Gremlins

Behind the cooing furball awaits the razzing homunculus, so it goes with a Looney Tunes vision in a Disney landscape. The snow-carpeted Everytown that becomes "a major disaster area," beginning with a visit to a Chinatown curio shop run by Keye Luke. The aspiring young cartoonist (Zach Galligan) works at the bank and gets pointers from Chuck Jones, his new pet is a mysterious, saccharine critter, it comes with rules. Fuseli's imp emerges, a whole swarm of them. "Does your father always give you vicious little monsters for a present?" The folksy inventor (Hoyt Axton), the girlfriend with a morbid secret (Phoebe Cates), the avaricious widow (Polly Holliday), the xenophobic neighbor (Dick Miller), the dweeb who fancies himself a capitalist maven (Judge Reinhold), all inhabitants of Joe Dante's marvelously vandalized Americana. (It's a Wonderful Life plays regularly, so does Invasion of the Body Snatchers.) Amblin sweetness is just a beat away from horror, suddenly the suburban kitchen is awash in green splatter after Mom (Frances Lee McCain) negotiates the invaders with orange juicer and microwave oven. Happy hour at the tavern with beer-guzzling, cigarette-puffing, break-dancing demons, followed by a screening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Elsewhere, the heroine remembers a certain foul scent from childhood, Santa Claus and the patriarchy dispatched with the same broken neck. "Hey kid, this is Christmas, not Halloween!" Movie theater up in flames, showdown at the department store. A rambunctious puppet jamboree, splendidly gross and malicious. The Asian magus returns at the close and is aghast at how the Yanks have corrupted the cuddly blob: "You teach him to watch television?!" Dante's sequel expands the giddy subversion. With Glynn Turman, Corey Feldman, Scott Brady, Jonathan Banks, Edward Andrews, Jackie Joseph, Belinda Balaski, Harry Carey Jr., William Schallert, and Ken Tobey.