Check Out This 1983 Gremlins Promotional Documentary

Friends, in the over ten years that I have been writing online, from my original blog to the Retroist and now with Pop Culture Retrorama, I think that I have successfully gotten across the point that I am a fan of horror. It has always been my go-to genre thanks to being raised as a Monster Kid on the likes of the Universal Monsters, The Twilight Zone, Creepy magazines, and Weird War Tales comic books to name a few. However it always seemed like that besides my Father, the rest of my family and friends never cared to discuss any of the horror movies that I saw on the weekends. That changed though when Gremlins was released to theaters on June 8th of 1984, because it seemed like every where I went I could find people to talk about the film.

Of course let us not forget that almost everywhere you went after the film was released you could also buy merchandise such as toys, video games, clothing, and Ralston Gremlins cereal!

Here is a fun fact for you, the first actor featured in that television commercial is Jonathan Ward (Charles in Charge), who would also appear in the excellent 1985 Twilight Zone episode entitled “The Shadow Man”. Which just so happened to have been helmed by none other than Gremlins‘ director Joe Dante – which for what it might be worth was featured in an earlier episode of the Saturday Frights podcast.

Which brings us back around to the subject for this article, this Gremlins promotional documentary which as I understand it was produced by Laurent Bouzereau (The Warriors) and features behind the scenes footage captured by the iconic Mick Garris (Fantasy Film Festival, Nightmare Cinema). Both Garris and Dante are two directors that I greatly admire, so it is a blast to get to see the latter kidding around with the likes of Hoyt Axton and John Louie on the set. In addition to featuring brief interviews with Steven Spielberg, Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, as well as Chris Walas – who was responsible for the design of the hilarious yet deadly titular creatures of the film.