Gremlins, Critters & Hobgoblins: Tiny Terrors of the 80s

This week on the podcast, we dive into the chaotic, creature-feature mayhem of the 1980s with a triple threat of furry fiends and pint-sized terrors. From the mischievous mogwai that spawn slimy, scaly Gremlins in Kingston Falls, to the razor-toothed Critters that crash-land in Grover's Bend, and the sleazy, low-budget Hobgoblins that turn a movie studio into a nightmare— we're celebrating the wild, rubber-suited monsters that defined a generation of horror-comedy.

Transcript

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Welcome to season one, episode 13 of Dad Bot of Horror. I am your host, Butch Bar. Once again, no co-host, still hopeful. So, my wife reminded me, or at least we talked about, you know, I wanted to thank all my listeners out there. Um, I have a small faithful group that keeps listening to the podcast, and I do appreciate it very much. I started doing this because I had a couple people suggested that, you know, uh I like talking about horror movies, and that's true. So maybe there's some people like listening to them. So um threw this together with the help of my wife, buying me equipment, buying me a nice table, buying me a nice comfortable chair, and setting up a studio in a bedroom down in our basement. And it's been a lot of fun. This isn't I'm not stopping, I'm just wanted to let everybody know it's been a lot of fun, and I plan to continue doing it because I am having fun doing it. And uh it's a little bit of work, but it's a lot of fun, and I have to tell you that so I record this on an on a uh on an app called Riverside, and then I edit it on Riverside, and then I upload it to a service called Buzz Sprout, and then through Buzz Sprout, and that is how I um distribute it to the different uh providers so that uh so that you out there can listen to it. Buzz Sprout, there's an app on your phone for it, and it gives you a daily tally of how many people have listened or downloaded, and then also on the app is the ability to see where they downloaded it. City and in the United States it shows a state, and other countries it shows the whatever you call that same thing, a province, territory, whatever, gives you that, and then it also kind of provides you a map, shows you it has a map, shows you uh how many downloads from each country. It's pretty neat. But I have to say, when I I do look at the app during the day, just a quick look at see if anybody downloaded, and I always get excited when I see someone has, even if it's just one or a day goes by like today, there's been one download today, and I enjoy that. And I also enjoy seeing a new city or uh a new state in the United States or a new country, that kind of stuff I really enjoy. And I don't know, I could just be weird, but I wanted to thank you all again. Uh, thank you, all the listeners in the United States. Again, that's where most of my listeners are. I do have what would seem to be a faithful listener in Germany. Thank you. There was a new listener in Australia, Australia. If you're listening again, thank you. And the listeners that were in Singapore and Ireland, I want to thank you all. So, again, this has been a blast, and I hope you keep listening because I do plan on continuing. Getting back to the continuing. We're gonna start uh season one, episode 13, with the movie Gremlins. And uh that was uh came out in 1984. Uh, the only way you can get it is to rent or buy it on Prime right now. I don't think I have that on DVD, so you can't even borrow it. Production company Swarner Brothers and Amblins, so you know this was big money. Uh the director is Joe Dante, writer Chris Columbus, and a star Zach Gallaghan, Phoebe Cates, and Hoyt Axton. I think I got all those names right. The plot. Again, I would imagine many of the people that are hearing this have seen Gremlins, but I'll I'll continue. Plot. After receiving an exotic small animal as a Christmas gift, a young man inadvertently breaks three important rules concerning his new pet, which unleashes a horde of malevolently mischievous creatures on a small town. So, so why this movie? So I try to set up my schedule for movies, you know, uh for movies and themes for each episode. So I kind of have kind of an idea, and then I try to set up the movies ahead of time. It doesn't always work because sometimes I'll start watching the movie again. It's just like, no, I I I just can't. Um for some reason I earmarked today for Gremlins. I have no idea why. So yeah, so here we go. So how did I see it? You know, I don't remember the first time that I saw this movie, but it had to be on VHS. I mean, 1984. Yeah, it makes me think it was on VHS. I know I didn't see it in the theater. So favorite kill. I don't think there were any memorable kills in this. I mean, I mean, the only no, because I'll get to the rest of that later, but I there was no real favorable kill, uh, memorable kill in this or favorite kill. Interesting, let's see. So I'm gonna start with I'm not a big fan of Gremlins. Like, I saw it, yeah, it was alright. I was never just a big fan of this movie. My friend Shawnee, if I remember, like he really liked this movie. In fact, again, if my memory holds, and you know, you're talking 80s, so you know, it's many years ago for me. I'm pretty sure that because he liked Gremlins so much, he and I ended up going on like a uh a uh double date together for this, which would have been one of our two double dates we went on. And the other one would have been for Born on the Fourth of July. I do remember that one specifically. So anyway, so Gremlins. It's a Christmas movie, and it's a horror movie. Um, and it's it's like a very fan a family-friendly horror movie. That's why, you know, when I was saying there wasn't any real memorable kills, like you don't see anything that's, you know, you're pretty sure the person's dead, but you know, nothing that nothing that, you know, blood and all that other stuff, something that you wouldn't want a kid to see. So this is very much a movie you could take your, you could have your kid watch. Um, there's a lot of comedy. The gremlin, the first gremlin is very cute, Mogwai. And then when the uh well, I guess that wasn't his name, that was his race, and the gremlins were what came from him. Yeah, kind of family friendly. Uh, this was a huge hit that ended up spawning a ton of knockoffs, and that's kind of what the next two movies will be about when I get to them about kind of the knockoffs of this. Um, and again, because it was so family friendly, um, there was a a lot of toys and merchandise related to this movie. I mean, it was everywhere, it really was. Um, so I'll go back to the three rules. So the three rules, which are kind of funny. So avoid sunlight. Sunlight hurts them, kills them. Number two, don't get them wet. But they never tell the guy why not to get them wet, but don't get them wet. Number three, don't feed them after midnight. Okay. They don't tell you why again, but just don't. I'll tell you why. So don't get them wet. If you get them wet, then they spawn other ones. Okay. If there's a drop of water hits them, it just a big furry ball, well, little furry ball pops out, and then it turns into another mogwai. Or I would imagine if it's a gremlin already, it'll spawn another gremlin. Don't feed after midnight. Feeding after midnight is what turns a mogwai into a gremlin. So the after midnight thing was a real was a real issue for me. Not whether I saw it for the first time because I was younger, but as I've gotten older, because we have time zones. So midnight where? Right now where I sit, you know, let's say it's midnight. But if I go to Iowa, it's not midnight, it's only 11. So if I feed a Mogwai here after midnight, is it really after is it just where I'm at in the time zone? And and how does the internal workings of the Mogwai know that? It's just, I don't know. And you know, sometimes I look too far into things, and and this is probably one of them I shouldn't really even think about that much. So this movie was, like I said, 1984. So there's no CGI in it, you know, and they they they did a great job. I mean, because for the most part, these things are puppets. I mean, not all the time. There's animatronic stuff in there too. But a lot of it, I mean, especially when you look at the gremlins, like a lot of stuff they're done is puppets, and they do a great job. Like they they they really for the most part look believable. As an adult, it's not, you know, you know. But for a kid watching it, it looks believable. In fact, I could imagine that the gremlins were might have been a little scary. The thing I like with gremlins, um, so gremlins, I don't know how far back in time they go. But I know during World War II, whenever like something went wrong with planes, it was gremlins did it. And there were like, I think there were even like uh posters and stuff, like don't let the gremlins get ya, kind of a thing. And and I remember a Bugs Bunny cartoon where there was a gremlin and he was trying to destroy the plane as as Bugs Bunny was working on it, and Bugs Bunny's trying to stop him. Uh, you know, things you remember, but this wasn't the first instance of gremlins, although these gremlins are a bit different to an extent. And they did mess around with equipment and electronics and stuff, so you know, maybe they it took a little bit from each other there. When you look at the director, the writer, and the producer of this movie, it it's no qu it is no doubt why it was a success. So Warner Brothers is Warner Brothers, but Amblin Entertainment is Steven Spielberg. So, and if you want to know why uh he calls his production company company Amblin Entertainment, it is because when he was a little peon working for a big studio, probably Warner Brothers. I don't remember which one though. Um, you know, he was just a peon nobody, and he made a short film called Amblin that won some awards and really like kickstarted his career. Um so that's why he calls his production company Amblin. So anyway, you have Joe Dante, Chris Columbus, and Steele Spielberg working on this. So it was like no doubt this was gonna be a hit. So, you know, I'll talk about a little bit. Like Joe Dante. He did a he's he's done a lot of stuff. Um things you might have known maybe a little bit better when you get into the horror movie type genre. Yeah, Piranha, the original Piranha, uh, The Howling, which was kind of big, and the Burbs. Uh, again, people my age, that was a big hit, and they just kind of did a weird. I shouldn't say weird, it's good. A kind of a not having anything to do with the movie, a TV series. My wife and I watched the first season, it was and it was pretty good. I would suggest it. It takes a while, you have to get past like maybe the fourth episode, third or fourth episode for it to really hit its stride, but it's worth it. And then uh Chris Columbus, he was a writer on this, but he's better known for his directing. He directed movies like Home Alone, but he also wrote The Goonies. So, again, this is all stuff from people in my generation, but I have to tell you, for you younger people out there, if there are any listening, Home Alone's a good movie, it's a good Christmas movie. Uh, The Goonies is a good is a good movie. Um, even with Dante, Piranha, the original Piranha, uh, it's okay, but it's worth a watch. The howling is great, and the burbs, again, is a great kind of it's more comedy than it is horror, but it's it's still a good movie. So you have a writer, director, producer, you already have a lot of things going for it. And then the cast is great. So it's funny, I wrote a note here. One of the one of the weakest acting members of the cast had the biggest part. Zach Gallaghan. Very good movie, I was good in this movie, and he's done a ton of stuff in Hollywood. He's just never taken that step, you know, and he and he won't, obviously. This is 40 years ago. He's got a lot of work. Um, I remember him from another movie that I a horror movie will be talking about some other time called The Wax Work, um, which I enjoyed. And then you had Phoebe Cates, who played Zach Gallaghan's hopefully girlfriend kind of a thing. Like a, they both like each other, but they're not really, you know, going taking it too far. Um, Phoebe Cates. So she in the 80s was basically the dream girl for for boys like me, especially after Fast Times at Ridgemont High. There is a scene of her getting out of the pool that is something that is she's kind of known for and probably will stick for her for the rest of her life, unfortunately for her. I also I don't know how I found it, but she did a commercial for a sahi beer. I really like stars from the United States, will you know do ads in other countries uh because they're stars, and apparently in the 80s, probably after Fast Times at Ridgemont High, she did an Asahi beer commercial, which is just great, and you can find it on YouTube. Hoyt Axton probably at the time this movie was made, was the biggest name in the movie. Hoyt Axton was a singer-songwriter, um 60s and 70s, it looks like, you know. I was just looking at his career a little bit. I knew the name, it just took me a while to place it, and then he turned into acting and he was good at all of it. But he's kind of a, you know, I see him and listen to him. He's kind of a good old boy kind of guy. Um, does a great job. Um, John Judge Reinhold, a lot of people recognize that name. Um, he's been in just a ton of stuff because he's a great character actor and he's very recognizable, he's very distinctive in appearance. Um, Corey Feldman, um, again, 80s child star, child actor, maybe not star, but I mean he kind of was. He had the Coreys. Um, but again, he was in this movie, not a huge part, but again, in it. It's one of these, if you have enough good actors, you don't have to be stars, but if you have enough good actors in a movie, you're probably gonna have a good movie. There's it's just how it goes. And the last one is actually one of my favorites. Her name is Polly Holliday. She, for me, will always be Flo from Alice, uh, very distinctive redhead um who was had a catch phrase, Mel kiss my grits, which I mean was amazing. I mean, that was that was 70s. I was just a kid, but it was like people would say that to each other. It's just like if someone get on your nerves, you would just say, you know, Jamie, kiss my grits. I don't know. It was great. So I spent a lot of time on Gremlins because it is, I shouldn't say by far the best movie of the ones I'm gonna talk about, but it was pretty, it was pretty good in my book. Um, movie number two. Now I say it was a good movie. I didn't like it, like I don't re-watch it, but it was a good movie. I I cannot, you know, say it wasn't. Just like, you know, Titanic. Titanic was a good movie that James Cramen made. I just don't care for it. So, second movie, season one, episode 13, is Critters. This is from 1986, so this is two years after Gremlins. Uh, you can uh watch it on Tubi. To be Tubi production company, uh New Line Cinema, show films and smart egg pictures. So New Line Cinema, you know, a smaller company, but we did talk about them with Nightmare on Elm Street. So uh director was Stephen Herrick, writer Dominic Murr, Stephen Herrick, and Dean. I'm sorry, not Dean, Don Keith Hopper. It stars uh D. Wallace Stone. That was her name when she made the movie. She now goes by D. Wallace. Um, M. Emmett Walsh and Billy Green Bush. The plot, again, I think many of you, if you've seen Gremlins, you probably saw Critters. I'm pretty sure I saw critters again because of Shawnee. Um, but anyway, I'll look at there. The plot, a group of small but vicious alien creatures called Krites escape from an alien prison transport vessel and land near a small farm town on Earth, pursued by two shape-shifting bounty hunters. So I'm gonna say why this movie, and I'm gonna say it was because of an obvious ripoff of Gremlins. I'm gonna say that right off the bat. I will. Things I say later, you're gonna have to draw your own conclusions. I'm pretty sure I saw it with Shawnee because I don't know. I just feel that he'd like Gremlins, and for some reason, I think we watched Critters together. How did I see it? I really don't remember the first time, but again, I'm sure it was on VHS. A favorite kill. This was another one. I think only two people were killed in the whole movie, and I think it's very similar to Gremlins. It wasn't a lot of kills because it was it was like a goal to keep this family friendly. You know, when you make an R-rated movie, you lose a lot of your audience, you lose all, you know, well, you know, unless you're going with an older uh adult with an adult, you're losing, you know, 17 down, and and you're talking like teenagers 13 through 16. That's a lot of that's a lot of ticket sales. So again, this was family friendly. So only two kills, nothing really memorable in this. Um so in Hollywood, if one type of movie does well, they're gonna be copycats. It's just how it is. You see it all the time. Um, if one war movie comes out and does well, there's gonna be a bunch of more movies. One western comes out, there's gonna be it does well, it's gonna be a bunch of western. It's just how it goes. So this it's it's it's it's a Hollywood's a copycat town. I mean, it takes a lot for you to break out and try something on your own and try something new. And then if it does work, that's great. I mean, I think when Scream came out all those, and I talked about Scream already, when Scream came out all those years ago, it was like it did well, so then you had some copycats. Um after that, well, anyway, we're not talking about Scream, we're talking about uh Critters. So this is actually a pretty good, we'll call it a copycat. Gremlins only had one sequel, while Critters had three sequels and a kind of a sequelslash reboot. Now, I talk about this as a copycat, but I'm getting it into that. Maybe it wasn't. So, according to something I read, uh, the script was actually written before Gremlins came out. So the crypt the script for Critters was written before 1984. Director Steve Herrick and writer Dominic Merck created it years earlier, but got rewrites to tone down, but after Gremlins, they had to rewrite it to tone down the similarities between Gremlins. So, you know, that's their story. I'm just gonna say that maybe sometimes things get made in parallel, and you know, they both end up doing well, and you see that sometimes in Hollywood too. So it just, you know, it benefited the idea benefited from Gremlins doing well that probably they had this shelved, and once Gremlins did well, they're like, hey, we have this, we could probably do it, and that's probably what happened. So good for them. Um, so we talked about the bounty hunters in this. I said that in the beginning. The bounty hunters added so much to this movie. Um so they had limited shape-shifting abilities and that they can change their appearance to look like anyone. Um, one guy just chooses one and sticks with that character. He's like a rock star that he happens to see on TV while they were coming to Earth. And he sticks with that character. And then you have the other guy that you don't know if he just likes changing who he is, or if something's broken and he just can't figure it out. Because the first person when he comes down happens to be a cop that was killed. So he's walking around looking like he got killed. He's like a light, it's kind of like a dead hue to him and has scratches and blood all over him. It's kind of funny. But then during the movie, he keeps changing to different characters. So, like I said, I don't know if he does it on purpose or if something about what he's using is broken. I think one of the fun things in this movie is. So the critters land near a farm. I like that they're called Krites. They are their their species name is Krite, but that they call them critters. I don't know. I can be amused by simple things. So uh they land near a farm and they start like invading this farm. And the farm exists of a mom, dad, and their son and daughter. Excuse me. And the daughter brings her boyfriend home who looks like a real douchebag. Like he's driving a real fast car and he's got like got a lot of hair and it's in this like mini ponytail weird thing. Um that was in the 80s. I mean, it totally fit the time period. Um, and that guy happens to be played by um Billy Zane. And uh you see this guy, and you expect him to be, well, a jerk, you know, and to be sexually aggressive with the girl. And it turns out to be the opposite. Like he meets the family, he eats dinner with them, and he is scared to death of her dad. Um, and she takes them to this place to make out, and he is scared to death to do it. So I just I just thought that was hilarious that you get this, you know, the aggressive farmer's daughter type thing that you hear in stories, and that they go ahead and do it here. I I just thought that was great. So with this movie, it goes back to what I just said in the previous movie, too. That I believe if you have good actors in a movie, you know, they're gonna take something that maybe is mid-level and make it much better. And again, like with Gremlins, you have that here where they have a very good cast, and that cast helps the movie so much. So I said D. Wallace Stone, who's just D. Wallace now, she was like almost an 80s screen queen. Kinda. Whereas you had Jamie Lee Curtis. D. Wallace was more like, you know, your your friend's cute mom. You know, where she was cute and this, that, and everything. And and but, you know, it wasn't like Jamie Lee Curtis, who starts off as like maybe a mousy high schooler, and as her career goes into Scream Queening, she kind of becomes kind of sexy. D Wallace, I don't think, was ever sexy, but she was all always very attractive and always did a wonderful job in all of her movies. Um, I'll just say a couple she was in the howling, she was in E.T., she was in Cujo. Um, she started acting in 1974, is still acting today. Um, IMDB, she has over 290 acting credits, so obviously she knows what she's doing. Then you have M. Emmett Walsh. So D Wallace is the mother in this, and again, like your friend's cute mom. Then you have M. Emmett Walsh who plays the cop of the town. And M. Emmett Walsh is a fantastic character actor. You will know him in things. He's kind of like the big heavy guy who has a very distinctive voice to him. He played the doctor in Fletch for people my age. He again has over 230 acting credits to his name. Billy Green Bush, Scott Grimes, Billy Zane, and Don Opper are all also other fantastic character actors that are in this movie. And they do a great job. And personally, I would watch Critters again before I watch Gremlins. I really do like the Critters and I like the Critters movies. I have seen all of them and I liked all of them. Like I said before, I saw Gremlins 2, and it's terrible. So maybe that's why I don't like Gremlins. I don't know. So I will move on to the third movie. And uh the third movie is called Hobgoblins. So uh again, this is season one, episode 13, Hobgoblins was year 1988. So this is two years after Critters. You can find it on Plex, Con TV, Tubi, and the Roku channel. Uh production company Rick Sloan Productions. That is a bad sign to begin with. Not because it's Rick Sloan, but I'll keep going. Director, Rick Sloan, writer, Rick Sloan, first base Rick Sloan, second base, Rick Stern. Oh my gosh. So if you listen to all my episodes, I believe in an earlier episode I mentioned if you're director, writer, and producer all the same person, that is not a good thing. You know, unless you're Steven Spielberg, that is not a good thing. You need someone, another voice in there saying maybe this isn't a good idea. And had they had that, maybe Hobgoblins would never have been made. It stars Tom Bartlett, Paige Sullivan, and Steven Boggs. If you think to yourself, geez, I've never heard those names. Yeah? Yeah. The plot a young security guard must track down diminutive, diminutive, I don't know how to pronounce that word, aliens, who kill people even as they make their fantasies come true. Now, why this movie? This was absolutely following the trend of Krems and Gremlins and Critters, except just not in a good way. How did I see it? I do vaguely remember watching this when it came out on VHS because I had seen Gremlins and Critters, and I know there's other ones, and Habalamas just fell into it. Favor kill? Again, no memorable kills in this movie. Uh, this movie was made on the cheap, but I'll get into that. So this is a terrible movie. I know MST3K and Riftrax have both done versions of this movie. Even that is hard to watch with them doing it. From what I understand, Rick Sloan actually suggested this movie to Mystery Science Theater 3000 for them to do it. So even he knew it was terrible, and maybe he hoped he would get more fans by putting it on there. And I'm sure he did. Again, I said earlier, follows my theory of same writer, director, and producer is not good. Again, I said this was done on the cheap. From what I read, um, it had a budget of$15,000. So the same amount of money I spent on putting a fence around the backyard of my house is how much it took him to make this movie. I believe I read somewhere that yeah, it was shot in a week and they didn't have any permits to shoot. So again, this was like guerrilla filmmaking. Apparently, also the producer, slash, writer, slash director did not see the terrible puppets that were made until the night before the shooting, and there was nothing he could do about it. Um, the movie is over-the-top silly, the writing is terrible, uh, the acting it the acting actually isn't bad. The characters in it are awful. Um, it's like they're not even good stereotype characters. The three actors I named, none of them acted in another project after this. Um, the only ones that have actually had a career after this movie had small roles. One of them, her name was Tamara Clatterbuck. Not to be confused with Mr. Clutterbuck, but this was Tamara Clatterbuck. And she played a fantasy phone sex girl in this movie and has gone on to have like an acting and I think producing career after this. And the other guy that had a career in this um played this guy in Club Scum who was like Road Rash was his name or something. And he's done like a lot of character actor work as kind of a you know a heavy set beefy guy. Um, again, for all the badness, and I said it before, the acting really wasn't that bad. I mean, it wasn't great, but uh, you know, I don't I didn't expect any of them to go on to be the next Olivier, and obviously none of them did, but they weren't really that bad. I can't blame the acting for what was going on on the screen. Now, granted, there wasn't a single actor on screen that was attractive. At least you didn't get as distracted from what was going on by how bad the acting was. It really wasn't that bad. Now, would I would I tell you to see this movie? No. Would I tell you to see this movie if it was on Miss MST3K or RefTracks? Maybe. So, and you know, it's listed as a horror horror, but it is barely a horror. So that is all I have for this particular episode. Uh, I want to thank everyone for listening, and um, I look forward to doing episode 14 for y'all. Have fun.