I posted my Top 5 Christmas Movies of all time a few days ago on facebook and I just thought with Christmas coming up I can probably give each one a brief reason why I felt like creating this completely un-traditional list of Christmas movies.

Please leave any thoughts and/or comments:

#5 ‘Gremlins’

Nothing quite like a little bit of mayhem on Christmas. I feel like there was a period of time where every action/comedy/thriller/whatever was taking a movie plot and adding Christmas to it and making big bucks. This one was no different. I hope everyone knows the plot, if not, here it is in an extremely brief synopsis: Father buys boy an exotic pet (Mogwai) that is extremely cute and comes with  a set of three rules. When those rules are broken the Mogwai spawns into a bunch of other Mogwais and when the rules are broken even more, they turn into evil, sadistic and malicious Gremlins. Put those creatures in a small town in a Christmas setting and you have one of the best 80’s movies of all time.

Gremlins came out during that hot era in the 80’s where everything that Stephen Speilberg touched was gold, including: Indiana Jones, The Goonies, E.T. and Poltergeist. He didn’t have to direct the movie just to have it be good. The puppet work was top notch and I challenge anyone to say otherwise. It is amazing what they were able to pull off at the time with the limited special effects that they had. I actually miss some of the special effects work that was done during this time because I feel (and still do) that once we were able to do anything we wanted to on screen it made people lazy with stories. How many original movies do we see? I am honestly shocked, even after the countless rumors of a remake of Gremlins, that they haven’t officially announced one yet.

Gremlins was a dark comedy that a child could watch (with parents) and watch a great adventure through a town with young teenagers taking us every step of the way.

My parents always tell me that they took me to see the movie when it came out and that they didn’t know how scary it was, but that was back in 1984 and I have no recollection of it (I was in fact 2 years old). I did end up seeing it on TV several years later and I even remember taping it on VHS and watching it over and over again.

The second one wasn’t as good, probably because it didn’t have the Christmas aspect of the story in it.

Now I said this was brief, it has in fact been years since I have seen Gremlins and would welcome a viewing of it if cable stations would play it. I wish someone would have as unique of a view of Christmas movies as I do. I won’t bore you with any more banter on Gremlins, check it out if you’ve never seen it, and if you haven’t seen it in a while, look for it, I know I will.