They are devious, smart, ugly, and enjoy destroying everything in their path. But that doesn't prevent them from generating sympathy. We're talking about the Gremlins, the little creatures that invaded cinema and pop culture in the 1980s.
Gremlins is a 1984 American black comedy horror film directed by Joe Dante, written by Chris Columbus, and starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, and Frances Lee McCain, with Howie Mandel providing the voice of Gizmo, the main mogwai character. It draws on legends of folkloric mischievous creatures that cause malfunctions-"gremlins"-in the British Royal Air Force going back to World War II. The story follows a young man who receives a strange creature as a pet, which then spawns other creatures who transform into small, destructive, mischievous monsters that all wreak havoc on a whole town on Christmas Eve.
The film was the center of large merchandising campaigns and opts for black comedy, balanced against a Christmastime setting. Steven Spielberg was the film's executive producer, with the film being produced by Michael Finnell.
Gremlins was theatrically released on June 8, 1984 by Warner Bros. to critical and commercial success. However, it was heavily criticized for some of its more violent sequences. In response to this and to similar complaints about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg suggested that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) alter its rating system, which it did within two months of the film's release, creating a new PG-13 rating.[3][a] It was followed by a sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, in 1990, which has a more satirical tone and parodies Hollywood sequels, to generally positive reviews from critics, but was a box-office bomb.