Skip to main content
Gremlins film image; young man looking over his shoulder at the small critter in his backpack

Gremlins

40th Anniversary

Image: © 1984 WBEI

This event has passed

Youth tickets available for $10!

The perfect last minute Xmas gift: give your special someone a cute ball of fur and don’t worry about where it came from. Just don’t put it under bright lights, don’t get it wet, and whatever you do, please, please don’t feed it after midnight…

Gremlins
began life as a horror movie but mutated into a big budget family entertainment – somehow retaining its genuinely vicious teeth. One of the most astringent, least sentimental directors around, Joe Dante fashioned it as an anti-Christmas film, inserting mischievous riffs on such seasonal classics as It’s a Wonderful Life, The Wizard of Oz and Phil Spector’s Christmas Album, trashing parochial small town Americana, consumerism, greed, and in a particularly delicious conceit holding up his rampaging signifiers as a mirror image to the ravenous, popcorn-belching movie hordes.

Director

Joe Dante

Cast

Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Corey Feldman, Dick Miller, Hoyt Axton, Key Luke

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

1984

Language

English

Content Warning

Violence, coarse language

PG

Open to youth!

110 min

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Screenwriter

Chris Columbus

Cinematography

John Hora

Editor

Tina Hirsch

Original Music

Jerry Goldsmith

Production Design

James H. Spencer

Also Playing

Barking Dogs Never Bite

Dir. Bong Joon-Ho
108 min

Bong's first film is a genial black comedy involving the deaths -- accidental and otherwise -- of several dogs in a Seoul apartment complex. Saturday's screening will be followed by a talk by Distinguished Professor Dal Yong Jin.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Flow

Dir. Gints Zilbalodis
84 min

In this wordless and gorgeously atmospheric animated feature, a solitary black cat survives a tsunami and must confront his fear of water whilst sailing through a flooded world with a group of misfit animals. An enchanting adventure film for all ages. Rated: G

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Memories of Murder

Dir. Bong Joon-ho
132 min

Parasite director Bong Joon-ho's police procedural is the centrepiece of our retrospective and arguably his masterpiece. Certainly, among serial killer movies this one is on a par with Zodiac and The Silence of the Lambs, but more politically astute.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Emilia Pérez

Dir. Jacques Audiard
132 min

When a defence attorney (Zoe Saldana) is enlisted to tend to the affairs of a notorious drug lord (Karla Sofía Gascón) completing gender affirmation surgery, there will be blood, ballads, and dance numbers. A maximalist musical from Jacques Audiard.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema