Word: gizmos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Chernenko: These Americans are crazy! What is this new ideology they call "goodness knows what"? They are always trying to come up with some new political gizmo--luckily for us, we always have old Karl and Vladimir llyich to turn to, Oh well...
Rand's Christmas present to his son is stranger and more wondrous than any of his own inventions: a little animal called a Mogwai, with a kitten's purr and the forlorn eyes of an orphan puppy. The creature, whom Billy's dad dubs Gizmo, arrives with enough warnings to fill a Tylenol label three times over: Keep him away from water; keep him out of the light; and never never feed him after midnight. A few drops of water inadvertently fall on Gizmo, and pop! pop! pop! pop! pop!, five living fur balls fly from...
...were controlled by hands, cables, rods, radio signals and a simple but effective method that Walas describes as "throw-'em-across-the-room puppetry." The most complicated gremlin had 60 cables operated by a dozen technicians standing 8 ft. to 10 ft. away; "super-faces" were designed for Gizmo and his gremlin archrival Stripe, with some 36 cables that controlled character movement of eyes, brow, mouth and nostrils...
...Every shot required different gremlins," Walas says. "We created twelve versions of Gizmo, and 14 Stripes, each used in a different closeup or for a specific movement or to express a new emotion. One gremlin had to be able to inhale and exhale cigarette smoke. Another had to throw dishes at Billy's mother, and another had to ride its skateboard through the department store. With all the rewriting of the script during production, we were making puppets until the last days of shooting...
Gremlins is more than a concordance of metaschlock; it never sacrifices the narrative payoff for an in joke. It is as weird as your Uncle Floyd and as embraceable as little Gizmo. It will lure lots of people into the moviehouses and send them out with shivers and smiles. One word of caution though. As you settle into your seat, whatever you do, don't let your arm drape down so it's just above floor level. Because The Gremle-uns'll git you Ef you Don't Watch...