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Gremlins for Christmas

In trying to figure out my favourite Christmas movie, I find myself stuck. I’m not really a big fan of the traditional yuletide films like A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life, though I do love A Christmas Story. I guess that would be my favourite Christmas movie, in the strictest sense. However, I do have another in mind….

Part of the problem, of course, is deciding what counts as a Christmas movie. Just because the story is set during the season does not make it valid. I appreciate the ironic sentiment behind calling Die Hard a Christmas movie, but it’s a tad violent for the label, in my opinion. Also, does simply having a seasonal setting make Batman Returns eligible?

So it is with some sense of humour that I nominate Gremlins as my favourite Christmas movie. It’s seasonal, it involves family and gift-giving, there are some life lessons (Phoebe Cates’ character has a particularly dark backstory) and it is packed to the rafters with Christmas music and songs. Superficially, at least, it seems like a Christmas movie, though in fairness it was released in the summer of 1984.

Perhaps the real reason I respond to it is that it feels like a subversive, almost anti-Christmas story, or a photo-negative of a traditional tale. Cates' history of childhood tragedy debunks Santa Claus and the town is overrun by chaotic anti-elves who make mischief instead of toys. They are dispatched when a movie theater explodes (there’s something ironic about a movie featuring the destruction of a movie theater as a plot resolution), while the climactic confrontation takes place fittingly in the one place everyone is all too familiar with at Christmas time: a department store.


True, the film is rather dated in several ways, but the practical puppet effects are still impressive. There is a high splatter quotient which makes it probably inappropriate for young kids’ family viewing, but I don’t have a family, so I’ll be selfish and say Gremlins is my favourite Christmas movie (after A Christmas Story).

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