Check it out, we have a script by hot up-and-comer Christopher Columbus, about adorable little critters who turn into monsters! And it’s loaded with small-town schmaltz. Speilberg will produce! Phoebe Cates will star!
Can we make the adorable critter so cute that every kid in America will want a doll based on it?
Yes. Yes, we can. High five!
Nice. Now we just need a hungry, hip young director-for-hire who can make this thing sing.
It just so happens I had lunch with this struggling Roger Corman protégé, Joe Dante. He’s been around a while but his biggest credit to date is a couple of episodes of Police Squad. The kids seem to like that show.
The kids, you say?
 |
Dante directs an entertaining but surpisingly nasty kiddie-horror movie. It’s violent and has some flashes of pretty black humour, but the good guys win and Gizmo is so damn cute that everybody forgets about that. It makes an ungodly amount of money. Every kid in America wants a Gizmo doll.
Six years later… |
Joe Dante, its six years later, you’re a genius and you made us all rich. Let’s make a sequel and all get richer!
Sure, but if you really want this to work, I’m going to need five times the original budget. Oh, and I get to do absolutely anything I want.
Deal!
Now, let’s sell some more dolls! High five!
evil, evil laugh
Uh-oh.
What? What’s happening? Why is he laughing like that?
 |
Dante assembles a nearly-plotless collection of black comedy sketches, sick jokes and cartoon violence, dripping with acid contempt for the materialistic aspirations and sterile aesthetics of the 1980s, and the original film. There are multiple scenes of Gizmo being tortured. Phoebe Cates tells a story about being flashed by an Abraham Lincoln impersonator. Dante uses the budget to cram in references to every one of his favourite old horror films, gets Rick Baker to do the special effects, and casts Christopher Lee, Tony Randall and Hulk Hogan. It’s brilliant and indulgent and loses great globs of money. |
Man, that was a blast! Who’s up for Gremlins 3?
cries
Fuck you, Joe Dante.
2 Comments