Double Feature Time: Gremlins/Silent Night Deadly Night

Here's another article idea I had for the much-missed Agony Booth! As this is the holiday season, I thought it would be appropriate to look at 2 films from 1984 which take place during Christmas-& both of which became quite controversial.

Gremlins took people a bit off guard upon its inital release. This may have been because Steven Spielberg's name was above the title, even though Joe Dante is the one who directed it. Indeed, Gizmo, like E.T., is a sweet little guy & the ending scene where he and Billy bid farewell may lead to a shed tear or two. But the title creatures made this much scarier than people were expecting. The subsequent criticism of the film for this, along with that of Spielberg's own Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which was released weeks earlier, led to the creation of the PG-13 rating. The good news is that Gremlins itself, like Temple of Doom, is wonderfully entertaining and became a deserved success. Ironically, Silent Night Deadly Night faced criticism even though everyone knew it was going to be a slasher film. This criticism came because, as the video below explains, some genius thought it would be a good idea to run a TV spot for the film during prime time, when children were still up and about. Not surprisingly, children were upset upon seeing a commercial with Santa killing people and parents were quick to make sure that the movie was all but put in the proverbial trash bin. But the film itself doesn't do any damage to the holiday season. Indeed, I can say that, like the Friday the 13th films, it's dumb fun if you are ever in the mood for that sort of thing. Despite this controversy, the film, like Gremlins, was successful enough to spawn sequels, with Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) arguably being even more enjoyable than it's predecessor.