No offense, It’s a Wonderful Life, but Gremlins has to be the best holiday film of all-time. This guy knows it, and so does Alamo Drafthouse. When we heard Brooklyn’s new dine-in theater was screening the film and handing out limited-edition Gremlins tiki mugs, we just about gave ourselves a mohawk. Sadly, the tiki mugs weren’t ready to distribute last week, but we’re told they should be in by Friday. If you missed Tuesday’s screening, there’s another one tonight–but you’ll have to act fast, because just a couple of seats remained at the time of this posting.
If you miss out, don’t worry: Williamsburg bowling bar The Gutter is also screening Joe Dante’s 1984 classic tonight at 9pm, and it’s free. Granted, you won’t get a tiki mug, but you will get free homemade cookies and countless adorable shots of Gizmo ululating– which, by the way, one superfan was able to do at Alamo last week in order to win a Gremlins Christmas sweater. Impressive.
The only bummer about all this is that nobody seems to be screening Gremlins 2: The New Batch. While the sequel doesn’t quite, er, hold water (the writing process was justly mocked by Key & Peele), it’s especially timely this year. The film’s quasi-villain, a self-obsessed real estate tycoon named Daniel Clamp, was modeled after Donald Trump. Incredibly, Gremlins 2 seems to have predicted all of those rumors about Trump TV, as Clamp wasn’t just a fame-whoring developer whose home base was a futuristic Trump Tower-esque high-rise, complete with “retail concourse”; he also doubled as a Ted Turner-esque media mogul and the president of Clamp Cable News Network.
Anyway, after an election where none of Trump’s outlandish behavior managed to bring him down, and he probably could’ve shot up Fifth Avenue without being held accountable, it’s important to remember that this dude’s fictional counterpart demolished Gizmo’s home in Chinatown. This guy evicted a mogwai and almost destroyed New York City by unwittingly unleashing a plague of gremlins. IS ANYBODY LISTENING? All of this while a Clamp Enterprises scientist, Dr. Catheter, performed experiments on Gizmo.
A lot has been made about the plot of Gremlins 2 being all over the map: After all, why would a real estate tycoon have a mad scientist on staff? Oh, I don’t know, why would Donald Trump give a Cabinet position to Dr. Ben Carson?
But all of that is fine, because Trump is making it okay to say “Merry Christmas” again. Oh, yeah? Tell that to Phoebe Cates:
But I digress. Watch Gremlins at Alamo or The Gutter tonight and then, if you’re not too wasted off of that tiki drink, go catch Gremlins 2 at home. Just make sure to chain your door in case some slimy hell-beasts try to drive a snowplow through it.