Zach Galliganas BillyThe story
About Gremlins
An inventor brings his son a strange and endearing pet home from a curio shop, along with three rules that must never be broken. They are broken within days, and by Christmas Eve the family's snowbound American town is overrun by malicious creatures that wreck every festive fixture they can reach. Joe Dante's film swings between small-town seasonal comedy and outright horror, often in the same scene.
The CineClaus verdict
Two films in one, and it never pretends otherwise.
Half is a snowbound small-town Christmas comedy and the other half is a creature feature that turns genuinely nasty, often inside the same scene. That swing is the whole appeal, and it is why Britain and America split down the middle over it - a PG there, a 15 here, and not reclassified until 2012.
Best watched late, lights off, by someone who knows what is coming.
The family desk
Can the kids watch?
Our take: not for small children, whatever the 12 suggests. Real horror beats, one famously grim monologue, and creatures designed to frighten. Eleven and up.
BBFC advice: Violence, horror, injury detail, dangerous behaviour, suicide references.
Content advice & accessibility
- Where the advice comes from
- The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).
- Our age guidance
- Editorial, separate from the official 12 certificate, and never looser than it.
