One wonders what the original audiences thought, as they settled into their seats thirty years ago, of the out-of-nowhere opening to Joe Dante’s six-years-later sequel to his 1984 smash “Gremlins.” Because “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” does not open like a conventional summer sequel; it opens with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, in a Warner Bros. logo animation that breaks out of the movie entirely for a brief bit of Merrie Melodies-inspired lunacy. Those first audiences probably didn’t know what the hell to make of it; “I thought we were seeing a ‘Gremlins’ movie,” they might’ve thought, “not a Looney Tunes cartoon!” Little did they know, they were seeing both.
READ MORE: Early Jackie Chan Titles On The Criterion Channel Showcase An Artist In Transition
Looking back, the most striking thing about “Gremlins 2” is the freedom its studio gave the director to go absolutely buck wild. Most big-budget sequels play it safe, replicating the experience of the original film as closely as possible; “The New Batch” certainly does not do that. And while plenty of follow-ups adopt the film’s philosophy of “more, and bigger” – this time, transplanting the story of tiny, havoc-wreaking monsters from a charming small town into midtown New York City, circa 1990 – such films typically attempt to at least duplicate the tone and style of the profitable original.
But Dante does not such thing. The “Looney Tunes” shout-out isn’t just a winking in-joke (or corporate synergy); it’s an indication that this is the anything-goes spirit Dante is working in this time around. (He would later take a feature-length crack at that style, with the undervalued “Looney Tunes: Back in Action” 13 years later.) “Gremlins 2” finds our heroes, Billy (Zach Galligan) and Kate (Phoebe Cates), making their way in the big bad city, where they both work for Daniel Clamp (John Glover) at The Clamp Premiere Regency Trade Center and Retail Concourse – a none-too-thinly veiled swipe at Donald Trump (then, sigh, merely a shady New York tabloid fixture) and his Trump Tower. Clamp oversees an empire of real estate, self-promoting books, gift shops, and several fawning cable networks; back then, you apparently had to own a cable network to control its content.
The building also houses Christopher Lee as a mad scientist, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that little Gizmo ends up in the building, and then a malfunctioning water fountain prompts the expected reproduction, and, well – they get to the good stuff as quickly as possible, with the titular batch coming out of their cocoons by the 42-minute mark. Screenwriter Charlie Haas makes the most of the vast office space, working out a number of clever twists and variations, and really rolling with the B-movie monster madness: we’ve got building fire sprinklers as mass multiplication device, office supplies serving the purpose of kitchen appliances in the first film, and, yes, a flying Gremlin buzzing the neighboring skyscrapers and cathedrals. But the script is mostly just a clothesline for gags; the picture has frankly less in common with “Gremlins” than something like “Hellzapoppin’,” less a follow-up narrative than a blackout revue-sketch free-for-all.
And it’s not just the Gremlins who are pulling merry pranks. It’s rare to come across a franchise picture so gleefully self-aware. Dante gives us an uproarious scene in which the building’s incredulous security staff, mocking Billy’s explanation of the Gremlins and their “rules,” ask jeering questions and poke logical holes – making the same points audiences had been making about the original film for the past six years. (That inquisition is interrupted by a monster attack.) Leonard Maltin pops up on a film review show on Clamp’s cable system “The Movie Police,” unabashedly trashing the first movie. And then there’s the interruption of the film itself, inspired by William Castle’s “The Tingler,” in which we’re told the Gremlins have invaded the very theater where you’re watching the movie; they burn out the print, take over the projection booth, and replace it with a nudist colony film. (Paul Bartel, Dante’s old pal from the Roger Corman factory, cameos as an annoyed usher, telling a horrified mother, “We just show those movies, ma’am, we don’t make them.”) By the time Hulk Hogan intervenes, “Gremlins 2” has gone fully, cheerfully off the rails.
The film’s genuinely WTF sense of storytelling was memorably ribbed in a Key & Peele sketch, in which a “Hollywood sequel doctor” takes over a brainstorming meeting and signs off on every insane idea they pitch. The sketch went viral because anyone who’s seen “Gremlins 2” can’t help but wonder exactly how Dante got away with this kind of well-bankrolled madness unless everyone at WB was coked out of their gills; it was the late ‘80s, after all. (Haas’ script does seem to wink at some chemical influence, with Billy’s suggestion for the time to unleash their plan to stop the Gremlins: “We should make our move at, say, 4:20.”)
But it’s mostly the result of a filmmaker standing his ground; Dante was initially uninterested in making a follow-up, seeing little new to say, and only agreed to take the film on with the promise of complete creative control. So if “Gremlins” was informed by the presence of superstar executive producer Steven Spielberg, feeling like a darker cousin to “E.T.,” the key creative influence of “Gremlins 2” is Chuck Jones – particularly his fourth-wall-breaking, semi-surrealist 1953 masterpiece “Duck Amuck.” “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” might not have been the financial success Warner Bros. was hoping for when they wrote Dante a blank check. But from this distance, as it has generally eclipsed the original in cultural cache and cult appeal, it stands as a testament to the value of letting a franchise filmmaker go absolutely berserk.
