Joe Dante, truly one of the movies’ great genre obsessives, made a career out of translating 1950’s B-movie and comic book aesthetics into black comedy/horror during America’s peak mall movie theatre era. In his mid-career hit Gremlins, small town teenager, Billy receives a strange pet called a mogwai for Christmas. The creature is small and adorable but comes with some very specific rules for its care that Billy precedes to inadvertently break, unleashing a horde of malicious gremlins that destroy everything in their wake. Gremlins is not only an epic feat of physical effects but also a rapid-fire onsaught of historic Hollywood references. A close watch provides a drinking game’s worth of easter eggs including throwbacks to the Wizard of Oz and The Forbidden Planet, set-decoration spoofs, and celebrity cameos. Mischevious and maximalist, frightening and funny, Gremlins on the big screen is an experience not to be missed.