🔗 Share this article

“Well, conditions are quite harsh here. We’re advising all of our clients to commit their entire holdings into tinned provisions and hunting rifles.” That bit of shrewd guidance comes from the Brain Gremlin – a genetically modified, speaking, bespectacled member of the slick creature crowd that infests Manhattan’s ultra-modern Clamp Tower skyscraper in director Joe Dante’s unhinged continuation Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Superficially, it’s nothing more than an financial suggestion from one monster to another. Yet, in a strange manner, it’s also remarkably sound existential counsel. Honestly, hear me out.

When situations deteriorate, the worst thing you can do is approach matters with excessive gravity. The Brain Gremlin comprehends this. In fact, the majority of the fang-bearing creatures that occupy Dante’s chaotic 1990 feature (possibly his finest) possess the same wry, meta funny bone regarding the hazy boundary separating everyday life and unadulterated chaos. It’s a particular aspect of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that ensures my return – and the older I get, it’s the underlying idea that strikes the deepest chord.

An Early Life Obsession

Naturally, my attachment to this movie wasn’t born on such an introspective level. Growing up, we only had a few scratched-up video tapes at home. Among them were Gremlins and its sequel, the latter housed in a thick former-rental sleeve almost certainly acquired from an non-chain rental store and featuring growling monsters on its knackered cover. I was immediately enamoured and these films quickly proceeded lodging themselves inside my tiny, impressionable mind. After that point, they became an almost-daily part of my youthful watching schedule.

Dante’s original typically gets all the accolades, thanks mostly because of its status as a semi-scary seasonal fave – and don’t get me wrong, I’ve watched Gremlins an incalculable number of times. Nevertheless, its successor infrequently obtains the same level of lofty appreciation, which feels a travesty. As a kid, I’d invariably jump at the prospect to watch Gremlins 2. During long summer holidays, 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 observed this fixation, they didn’t seem to mind.

Hidden Delights and Societal Nuggets

As I got older, new understandings enriched repeat viewings, amplifying the pleasure of watching little green monsters happily vandalize a New York high-rise. I learned the ahead-of-its-time development mogul and Clamp Tower owner, Daniel Clamp (John Glover), was modeled closely on future president Donald Trump, with his red-headed employee Marla (Haviland Morris) referencing his former spouse Marla Maples. Thankfully, Clamp possesses greater compassion than his real-life counterpart.

The “apocalyptic” video Clamp plays during the height of creature carnage? I discovered it was based on a real-life “Doomsday” video commissioned 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 seize control of the actual feature in progress. An edit for movie houses, another for home video and television, each providing a grinning portion of fourth-wall-breaking cultural alchemy before the term was even a thing.

A Persistent Legacy

While it was makeup maestro Rick Baker’s wonderfully grotesque creatures that drew my gaze as a child, this hidden treasure held my interest as an adult. Eventually, I even interviewed Dante about it myself and he had no qualms informing me he made the movie with the direct intention of poking fun at those who loved its silly-yet-sincere predecessor and wanted more. “We were going to make fun of the fact you came to see it,” he gleefully confessed. This cartoonish defiance and resolve to not take his sequel as solemnly as his Warner Bros bosses obviously desired, only increased my affection for it.

When I went through a abrupt familial death recently, I was surprised to find that, during my heightest mourning, all I wanted to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Strange, isn’t it? Perhaps not. The soothing reminiscence it offered was necessary to thin out my mind’s mourning mire – but the insights it had given me as an adult were equally valuable.

Like Gremlins running amok in a genetics laboratory, there’s some things in life you just are powerless over. Dante knows it. The Brain Gremlin knows it too. Sometimes, you have to be like them: accept the turmoil, invest all your resources into preserved goods and firearms and try not to approach life with excessive gravity.

It’s robust worldly wisdom from a highly unexpected fountain – and it’s the reason Gremlins 2: The New Batch will eternally stand as my comfort movie.