refuses to sell the mogwai, so his grandson slips it to Rand behind his back, along with three rules for its care.

In Gremlins, which mogwai rule does the shopkeeper's grandson call the most important?

Never feed it after midnight is the rule he says can never be forgotten, though nobody defines when 'after midnight' ends, a gap the studio queried and the sequel openly mocks.

What is the name of the snowy small town where Billy Peltzer works at the local bank?

Kingston Falls is the town; its picture-postcard setting deliberately echoes It's a Wonderful Life, a clip of which plays on television in the film.

Which actor plays Billy Peltzer?

Zach Galligan, a relative unknown, won the part of Billy after Spielberg saw his screen test with the actress cast as Kate and pushed for him.

Which Fast Times at Ridgemont High actress plays Billy's girlfriend Kate Beringer?

Phoebe Cates won the part of Kate despite studio worries that her risqué role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High made her a poor fit for the sweet girl next door.

Which country singer-songwriter plays Billy's inventor father, Randall Peltzer?

Hoyt Axton got the part after the director saw him play the folksy father in The Black Stallion and decided the singer was also a seriously good actor.

The actor who plays Rand Peltzer wrote which 1971 Three Dog Night song that spent six weeks at No. 1?

Joy to the World nearly went unrecorded: two of Three Dog Night's three lead singers dismissed it as a silly kids' song before the third talked them into it.

Who provided the voice of Gizmo in Gremlins?

Howie Mandel got the job when a friend already voicing a gremlin urged him to audition, and he improvised much of Gizmo's chatter to match the finished puppet footage.

Which longtime Scooby-Doo voice actor voiced the gremlins' leader in Gremlins?

Frank Welker and his fellow voice actors mostly made up the creatures' lines themselves, reacting to puppet footage that had been shot before any voices were recorded.

What is the aggressive mogwai leader, named for the white tuft on his head, called?

Stripe is the leader; in the original draft Gizmo himself was to turn into the villain, but Spielberg vetoed it because audiences would want the cute mogwai kept around.

In Gremlins, the last surviving gremlin tries to spawn more of his kind in which department store's fountain?

It is the Montgomery Ward store; the leader had left the cinema early for candy across the street, which is why he alone survived the gas explosion that killed the rest.

In Gremlins, how does Kate say her father died, in her speech about hating Christmas?

Broke his neck in a chimney: Kate says he slipped climbing down it dressed as Santa, and the director refused to cut the speech, arguing it summed up the film's mix of horror and comedy.

Which future Goonies star plays Pete Fountaine, the kid who accidentally spills water on Gizmo?

Corey Feldman says the role repaid a promise: Steven Spielberg had talked him out of E.T. after a rewrite shrank his part, vowing to cast him in his next film with a kid.

The Gremlins town square was filmed on the Universal studio set that became the hometown in which 1985 hit?

Back to the Future turned the same Courthouse Square into Hill Valley a year later; Gremlins shot there because its director wanted a stylised backlot town, where puppet monsters would be easier to believe.

Gremlins opened in North America on June 8, 1984, the same day as which other blockbuster?

Ghostbusters won that opening weekend by only about $1 million, even though Gremlins had cost less than half as much to make.

Before settling on puppets, the makers of Gremlins tested which animal wearing a gremlin head?

A monkey was the early plan, but the rhesus they tested in a gremlin head panicked, tore around the editing room and soiled everything, so the film switched to puppets.

In Gremlins, which Disney classic is the horde watching when Billy blows up the movie theater?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has the whole horde packed into one cinema, which is what lets Billy and Kate wipe out all but one of them with a single gas explosion.

Violence in Gremlins and which other 1984 PG film prompted the PG-13 rating?

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, released weeks before Gremlins, drew the same complaints; Spielberg, connected to both, suggested an intermediate rating and the MPAA created PG-13 in July 1984.

Which film was the first released theatrically under the new PG-13 rating in 1984?

Red Dawn reached theaters with the new rating on August 10, 1984; The Flamingo Kid had been the first film awarded a PG-13 but was not released until December.

Who composed the score for Gremlins, including the mischievous 'Gremlin Rag'?

Jerry Goldsmith answered a horror film with a jaunty, carnival-style rag, and he turns up on screen as the man in the phone booth when Rand calls home from the convention.

The composer of Gremlins won his only Academy Award, from 18 nominations, for which film?

The Omen won with a menacing choral chant, 'Ave Satani', while the composer's scores for Patton and Planet of the Apes were among the 17 nominations that lost.

Gremlins puppet designer Chris Walas later won a makeup Oscar for which film?

The Fly won Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis the makeup Oscar for Jeff Goldblum's slow transformation into an insect, and Walas went on to direct the sequel, The Fly II, himself.

In the darker original Gremlins script, whose severed head was thrown down the stairs?

Billy's mother was decapitated in the first draft, a scene cut as too dark; on screen she instead kills three gremlins in her own kitchen, with a blender, a knife and a microwave.

Gremlins was the first film to carry which production company's now-famous logo?

Amblin Entertainment's logo, a boy and E.T. cycling across the moon, debuted on Gremlins, a film Steven Spielberg had first pictured as a cheap horror movie rather than a family hit.

In Gremlins, which World War II veteran is the first to call the creatures gremlins?

Mr. Futterman, Billy's neighbor, blames gremlins for every foreign-made machine that breaks, an old airmen's joke from the war, until real ones turn up and leave him badly injured.

Steven Spielberg considered which filmmaker, then known only for short films, to direct Gremlins?

Tim Burton was in the running on the buzz around his early shorts, but he had never directed a feature, which counted against him; his first, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, arrived in 1985.

Which children's author, a former fighter pilot, published a book called The Gremlins in 1943?

Roald Dahl drew The Gremlins from RAF folklore about imps that sabotage aircraft; it was his first book, written for Walt Disney ahead of an animated film that was never made.

Which creature feature, advertised with a monster climbing out of a toilet, was filmed at the same time as Gremlins?

Ghoulies is often written off as a Gremlins imitation, but the two were shot at the same time; its producer ran out of money mid-shoot, so Gremlins reached theaters seven months sooner.

Spielberg chose the Gremlins director largely because of which 1981 werewolf film he had made?

The Howling blended horror with comedy, the mix Spielberg wanted for Gremlins; he had already cast its lead actress, Dee Wallace, in E.T.

Which film critic plays himself in Gremlins 2, panning the first film until gremlins attack him?

Leonard Maltin had panned the original on Entertainment Tonight; the director, stung at the time, invited him to repeat the review on camera and be mauled for it.

Gremlins 2's billionaire Daniel Clamp was modeled on Donald Trump and which media mogul?

Ted Turner and Donald Trump were blended into Clamp, who owns both a cable network and the skyscraper that bears his name, so one character let the sequel send up two tycoons at once.

What is the first name of Christopher Lee's Gremlins 2 character, Doctor Catheter?

Cushing is his first name, making him Dr. Cushing Catheter in tribute to Peter Cushing, Lee's frequent Hammer co-star and close friend.

Gremlins 2's mogwai George and Lenny are named after the main characters of which John Steinbeck book?

Of Mice and Men lends its pair to the mogwai, who mirror the book's duo: George is the sharp, cynical one and Lenny his slow, buck-toothed sidekick.

Which Odd Couple star voiced the erudite Brain Gremlin in Gremlins 2?

Tony Randall, television's Felix Unger, voiced the Brain Gremlin, an ordinary gremlin until he gulps a brain serum in the lab and starts lecturing on civilization.

Robert Prosky's Clamp cable-network horror host, Fred, was based on which classic sitcom character?

Grandpa Munster of The Munsters inspired Grandpa Fred, who ends the film promoted after covering the gremlin outbreak live with a Japanese tourist as his cameraman.

In Gremlins 2, a gremlin ends up as a rooftop gargoyle after Billy's old neighbor douses it in what?

Wet cement does it: the winged gremlin flies off dripping, sets hard on a cathedral spire and spends the rest of the film as a gargoyle.

After drinking a lab serum, the leader Mohawk mutates into a centaur-like hybrid of what creature?

Mohawk becomes a spider hybrid after drinking a spider serum; another gremlin turns bat-like and is given a genetic sunblock that makes it immune to sunlight.

In a Rambo homage, Gizmo kills Mohawk with a makeshift arrow tipped with an ignited bottle of what?

Correction fluid is the accelerant: Gizmo lights a bottle tied to his makeshift arrow and fires it at Mohawk, who had spent the movie abducting and torturing him.

Which wrestler appears as himself in Gremlins 2, bullying the gremlins who hijack the projection booth into restarting the film?

Hulk Hogan is fetched from the audience after the gremlins swap the film for a vintage nudist reel, and he rips off his shirt and threatens them until the movie starts again.

Which Looney Tunes character interrupts Bugs Bunny in the animated opening of Gremlins 2?

Daffy Duck shoves Bugs Bunny aside to claim the opening, then returns after the credits to steal Porky Pig's 'That's all, folks!' too, in new animation written and directed by Chuck Jones.

Which actor plays sunny billionaire developer Daniel Clamp in Gremlins 2?

John Glover played the tycoon with such cheerful innocence that, the director says, a part written as a villain became one of the funniest things in the film.

Which song does the Brain Gremlin lead hundreds of gremlins in singing in Gremlins 2's big musical number?

New York, New York is the number: the Brain Gremlin leads the horde in a Sinatra-style singalong in the Clamp Center lobby just before the gremlins are hosed down and electrocuted.

The first season of the animated prequel Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai is set in which 1920s city?

Shanghai is where ten-year-old Sam Wing, the future Mr. Wing, first meets a young Gizmo; the second season then carries the pair across the Pacific to San Francisco.

Secrets of the Mogwai debuted on May 23, 2023, on the launch day of which streaming service?

Max, the rebranded HBO Max, launched on May 23, 2023 with the series as a day-one title; two years later the service dropped the new name and became HBO Max again.

Which actress plays the miserly Mrs. Deagle in Gremlins?

Polly Holliday, known as Flo on the sitcom Alice, plays Mrs. Deagle, who dies when the gremlins sabotage her stair lift and launch her out of a window.