Headscratchers / Gremlins (1984)

• Mr. Futterman mentions the gremlins as the things that caused mechanical problems during WWII, but the mogwai was bought from a Chinese shop, in a Chinatown and has a Cantonese name. It was Japan that we fought in WWII. It just seems like a stretch that the writers would try to connect the two like that.
  • The writers didn't make up the part about the Gremlins sabotaging planes. Gremlins are actual folkloric creatures who are supposed to do just that and had been depicted in media long before the movie. As for the Chinese shop, it just fits (in a racist, oriental kind of sense) that the mysterious generic Asian (Chinese) guy would have certain mysterious mythological creatures such as Gremlins.
  • The old man also never refers to the monsters as gremlins, and he's probably the only one who would know their proper name. Billy is the one who started calling them that. He had recently had a conversation with Mr. Futterman about little monsters that wreck things, was now faced with little monsters that wreck things, and decided to use that term. Might qualify as an Ironic Echo.
  • China was also fighting Japan during World War II. It was a World War after all, not just USA v Japan. I don't remember the exact quote but I doubt Mr. Futterman was implying that it was anything to do with the Japanese anyway. It was just an observation.
  • Variations of sprites exist in folklore all over the world. Who says gremlins can't exist between two nearby countries in the same continent?
  • Mogwai actually are creatures of Chinese folklore (They're a type of sprite). And, according to the myths, when it rains, Mogwai..well...become horny and start to breed like rabbits (hence the whole "Water=Babies for Mogwai/Gremlins" scenario). The film simply merged the two mythologies together to form a single creature.
  • Japan had previously conquered China in the early 20th century, so it wouldn't be surprising that some Mogwai/Gremlins made it to Japan via soldier/politician/idiot who wanted a fascinating pet.
  • It's also possible that Gizmo's previous "owner" (for lack of a better term) was Japanese, and Mr. Wing adopted him after the war.
• Two policemen drive up to a house to see a man screaming for help as a bunch of gremlins mauls him. The two officers look at each other, decide they're uncomfortable and drive off, leaving the man to his death. And this is NEVER addressed! By the very definition of their job, these two policemen just murdered a man through inaction.
  • Their brake line is cut by a gremlin, and their car crashes; the only person who gets worse comeuppance is Mrs. Deagle.
  • Actually, given that the movie takes place in the U.S., Warren v. District of Columbia says that their job description doesn't force them to provide individual protection to people. That said, they had never seen gremlins in their lives before, so understandably they were unnerved. Mind you, they seemed rather callous about it.
  • Rule of Funny (the scene was played in a comedic light). And yes, as another troper has noted, they do receive their comeuppance.
  • You think them driving off is bad? Originally they were even more callous; Frank (the sheriff) was supposed to say "The hell with him!" as he rolls up the car window and sped off. Spielberg objected to this, and so the line was cut, although you can still see the actor mouthing the line.
  • They were pretty bad cops to begin with. Both were drinking on duty (granted, on Christmas Eve in a very small and sleepy town, but still.) So they were probably still a little drunk when that happened. And they're small-town cops, who probably don't deal with many crisis situations in the first place. They were just out of their element. Moreover, the whole scene was crafted because, as Joe Dante says in the commentary, "Whenever you have a movie like this and police, you have to have a scene with the police, and it's always the same scene." Billy at the police station and then the police leaving "Santa" to die and then getting killed is just a way to get the cops out of the picture so Billy (and Gizmo) can be the hero, without making the audience feel too bad about two cops being killed.
  • The guy died? I was under the impression that the Gremlins were annoying and probably harmed him but didn't kill him, on camera at least.

• How come nobody ever told Mrs. Deagle that Animal Cruelty is a crime?
  • Even if someone had the guts to do so, she wouldn't care.
• Why do the Peltzers have a toy robot in the stocking if their only child is a teenager?
  • There are plenty of adults who enjoy toy robots.
  • Just ask any adult Transformers fan. Just don't go into any specifics.
  • I'm in my 30s and I have a little wind-up robot on my computer desk right now.
    • Yeah, but keep in mind that when the film was released (The '80s) an adult having childish hobbies would have been considered a weirdo with little positive connotations. Which in fairness is a bit how the Peltzer family is presented.
  • Doylist explanation: The various versions of the script waffled back and forth with how old (and how mature) Billy was supposed to be, and elements of earlier drafts where he was significantly younger remain (his ten-year-old best friend, love of comics, and toys, etc.)
  • Who said the gifts in that stocking were specifically Billy's? The toy robot may have been a gag gift for Billy's inventor dad, something for him to put on his work desk for fun. Or it might have even been a gift for Gizmo — many people put up stockings for the family pet. And Gizmo had already shown a propensity for playing with toys.

• Regarding the death of Mr. Hanson, what is kept in an elementary school science class that can be injected into a person to kill them? When Billy finds Hanson, you can still see there's some clear fluid of some sort inside the syringe. So what did he get injected with?
  • Who said it was the liquid that killed him? Gremlins are quite well-equipped in that department themselves. The syringe could've been a sedative or just some random stuff it jabbed into him, because, well, crazy and evil. And was it even confirmed that the man was dead?
    • I thought the implication was that the gremlin injected an air bubble into his bloodstream and gave him an embolism. Are you sure the syringe had anything in it?
  • I always thought that the Gremlin just killed him (With claws, bites, knives, bazookas, falling pianos... they are Gremlins, after all), and finally, he put the syringe in his ass "as revenge" for what he did before. The syringe made the scene more fun for me when I saw the movie as a child, as it was a "funny, slapstick death", instead of just plain horror.

• How did the Mogwai manage to wrap the dog in Christmas lights and hang it from the pole, all without anyone hearing? Or was it actually Mrs. Deagle?
  • It is heavily implied that the evil Mogwai did it with Stripe pretending to be asleep and then opening his eyes when Billy leaves his bed to investigate the dog's cries. And it must probably been an extensive team effort with the dog more confused than panicked and only starting to howl when it was left outside to freeze.

• Why didn't Billy ask the sheriff and his deputy to take a look at his house? That should prove not only that the Gremlins exist, but the kind of mayhem just four of them can cause. It might not convince them that there are more of them, but seeing that half of Billy's story is true, they should be more inclined to believe the other half.
  • They do seem to be lazy, incompetent cops, besides being already groggy and reluctant to do any actual work on Christmas Eve.

• Gizmo sure was cute, but Billy already had a dog. Would a second pet really be his dad's first choice as a perfect gift?
  • Lots of families have multiple pets.

• What happened to the gremlin at the school? I guess we can assume he made it to the theater and was killed with the others but this was never explained. When first watching this movie I was wondering if at the end of the movie we would see he survived and that would lead into the sequel but that was not the case.
  • Gremlins run amok all over town. Only Stripe has a specific identity. We can assume it was one of the many we see throughout the film, and all of them gather at the theater at the end.

• Wait, if only clear water can cause the spawning of more Mogwai and Gremlins, why did the Pool, which should be full of Chlorine, spawn more Gremlins?
  • Scientific answer: ratios. The pool had a high enough water-to-chlorine ratio to count as "water," while beer, soda, and so on do not. Mystical answer: Mogwai and Gremlins are magical creatures, and so what affects them is governed by our perceptions. Beer is not water, it is beer; orange juice is not water, it is orange juice; but water in a swimming pool or paintbrush cleaning glass is water, no matter how much chlorine or paint is mixed with it.
  • Chlorine swimming pools have to be tested every darn day or so to see how much chlorine is left in it and have more added until it gets into the right range. A significant amount of chlorine only happens if you "shock" the pool, which means you can't use it for swimming until the chlorine level falls. Give it just a couple of days of forgotten maintenance (or deliberate waiting before draining the water out), and the chlorine level is so low that it doesn't even register on the test strips.
    • Which makes sense, as the pool was presumably closed for Christmas and not being re-treated with chlorine daily with nobody using it.

• Am I reading too much into things, or was the implication of the Santa scene supposed to be that it was the REAL Santa getting attacked by the Gremlins, and the cops just assumed it was an actor? Which is somehow supposed to add to the general black comedy of the evening's events?
  • The cops identify the man by name (Dave something) and note "he plays Santa every year," meaning he's just a guy who goes around Kingston Falls on Christmas Eve pretending to be Santa.

• How did Rand Peltzer get the Mogwai away from New York City undetected? It's bad enough he brought his son home a new pet with some pretty hefty strings attached. Taking a live creature out of the city could have led to police attention and much worse.
  • You seem to be inferring that Rand would have had to fly home with Gizmo, but that's not the case. He takes him from the Chinatown in NYC to his hometown Kingston Falls, which is established in the lore as a small town in New York state. Given he's shown driving back to Kingston Falls again in the third act, we can infer that he drove there at the start of the movie. So by travelling by car, there's very little chance that police could pick up on him transporting a Mogwai out of NYC to upstate; he was able to easily conceal the creature just by walking out of the store and through Chinatown in the case Gizmo came with.
  • Bear also in mind that this is the mid-1980s, when slipping things through a checkpoint was easier.

• Are the Peltzers or Mr. Wing at all liable for the damage and vandalism inflicted upon the town by the gremlins? Who would qualify as the owner? Mr. Wing seems to think that the kid gave the mogwai to Rand without his permission and the Peltzers think they owned it because they exchanged money to get one.

• Why is Mr. Hanson projecting an educational film to a class in a school building on Christmas Eve? Do schools in New York State open that late in the year?

• When Stripe multiplies in the pool at the YMCA shouldn't he be spawning Mogwais instead of Gremlins? It doesn't make sense cuz I thought only Gizmo was able to multiply.
  • It makes perfect sense. The Gremlin stage is simply a corrupted form of the Mogwai and retains all the abilities and vulnerabilities of its previous state - one being reproduction. All the mogwais and the Gremlins will reproduce copies of themselves when exposed to water (not just Gizmo). If Stripe was still a Mogwai, he would indeed produce more Mogwais, but he was currently a Gremlin so the resulting hordes were all copies of him in that state.

• How did Mrs. Peltzer get pinned down by the Christmas tree Gremlin? I'd understand if it was a large group of Gremlins, but it's only one. The Gremlins themselves are no bigger than a small dog, and I can't imagine their grip being that strong either. She could've knocked him off by just jumping upwards really hard.
  • Well, it did first land the Christmas tree on her, and those can be quite heavy. It used the tree as basically a shield so she couldn't get a stab in on it with her kitchen knives. We're not shown exactly how it ended up with the Gremlin out of the tree on Lynn's back strangling her, but it probably knocked enough fight out of her with the tree to get her into a hold. That kind of hold isn't that easy to break, and while Gremlins are small, they seem to be pretty strong for their size. Stripe mostly uses range and concealment to attack Billy, but when he does go head on, Billy isn't able to just overpower Stripe.

• Why did Mrs. Deagle have a pricey "Imported Bavarian Snowman" to begin with? First of all, she doesn't seem to give a damn about Christmas - she despises carolers and keeps a bucket of water on hand to douse them, and we get a good look at her house and there are no other decorations up, inside or out. And speaking of her house, it's actually rather squalid inside, suggesting that despite her wealth, she hoards her money and lives frugally. So what's she doing with an expensive holiday decoration?
  • The disarray of Deagle's house is implied to be caused by the menagerie of rather feral cats she keeps rather than her being frugal. And while it does seem odd that she has Christmas decorations in the first place, she's clearly mostly interested in the fact that it's expensive rather than festive. It seems within her character to show off with an exotic purchase while still being annoyed by Christmas cheer, like carolers arriving uninvited at her doorstep.

• Why did Gizmo refuse the chicken leg Billy offered him when he was feeding the other Mogwai? Was he just not hungry, or did he know it was really after midnight? Or he just wouldn't eat past 11:30 just to be safe? But if he did know it was after midnight, why didn't he try to stop Billy from feeding the other Mogwai? Did he even know what the other Mogwai did to the clock? And yet he doesn't even warn Billy in any way.

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