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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - June 15th

"GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH" released in 1990

Those mischievous, nasty and slimy green Gremlins are back and they're going to take a big bite out of the Big Apple, as they take over an automatic state-of-the-art office building in Manhattan!

Six years after the Gremlins rampage in Kingston Falls, Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) and his now fiance Kate (Phoebe Cates) work for Clamp Enterprises, a media conglomerate run by eccentric billionaire, Daniel Clamp (John Glover). Meanwhile, the mogwai Gizmo (voiced by Howie Mandel) has been captured while wondering Chinatown - after the death of of his owner Mr. Wing (Keye Luke) - and is to become the guinea pig of mad scientists (also working for Clamp Enterprises). After Billy manages to rescue Gizmo from the labs, Gizmo is left in the office, where water spills on his head and spawns new mogwai, including Mohawk (voiced by Frank Welker). Eating after midnight, they quickly turn into Gremlins and cause the fire sprinklers to go off, spawning a Gremlin army that throws the building into chaos. Once again Billy, Gizmo and Kate must find a way to stop them before sunset - sunlight being lethal to Gremlins - and they escape into New York!

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The original Gremlins (1984) was a financial success, and Warner Bros. asked its director Joe Dante to make a sequel straight away. Dante declined however, the original film being a taxing experience for him. Work on Gremlins 2 continued without him, as the studio approached various directors and writers. Storylines considered included sending the Gremlins to cities like Las Vegas or even the planet Mars. After these ideas fell through, the studio returned to Dante, who agreed to make the sequel after receiving the rare promise of having complete creative control over the movie; he also received a budget triple that of the original film.

With more control over the film, Dante engineered a project that he later referred to as "one of the more unconventional studio pictures, ever'", including a lot of material that he believed Warner Bros. would not have allowed had they not wanted a sequel to Gremlins. In keeping with Dante's desires to satirize the original film, screenwriter Charlie Haas included a lot of self-referential humor - most notable was a cameo appearance by film critic Leonard Maltin. He holds up a copy of the original Gremlins home video and denounces it, just as he had in reality; however, his rant is cut short when Gremlins, who had been making fun of him behind his back the entire time, eventually pounce on him!

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Several actors from the original film returned to make Gremlins 2, including Galligan, Cates, and Dick Miller (as the long suffering Murray Futterman). Joining them was Robert Prosky (as Grandpa Fred), Gedde Watanabe (as a camera-totting Japanese tourist) and John Glover playing Clamp (character based upon Donald Trump and Ted Turner) and brought to the role an enthusiastic innocence that overrode the fact that his character had been written as a villain, which Dante thought lightened the film in general. Making special cameo's, including Maltin, were Hulk Hogan, John Astin, Henry Gibson, Jerry Goldsmith, Bubba Smith, the great Christopher Lee, and director Joe Dante himself - appearing as the director of the Grandpa Fred show.

One of Dante's earlier reservations about returning to direct the sequel was that too much time had passed between the films, thus possibly reducing Gremlins 2's appeal. Turned out that Dante was correct. Although well-enough liked by the critics, it was a disappointment at the box office; grossing only a third of the originals box office (US$40 million against US$153 million), not even recouping it's US$50 million budget.  Roger Ebert, who had approved of the first film, observed that Gremlins 2 was meant to satirize sequels, but once the Gremlins arrived the film simply becomes a "series of gags." Leonard Maltin, ironically, gave it three out of four stars for its "references to other films... Glover's imitation of Turner and Trump, and Lee's performance."

On January 2013, Vulture reported that Warner Bros. was negotiating with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment to reboot the Gremlins franchise. Seth Grahame-Smith (author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter) was tapped to produce alongside David Katzenberg, but has since stated that the project has been put on hold. Although the occasional rumor surfaces from time to time, there has been no definite news if a sequel/reboot will happen anytime soon - which means we'll simply have to wait a little longer to see our favorite Gremlins back on the screen!

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   67%