True Story: I’m Afraid of Gremlins 2
When I was seven, I fed my dreams after midnight.
Let me describe the dream: I am a child. I’m at the neighborhood grocery store looking at the shelves of the video rental section trying to help decide which VHS we’re going to rent as a family. My mom is there. My brother is (sometimes) there.
I beg my mom not to rent Gremlins 2 with tears in my eyes. My mom, thinking I’m being dramatic, rolls her eyes while she reassures me that we will not be renting Gremlins 2. She even shows me the box of the movie she’s selected to help calm me down. It is not a copy of Gremlins 2.
This doesn’t calm me down.
I watch the grocery store employee ring up my mom and I know we’re taking home Gremlins 2. I can feel my heart race and my stomach drop.
This. Is. happening.
We get home, plop the tape into the VCR and the movie starts with a wide shot of a car on a desert highway. Sure, this is NOT how Gremlins 2 starts in my waking life, but in my dream I am certain that we’ve ended up with the one movie I desperately fought against bringing into our home.
Then gremlins start crawling out of our VCR and attack our home and my family.
Then I wake up.
This is a reoccurring nightmare that I’ve had off and on since I was in 2nd grade. You can tell how old it is because it involves VHS tapes and grocery store rental services. There are a few things that boggle my mind about my own mind here:
1. Why don’t I update to a more contemporary scenario?
The fact that I am a kid in the early 90s is maybe the linchpin of the nightmare. Kids don’t have a lot of agency. They can throw fits and stuff, sure, but in the end the parents get to make the ultimate decisions and get to justify their choices with an iffy, “Because I said so.”
I’m lucky that, in this nightmare, I’ve cast my mom as a pretty sympathetic character. She listens to my worries and does work to help me out, even if she doesn’t fully believe the reasons why I’m so freaked out. It’s all for nothing though, since we end up renting Gremlins 2 anyway. And then she gets scratched to all hell by Gremlins 2 gremlins.
The VCR is a very important element at play here too. Despite so many upgrades in technology, I still picture gremlins from Gremlins 2 pouring out of a VCR. Shouldn’t they be ripping out of my Apple TV by now? Maybe it’s how VCRs act that keep them so present night after night. VCRs spit out tapes. Ejecting a VHS tape is a very different feeling than ejecting a DVD or selecting something from a Hulu queue. The tape IS the movie. If your VCR has a remote, the buttons manipulate a very physical thing. Plus, the slot is bigger than a DVD player which is FAR too small for Gremlins 2 gremlins to climb out of.
2. Why is it only Gremlins 2 and not the whole franchise?
Please do not — as the kids say — get it twisted: I am not afraid of gremlins. The episode of the Twilight Zone where William Shatner overacts because he thinks he sees one on the wing of his plane is great! The car is super cool too. I can watch the first Gremlins movie over and over again. I love it.
I am afraid of Gremlins 2. I am terrified of it.
Here’s a small illustration: The movie starts with a Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny cartoon and there is a Chuck Jones gallery an hour outside of my hometown that features the animation cells from that cartoon. When I visit the gallery, I can not walk by the wall that features those cells.
Gremlins 2 was made by Joe Dante after Warner Brothers basically begged him to do it and threw a gigantic budget and a whole ton of creative freedom his way. So, he did the world’s coolest thing and made a super meta movie about how awful everything in the early 90s was. The movie does wacky stuff with the format and even has the gremlins mess with the actual film strip their own movie is on. Only to be reprimanded by a 4th-wall-breaking Hulk Hogan. As an adult, I can appreciate how nifty this all is. As a seven year old it was too mind blowing. It scared the crap out of me.
They made it cooler/worse when the movie came out on video. They swapped out the scenes of the Hulkster and the film strip for ones where the VHS tape gets all screwy and John Wayne has to regulate. Check it out for yourself:
Finding this video clip to illustrate my point was a harrowing experience for me. I hope you appreciate it.
The movie features ungodly levels of tiny green chaos and I do not do well with chaos of any size or color, which is probably why my child’s brain took this trauma and made it a long standing subconscious symbol.
Dreammoods.com says I’m on the right track with this:
Gremlins 2 gremlins are mischief and trouble to the nth degree. One is a spider. One gets ahold of dentist equipment. One is voiced by Tony Randall, for heaven’s sake. It’s pandemonium.
3. Where is Gizmo during my nightmare?
There are a few redeeming characters in Gremlins 2. The humans are pretty funny. Zach Gilligan and Phoebe Cates come back as their original characters. And it’s neat to see the Star Trek Voyager doctor back when he had hair.
The best part of any Gremlins film, though, is Gizmo. He’s just so dang cute.
I feel like my Gremlins 2 nightmare wouldn’t have become a reoccurring one if there had been the presence of Gizmo in the dream. Now, I admit that in the Gremlins universe there would be no gremlins at all without Gizmo, however, mogwai can exist juuuuust fine without humans coming around and being the reason everything goes haywire. Humans get Gizmo wet. Humans feed the mogwai after midnight*. Humans are irresponsible with nature so, the movie gets its conflict and Sarah gets her nightmares. It’s like my brain just fast-forwards past the part where I might get a fun pet for a little while.
This is the last little clue into why I have these dreams so often and have since I was little.
Control is an illusion. Being an adult doesn’t give me any more command over the world than I had as a child. I can throw fits and hope and pray that things will not go to hell in a handbasket but sometimes Shit. Just. Happens. Sometimes your world is surrounded by a million tiny green monsters without one fuzzy cute Furby to snuggle up with. I think this was the reality I was so desperately trying to wrap my head around when I was little and it’s lead to a life of dream-reminders every once and awhile that things can go south real quick.
The trick is to dress up like Rambo and be our own Gizmos.
Sarah Kennedy is a comedian from Albuquerque who lives and performs in New York. You can follow her on Twitter here.
*In Gremlins 2, the friggin’-awful-nightmare-mogwai feed themselves froyo — which is a funny comment on “The 90s” but also, you can blame their access to the post-midnight food on lax security and poor food safety. Those froyo machines should be emptied out and cleaned every night.
