Gremlins 2: The New Batch is a 1990 American comedy horror film and a sequel to Gremlins (1984). It was directed by Joe Dante from a screenplay by Charles S. Haas and features creature designs by Rick Baker. Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Dick Miller, Jackie Joseph, Keye Luke and the voices of Frank Welker and Howie Mandel reprise their roles from the first film, with John Glover, Robert Prosky, Robert Picardo and Christopher Lee joining the cast. It continues the story of Billy Peltzer and the mogwai Gizmo, the latter of whom spawns more of his kind when wet that eventually become the titular imp-like monsters and proceed to wreak havoc within a skyscraper in New York City.
The film heavily parodies its predecessor, with more cartoonish elements and less horror. There are a number of parodies of other forms of popular culture, including the Rambo franchise, The Wizard of Oz, Marathon Man and The Phantom of the Opera. It was theatrically released by Warner Bros. Pictures on June 15, 1990, and received generally positive reviews. It grossed $42 million on a budget of $30–50 million. Since its release, it has developed a cult following. A third film is set for release on October 6, 2028.
Plot Following the death of his owner, Sam Wing, Gizmo the mogwai is captured by scientists at the Splice O' Life genetic engineering laboratory at Clamp Center, a state-of-the-art skyscraper in Manhattan owned by eccentric billionaire Daniel Clamp. At the mercy of chief researcher Doctor Cushing Catheter, Gizmo is rescued by his former owner, Billy Peltzer, and his fiancée, Kate Beringer, both of whom work elsewhere in the building. Clamp befriends Billy upon being impressed by his skills in concept design, sparking the interest of Billy's superior, Marla Bloodstone. Gizmo is left in Billy's office, where water from a broken drinking fountain spills onto his head and causes him to spawn a quartet of new mogwai. They detain Gizmo in the air vents and later eat after midnight at the building's food court to become gremlins.
After Gizmo finds his way out of the vents, gremlin Mohawk abducts and tortures him. The other gremlins set off fire sprinklers to spawn an army of them that throws the building into turmoil. Billy attempts to lure the gremlins into the lobby, where sunlight will kill them; after briefing Clamp on gremlin knowledge, he exits through a secret route to cover the building's entrance with a giant sheet depicting night to deceive the creatures. The gremlins drink genetic serums in the lab; one gains high intelligence, another becomes female and a third is transformed into a being of pure electricity that murders Catheter before Billy traps it in the building's telephone system. All the while, television host "Grandpa Fred" films the incident, aided by Japanese tourist Mr. Katsuji.
Murray Futterman, Billy's neighbor from Kingston Falls who is visiting the city with his wife, Sheila, is attacked by a bat-like mutated gremlin immunized to sunlight by the intelligent one with a sunscreen-like formula. After petrifying it with cement, Futterman realizes he has proved his sanity and must help; when Clamp exits the building via his secret route, Futterman follows to sneak inside and aid Billy. Chief of security Frank Forster teams up with Billy, but the enamored female gremlin, nicknamed Greta, chases the former off. Kate and Marla are attacked by Mohawk, now mutated into a centaur-like spider hybrid after drinking another serum, but Gizmo saves them by killing him using a makeshift arrow topped with an ignited bottle of correction fluid.
When the plan to stop the gremlins is foiled due to the sudden occurrence of a storm, Billy instead directs Futterman to spray the gremlins with a fire hose, then releases the electrical one to melt them all. Clamp soon charges in with the authorities and press, only to discover that the threat has been neutralized; thrilled by the outcome, he promotes Billy, Kate, Fred and Marla and hires Katsuji as a camera operator as the former two return home with Gizmo. Forster contacts Clamp to notify him that he is trapped on the building's highest floor, where Greta, the sole gremlin survivor, corners and entices him to marry her.
Cast
The film has various crew and guest cameos: Alex Leam as a customer receiving his ordered frozen yogurt, the film's composer Jerry Goldsmith as another frozen yogurt patron, John Astin as a janitor and Henry Gibson as an employee fired for smoking. Rick Ducommun cameos as a security guard and director Joe Dante as the director of Grandpa Fred's show. Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith cameo as themselves. The cast of PBS' Square One Television appear as themselves filming an episode in Clamp Center's lobby. Dean Norris and Raymond Cruz appear in the film as a SWAT team member and delivery man, respectively. Joel Brooks plays the waiter at the Canadian restaurant.
Voices
Howie Mandel as Gizmo Tony Randall as the intelligent gremlin (credited as "The Brain Gremlin") Frank Welker as Mohawk Kirk Thatcher and Mark Dodson as the gremlins Jeff Bergman as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Neil Ross as Clamp Center's intercom announcements Chad Everett as John Wayne
Looney Tunes segments The film includes animated segments written and directed by Chuck Jones, animated by Warner Bros. Animation and Chuck Jones Enterprises and featuring Looney Tunes characters Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. Jones had retired from animation before returning to work on Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Dante explained the animation at the beginning of the film was meant to "set the anarchic tone".
The first segment initiates the film and features the classic Looney Tunes opening card, leading to the assumption that this is a cartoon being shown alongside the film; however, when Bugs appears through the rings atop the Warner Bros. shield, Daffy interrupts the sequence and pulls Bugs away from the shield, striving to recreate the opening with himself in Bugs' place. Unfortunately, the shield overshoots, causing the entire card to fall apart and become stuck around Daffy's waist. An annoyed Daffy then ascertains that since he will not star in the cartoon, they might as well just skip straight to the film. Bugs happily obliges by spinning Daffy away from the screen like a spinning top, making way for the film's title to appear.
The DVD and Blu-ray release of the film include a longer version of the cartoon short. In it, Daffy is informed by Bugs that he has been promoted to executive and is subsequently put in charge of writing the title of the movie. When Daffy mistakenly writes the title Gremlins 2 as "Gremlin Stew", Bugs corrects the error. Daffy then attempts to rename the film The Return of Super-Daffy Meets Gremlins 2 Part 6: The Movie, but Bugs rejects this for being too long, changing it back to Gremlins 2 (rendered in the font of the official logo). Daffy then quits his new job and Bugs decides to add a subtitle, saying it looks "a little skimpy" without one. This material was removed from the theatrical release because early audiences expected a live-action film and were bewildered by the lengthy animated sequence.
Throughout the film's credits, Daffy pops into frame sporadically and spouts off sarcastic comments. The last segment appears afterwards and again features the Looney Tunes rings. This time, Porky comes out of the rings and tries to say his usual "Th-th-th-that's all, folks!", but Daffy interrupts and takes over again. After Daffy says the slogan, the back of the Warner Bros. shield – with the credits "Title Animation Written & Directed by Chuck Jones", as well as featuring his signature – smashes him. He then peeks his head out on the left side and says, "Fade out.", as the segment concludes.
Production The original Gremlins was a financial success, and Warner Bros. asked its director Joe Dante to make a sequel straight away. Dante declined, because he saw Gremlins as having a proper ending, and thus a sequel would only be meant to be profitable. Moreover, the original film was a taxing experience for Dante, and he wanted to move on. Work on Gremlins 2: The New Batch continued without him, as the studio approached various directors and writers. Storylines considered included sending the gremlins to cities like Las Vegas or even the planet Mars. After these ideas fell through, the studio returned to Dante, who agreed to make the sequel after receiving the rare promise of having complete creative control over the movie; he also received a budget triple that of the original film. Dante later acknowledged that by this point too much time had passed between the films, thus possibly reducing public interest in a Gremlins sequel.
Principal photography commenced in New York City on May 26, 1989, and ended in September. As the filmmakers noted, this was a time when cable television, genetics and frozen yogurt were becoming more common in popular culture, hence are all parodied in the movie.
Plotting With more control over the film, Dante engineered a project that he later referred to as "one of the more unconventional studio pictures, ever." Dante included some material that he believed Warner Bros. would not have allowed had they not wanted a sequel to Gremlins. Allowed to break a number of rules in filmmaking, he also later claimed it was the film into which he had put the most of his personal influence. Dante imagined Gremlins 2: The New Batch as a satire of Gremlins and sequels in general.
Screenwriter Charlie Haas introduced the concept of moving the gremlins to New York City and a corporate head (Daniel Clamp) as Billy's boss. When the Warner Bros. executives grew concerned about the expense of portraying the gremlins attacking an entire city, Haas came up with the idea of confining the action within Clamp's "smart building". Haas also included a great deal of material in his screenplay that proved too elaborate to produce, including having a cow–hamster hybrid running on a treadmill in the laboratory.
In keeping with Dante's desires to satirize the original film, the sequel has some meta-references and self-referential humor. These include a cameo appearance by film critic Leonard Maltin. He holds up a copy of the original Gremlins home video and denounces it, just as he had in reality; however, his rant is cut short when gremlins assault him. Partly for this scene, one academic called Dante "one of contemporary cinema's great pranksters."
Additionally, when Billy is trying to explain the rules regarding the mogwai to staff in the building, the staff finds them quite absurd and derisively interrogates Billy on their precise meaning, at one point considering the thought experiment of a mogwai in a plane which crosses a time zone. This scene originates from the fact that the filmmakers themselves saw the rules as irrational and some questions in the scene were based upon those raised by fans of the original film.
At one point in the film, Dante attempted to involve his audience in the story by making it seem as if the gremlins had taken control of a movie theater where the film is being shown. In the scene, the theater's projector becomes sabotaged by the gremlins, who then engage in shadow play over the blank projection screen before showing the vintage nudie film Volleyball Holiday in their origin film's place. Hulk Hogan, who is in attendance in the auditorium in a cameo appearance, intimidates the gremlins into running the rest of the film. This joke was inspired by a similar stunt in William Castle's The Tingler (1959). The studio feared that people might leave the theatre if they thought the film had broken; Dante therefore secured the inclusion of the sequence by assembling some people for a preview of the film. When the scene was shown, the real-life audience found it enjoyable and stayed in the theatre. Dante later described this scene as one of the most widely enjoyed jokes in the film.