ANOMALY20 REVIEW: Gremlins: A Puppet Story [2020]

Ha! Forgetting about the man-hours that go into a film production before the cameras start rolling is something many of us do. People do so where it concerns art and labor in most fields because it’s easier to reduce finished products to the “genius” or “talent” of a creator than fathom the work that actually goes into making those indelible traits possible. So watching an Oscar-winning make-up/special effects artist like Chris Walas go through the process of advancing from reading a script that seemed impossible to bring to fruition to…

Read More

REVIEW: Gremlins [1984]

“What’d you call this? The putrid stage?” There had been gremlins in existence before the diminutive green monsters screenwriter Chris Columbus, director Joe Dante, and creature creator Chris Walas imagined and yet theirs are the ones we immediately think about when the word is uttered. The design is a far cry from Bugs Bunny’s colorful adversary in 1943’s “Falling Hare” or the human sized counterpart opposite William Shatner in the 1963 “Twilight Zone” episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and by far the creepiest. From their reptilian skin, mucus covered sharp…

Read More