🔗 Share this article

“Well, it’s rather brutal here. We’re advising all of our clients to invest all their resources into canned food and shotguns.” This nugget of wise counsel comes from the Brain Gremlin – a lab-engineered, articulate, spectacled member of the slick creature crowd that overruns Manhattan’s super-smart Clamp Tower skyscraper in filmmaker Joe Dante’s unhinged continuation Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Superficially, it’s nothing more than an investment tip from one monster to another. But, curiously, it’s also remarkably sound life guidance. Seriously, hear me out.

When things go bad, the worst thing you can do is view events with undue solemnity. The Brain Gremlin grasps this. In fact, most of the dentally-gifted beasts that inhabit Dante’s unrestrained 1990 movie (debateably his greatest) possess the same wry, meta funny bone regarding the blurry line separating everyday life and pure pandemonium. It’s a single component of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that maintains my loyalty – and as I age, it’s the theme that echoes the loudest.

A Youthful Obsession

Naturally, my attachment to this movie did not begin on such an philosophical plane. Growing up, we were limited to a few scratched-up video tapes at home. Included within that collection were Gremlins and its second chapter, the latter housed in a chunky ex-rental box probably bought from an off-brand video shop and boasting snarling creatures on its knackered cover. I was immediately enamoured and these films wasted no time lodging themselves inside my small, malleable brain. Henceforth, they became an almost-daily part of my youthful watching schedule.

Dante’s first film usually receives all the praise, thanks primarily due to its status as a moderately spooky festive favorite – and let me be clear, I’ve watched Gremlins an incalculable number of times. However, its successor infrequently obtains the same level of high regard, which feels criminal. As a kid, I’d always seize the chance to watch Gremlins 2. During bright summer vacations, I’d lock myself inside and pop it in. When I got my own TV-VHS combo unit, it continued playing looped in my bedroom. With repetition, it etched itself permanently in my mental framework. If my parents noticed this obsession, they gave no indication of concern.

Hidden Discoveries and Pop-Culture References

As I got older, new revelations rewarded frequent screenings, heightening the enjoyment of watching small emerald creatures gleefully trash a New York high-rise. I learned the future-focused real estate tycoon and Clamp Tower owner, Daniel Clamp (John Glover), was inspired directly by future president Donald Trump, with his red-headed employee Marla (Haviland Morris) echoing his second wife Marla Maples. Luckily, Clamp possesses greater compassion than his actual-world equivalent.

The “doomsday” video Clamp plays during the height of creature carnage? I discovered it was based on a genuine “Doomsday” video produced by the CNN boss Ted Turner in case the world truly faced apocalypse. I noticed how Dante made a special effort to film varying versions of a meta sequence where Gremlins hijack the actual feature in progress. One for cinemas, a separate one for tape and broadcast, each offering a winking bit of fourth-wall-breaking cultural alchemy before the term was even a thing.

An Enduring Legacy

While it was makeup maestro Rick Baker’s gloriously nasty-looking creatures that captured my attention as a child, this deeper gold kept me hooked as an adult. Eventually, I even interviewed Dante about it myself and he had no reservations telling me he made the movie with the specific aim of poking fun at those who loved its absurd-yet-genuine predecessor and wanted more. “We were going to make fun of the fact you came to see it,” he gleefully confessed. This anarchic insubordination and resolve to not take his sequel as solemnly as his Warner Bros bosses evidently expected, only increased my affection for it.

When I experienced a sudden family bereavement not long ago, I was astonished to realize that, during my deepest grief, all I felt compelled to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Weird, right? Perhaps not. The soothing reminiscence it furnished was essential to dilute my mind’s grief morass – but the insights it had imparted to me as an adult were equally valuable.

Like Gremlins running amok in a genetics laboratory, there’s certain elements in life you just can’t control. Dante knows it. The Brain Gremlin knows it too. Sometimes, you have to be like them: welcome the pandemonium, invest all your resources into canned food and shotguns and try not to approach life with excessive gravity.

It’s powerful existential guidance from a most improbable origin – and it’s the reason Gremlins 2: The New Batch will forever remain my comfort movie.