THE 'BURBS (1989)

"Satan is good. Satan is our pal."

Some nosy neighbors on a cul-de-sac have absolutely nothing better to do all day and night than spy on their new neighbors...and with good reason: these fuckers are weird as fuck!  You wouldn't want them living next to you, that's for sure.  As the film opens, it's late at night and Tom Hanks is investigating some strange noises coming from the neighbor's basement.  The next day his other neighbors dare him to go knock on the creepy neighbor's door.  He does, but with bad results.  Things just escalate and escalate from there until the street looks like a war zone.

THE 'BURBS was an alright ride.  I knew the basic premise of the story beforehand and was hoping that it was going to be balls to the wall crazy.  But unfortunately it was pretty tame.  Still I got a few chuckles out of it.  Plus, I finally discovered where that sample from the song "Carnage Castle" by Blood Freak came from!

Nowhere near as dark as it should have been, Corey Feldman acting cool, zero gore, zero blood, zero nudity, great cast, Tom Hanks freaking out, multiple references to Satan, various horror movies on televisions.  Worth an occasional viewing.  I'd love to see a dark remake.

GREMLINS (1984)

While on a business trip, a struggling inventor purchases a small little creature for his teenage son, Billy.  The critter is called a Mogwai and they name this one, Gizmo.  It kinda looks like a little humanoid guinea pig with big ears.  It can also understand English and likes to hum.  The three main rules for taking care of this dude are 1) no bright lights, especially sunlight 2) no water ever and 3) never feed it after midnight (I'm guessing for the current time zone).

For the first day or two things go pretty well.  Billy and Gizmo have a lot of fun playing the keyboard and watching TV, but then things get all fucked up when Giz gets water on him and pops some more Mogwai's out of his friggin' back!  These dudes aren't as sweet as Gizmo and when they eat after midnight, all kinds of Hell breaks loose.  Soon, these new brand of critters have completely taken over the town and are hellbent on killing Billy.

I'm sure by this point in time about everybody has seen GREMLINS a few dozen times, but if you haven't...it's a great film.  It's a little dated, there's not enough Corey Feldman, Phoebe Cates never gets naked and there are some darker elements to the story (that might disturb younger, sensitive children) if you think about it too much, but overall it's a fun family film with that familiar 1980's Spielberg feel to it.  Pretty much mandatory viewing if you are at all interesting in good movies or influential films of the last few decades.

It would be awesome if they did make a full-on dark as fook remake!  Gore, nudity, ultra-violence, Stripe pulling someone's intestines out and eating it as the die watching...mmmmmm!!!  If you want to know more about Mogwai's, then check out the novelization by George Gipe.

Part 2 - Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Steven Spielberg cameo.

I think we all remember that building in the background.

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1958)