Often,the sequel to a popular film is just more of the same, with a studio trying to recapture past magic in hopes of similar box office results. This strategy doesn’t always work, as audiences can see right through the ploy. Other times,a sequel really goes for it, attempting something new, perhaps with positive results, or in other cases, being so different that audiences reject it. The latter was the fate ofGremlins 2: The New Batchwhen it came out in 1990. The firstGremlins, written byChris Columbusand directed byJoe Dante, was one of the biggest success stories of 1984, but the follow-up was so weird that it bombed at the box office. The weirdest scene goes even more meta than the rest of it, asthe film shuts down andGremlins 2is hijacked by the scaly creatures, who take over the projector booth. The novelization, written byDavid Bischoff, aimed to keep that tone and, in the process, gave us a chapter even wilder than this moment.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch
The Gremlins are back, and this time, they’ve taken control of a New York City media mogul’s high-tech skyscraper.
When Chris Columbus wroteGremlins,he envisioned it as a straight-up, R-rated horror film. ButSteven Spielbergstepped in andtoned down the script to make it lighter and more family-friendly.Gremlinsis still terrifying, so much so thatit helped usher in the PG-13 rating, and although some parents were outraged, the public as a whole loved the movie. The proof is in the receipts, asGremlinsmade $148 million in 1984,good enough to make it the third-biggest movie of the year.
Warner Bros. wanted a sequel immediately, but Joe Dante wasn’t interested in doing the same thing again.The studio decided to makeGremlins 2without him but couldn’t figure out how to approach it. In an interview withFilm Comment, Dante said:
“Eventually they came back to me and Mike Finnell, the producer, and said: “We want to put out anotherGremlinsmovie next summer, and if you do it, we’ll let you do whatever you want.” That promise lured me back into the fold. To do anything you want on a studio movie, with approximately three times the money of the first movie, was pretty appealing.”
During ‘Gremlins 2: The New Batch’ the Gremlins Are Threatened by Hulk Hogan
Joe Dante decided to makeGremlins 2a wild, meta-comedyrather than the monster movie the first film was. Dante told Film Comment:
“They let me make the movie I wanted to make, though they really didn’t get it. For example, they just didn’t understand why I wanted to have the gremlins “break” the film. They said: “Everyone will leave.” I said: “No, they’re not going to leave. It’s a joke!””
The scene in question happens after the gremlins, having been birthed from Gizmo again and transformed into bloodthirsty creatures when they eat after midnight, take over Clamp Center in New York City. In a breaking-the-fourth-wall moment,the movie stops, and silhouettes of laughing gremlins appear on the screen, making shadow puppets. One gremlin puts on a different movie before we cut back to ours, where an outraged mom storms out and yells at a theater employee, “This is worse than the first one!” The beaten-up projectionist comes down the steps, complaining about how the gremlins have taken over the film. The employee says he’ll take care of it, so he goes back into the theater (ourtheater) and asks a man for help. That man gets up and is shown to be theyellow-and-red-wearing Hulkster himself,Hulk Hogan. He delivers a promo on the gremlins, threatening them if they don’t turnGremlins 2back on. The gremlins relent, andHogan looks at us through the cameraand says, “Sorry folks, it won’t happen again.”
Why Is Gizmo the Only Good Gremlin?
In the ‘Gremlins’ films, all of the creatures turn bad except for Gizmo. The original film’s novelization gives us a strange reason for why.
Although this meta approach didn’t work in theaters (the film made a very underwhelming $41 million), Dante took the breaking-the-film approach again for the VHS version ofGremlins 2. This time,when the movie breaks down, the gremlins appear in a western, going so far as to wear cowboy hats. It’s then thatJohn Waynewalks out (in footage from one of his films, and with his voice intimated, as he had been dead for a decade) and tells them to leave and go back to their own movie. A trio of the creatures get into a shootout with the Duke, but he easily defeats them.
The Gremlins Attack the Author and Write a Chapter of the ‘Gremlins 2’ Novelization
That bold meta style wasn’t understood in 1990, but thankfully, today,Gremlins 2: The New Batchis appreciated and loved just as much as the original. If you thought those scenes were bonkers, neither compares to what happenedin David Bischoff’s novelization of the film when the gremlins take over the book.
In another wild moment from the movie, the gremlins break into a science lab at Clamp Center, where they drink serums that turn them into various mutations. One gremlin turns into a bat, Mohawk becomes a spider,another turns into a horny female named Greta, and one even sprouts vegetables from his face. It’s all absurd, which is exactly why it works. The most impressive is the gremlin who drinks the brain serum. He shakes violently and falls to the floor, andwhen he reappears, he somehow is now wearing glasses and can speak in the voice of actorTony Randall. He becomes the leader of the group, and in the novel, he takes over the pages. Literally.
There are a few differences betweenGremlins 2the movie and the novelization, such as jokes about Joe Dante (there’s a reference to a movie calledThe Jowling, a play on Dante’sThe Howling), and comments about Gizmo being from outer space,an origin made up byGeorge Glipefor the novelization of the first film. When it comes to the scene where the gremlins take over the movie, it obviously had to be approached differently. David Bischoff nailed it by having the Gremlins attack him and having the Brain Gremlin take over writing a chapter. In it,the Brain ties up Bischoff and locks him in his bathroom. He immediately goes meta, writing,“You have previously known me as the ‘Gremlin that drank the brain fluid’ - or, as Bischoff quaintly called me, Mr. Glasses. Believe it or not, in the screenplay, I am referred to as BRAIN GREMLIN.” Mr. Glasses then makes reference to Hulk Hogan coming to the rescue at this point in the movie, name drops Joe Dante, and points out that the projectionist,Kenneth Tobey, is the star ofThe Thing from Another Worldbefore elaborating on the gremlin cause.
“You may hereafter refer to us as the New Capitalist Democratic Nice Folks.Already our numbers are spreading out from the heart of America to aid you in this endeavor and although you may be viewing this physically for the first time now (except for those lucky citizens of Kingston Falls who received a foreshadow some years ago) our intellectual forces have been at work for some time, albeit embodied in human form.According to my contacts with our crypto-CD’s the Church of SubGenius it is generally not know, for instance, that the entirety of network television is programmed by proto-Capitalist Democrats.However, the past is merely prologue, introduction, forward, with some long footnotes thrown in.Our time is now!So, my dear readers (oh, the few, the chosen literate who have been intelligent enough to purchase this volume) prepare for a New Age of the New Capitalist Demo -Oh dear. Mr. Bischoff seems to have successfully axed his way out of the bathroom.Methinks I need to fly and return this temporarily liberated keyboard to his suburb, urbane and witty prose -Back I fly to the Clamp Cent…”
After the author regains control of his novel, it continues mostly like the movie until the end. Novelizations aren’t a big deal anymore, but back in the 80s and 90s, they were not just used to make bank off of a popular movie but became a fun way to take that movie and expand on it in a longer form with more scenes and backstory. I don’t think any others ever had a near-sighted demonic reptilian creature writing about the New Capitalist Democratic Nice Folks, though.
Gremlins 2: The New Batchis available to watch on Prime Video in the U.S.
