Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Joe Dante occupies a strange space in Hollywood. He has directed some surefire Hits. Family Hits, the biggest kind there are. The kind that people revisit over and over again, but he also is massively dorky and subversive. Filling his movies full of cultural references at a speed that only the very dorky and literate will catch.

This has often been his downfall (but his flops are often his best shit, see Matinee if you haven’t yet).  This was certainly the case for this one.

Gremlins 2 is a sort of parody of the first film  (which didn’t really take itself too seriously to begin with), mostly it fucks with how popular it got. The phenomenon of Gremlins. We catch up with the two main characters of the first one  Billy and Kate (played by Zack Galligan and Phoebe Cates) who both now live in NYC in the same super futuristic building (he an illustrator and she a tour guide), and when Gizmo comes a knocking the inevitable shit hits the fan. It is quickly that he gets covered in water and then everyone gets fed after midnight and you get the idea.

Shots are made at  Gremlins pt 1, Die Hard, Rambo, Dr. Quatermass, Phantom of the Opera, Marathon Man, Loony Toons, Christopher Lee sends up his whole career playing a Mad Scientist. It is way over the top.

There are some terrible and regrettable moments as well. Gedde Watanabe pulls another “Long Duck Dong” in this as an Asian Tourist covered in cameras. However the rest of the cast is a real who’s who of Joe Dante regulars: Dick Miller, Jackie Joseph, Belinda Balaski, Paul Bartel, Rick Ducommun, among other familiar faces.

But overall, this movie just doesn’t give a fuck. It wants to fuck with its own image and its mainstream access and succeeds. Fingers crossed the rumors of a part 3 are TRUE.

Trivia bonus! Written by Charles S. Haas who scripted the classic “Over the Edge”!