15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Gremlins

In 1984, the American comedy-horror ‘Gremlins’ hit screens across the globe with great success. Directed by Joe Dante, with Steven Spielberg on-board as executive director, the movie would become a surprise hit that would later spawn a sequel, video games and huge amounts of Gremlins merchandise.

While everyone now knows you should never get Gremlins wet, you don’t feed them after midnight and you don’t expose them to bright light, most people probably don’t know about these 15 awesome Gremlins movie facts.

While Gremlins is Christmas movie, it was actually released in the summer of 1984. Gremlins was rushed into production shortly after Warner Bros. found out they had no major competition for Paramount’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) or Columbia’s Ghostbusters (1984) for the summer movie season.

Gremlins opened the same day as Ghostbusters, they both did extremely well. Ghostbusters was the second highest grossing film of 1984. Gremlins was fourth taking $148 million.

The original script was far darker than the end product that was released in 1984. In the scene where Billy’s mother investigates the strange noises in the attic she was originally supposed to be decapitated by the gremlins and her head tossed down the stairs for Billy to discover.

The original script also contained a scene where the gremlins attacked a McDonald’s, eating customers instead of burgers and another where Billy’s dog gets eaten.

It was Gremlins and Indiana Jones in 1984 that were responsible for the US PG-13 rating. Both films were considered PG but because of the mild violence, which wasn’t enough to be considered an R rating, a compromise had to be made.

The fictional town of Kingston Falls in which Gremlins is set, is actually the exact same movie-set used for Hill Valley in Back To The Future.

In Kingston Fall’s town square, the movie theater is playing a double-bill of A Boy’s Life and Watch the Skies. These were the working titles of Spielberg’s very own E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The movie theater in Kingston Falls that blows up in the movie was involved in another incident….. Marty McFly drove the DeLorean into the entrance at the end of Back to the Future.

Gizmo was originally scripted to turn into the Gremlin Stripe. However, Spielberg over ruled the idea, saying he thought it was best to leave Gizmo furry and cute, as the audience would want that.

Stripe was voiced by Frank Welker, who is well-known for his voice work over the past four decades. He has voiced characters in hundreds of cartoons and movies over the years including Megatron from Transformers, Scooby-Doo and Garfield.

Gizmo was voiced by Howie Mandel, that’s right, the host of Deal or No Deal and judge in America’s Got Talent was once the voice of Gizmo.

Judge Reinhold (left), who played a small role in the movie, was actually co-star of the biggest film that year, ‘Beverley Hills Cop’.

Each of the animatronic gremlins cost between $30,000 and $40,000. When everyone left the lot for the day, security would have everyone open the trunks of their cars to make sure none were being stolen.

Phoebe Cates was so terrified of the animatroic gremlins that she would avoid them as much as possible while not filming scenes.

The infamous ”there is no Santa Clause” monologue was considered too dark and nearly cut from the film. However, producer Steven Spielberg stepped in and convinced the studio to keep it.

The Gizmo puppets were particularly frustrating because they were smaller and thus broke down more. Consequently, to satisfy the crew, a scene was included in which the gremlins hang Gizmo on a wall and throw darts at him. This was an item on a list that the crew created known to them as the “Horrible Things to do to Gizmo” list.