🔗 Share this article

“Well, conditions are quite harsh here. The guidance we offer all of our clients to put everything they’ve got into canned food and shotguns.” This piece of wise counsel comes from the Brain Gremlin – a scientifically altered, articulate, bespectacled member of the slimy Gremlin horde that overruns Manhattan’s super-smart Clamp Tower skyscraper in director Joe Dante’s unhinged continuation Gremlins 2: The New Batch. At first glance, it’s simply an financial suggestion from one monster to another. Yet, oddly enough, it’s also remarkably sound life guidance. Truly, listen to my reasoning.

When things go bad, the most counterproductive action you can do is view events with undue solemnity. The Brain Gremlin grasps this. In fact, a large portion of the dentally-gifted beasts that populate Dante’s wild 1990 film (possibly his finest) possess the same knowing, self-referential sense of humour regarding the hazy boundary separating daily routine and absolute bedlam. It’s a single component of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that maintains my loyalty – and with the passage of time, it’s the message that resonates the most.

A Childhood Fascination

Of course, my attachment to this movie didn’t start on such an introspective level. In my youth, we only had a few scratched-up video tapes at home. Among them were Gremlins and its second chapter, the latter housed in a bulky previously-rented case almost certainly acquired from an off-brand video shop and featuring grimacing beasts on its knackered cover. I was right away smitten and these films did not delay embedding themselves inside my young, susceptible psyche. From then on, they became an near-everyday part of my childhood viewing routine.

Dante’s first film commonly garners all the accolades, thanks mostly because of its status as a semi-scary seasonal fave – and don’t get me wrong, I’ve watched Gremlins an incalculable number of times. However, its successor rarely gets the same level of high regard, which feels unjust. As a kid, I’d never miss an opportunity to watch Gremlins 2. During bright summer vacations, I’d seclude myself indoors and play it. When I acquired my personal TV-VHS combo unit, it stayed in constant rotation in my bedroom. With repetition, it ingrained itself in my mindset. If my parents noticed this obsession, they gave no indication of concern.

Subtler Rewards and Cultural Easter Eggs

As I matured, new understandings enriched multiple watches, heightening the enjoyment of watching diminutive verdant beasts gleefully trash a New York high-rise. I learned the ahead-of-its-time development mogul and Clamp Tower owner, Daniel Clamp (John Glover), was based squarely upon the eventual commander-in-chief Donald Trump, with his red-headed employee Marla (Haviland Morris) echoing his second wife Marla Maples. Fortunately, Clamp demonstrates more humanity than his actual-world equivalent.

The “apocalyptic” video Clamp plays during the height of creature carnage? I discovered it was modeled after a real-life “Doomsday” video commissioned by the CNN boss Ted Turner in case the world actually met its demise. I noticed how Dante went out of his way to film different iterations of a meta sequence where Gremlins seize control of the exact movie you are viewing. One for cinemas, another for home video and television, each offering a winking bit of meta pop-culture magic before the term was even a thing.

A Persistent Appeal

While it was effects expert Rick Baker’s gloriously nasty-looking creatures that captured my attention as a child, this deeper gold held my interest as an adult. Ultimately, I even conversed with Dante about it myself and he had no reservations informing me he made the movie with the express purpose of mocking those who loved its silly-yet-sincere predecessor and wanted more. “We were going to make fun of the fact you came to see it,” he gleefully confessed. This anarchic rebelliousness and commitment to not take his sequel as gravely as his Warner Bros bosses evidently expected, only made me love it even more.

When I endured a abrupt familial death recently, I was astonished to realize that, during my heightest mourning, all I desired to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Odd, no? Perhaps not. The nostalgic calm it furnished was needed to thin out my mind’s sadness sludge – but the insights it had imparted to me as an adult were equally valuable.

Like Gremlins tearing apart a genetics laboratory, there’s some things in life you just cannot manage. Dante knows it. The Brain Gremlin shares this wisdom. Sometimes, you have to be like them: accept the turmoil, put everything you’ve got into tinned provisions and hunting rifles and try not to view the world with undue solemnity.

It’s strong life advice from a very unlikely source – and it’s why Gremlins 2: The New Batch will eternally stand as my go-to cinematic solace.