25 Days: GREMLINS

Sometimes, the sweetness and jubilation overload of the season, combined with the recklessness of consumerism gives way to the spiteful darker aspects of the holiday, but it's usually best to deal with that side of things in secure environment of an anti-Christmas classic:

GREMLINS    (COMEDY/HORROR, 1984)
Directed by Joe Dante
Starring Zach Gilligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Frances Lee McCain, Dick Miller, Corey Feldman, Polly Holliday
PG for unspecified reasons (contains PG-13-level creature menace and mayhem throughout, and some frightening images, thematic elements and smoking).
Naughty or Nice?: Naughty
Religious or Secular?: Secular
Cynical or Sentimental?: Sentimental
Holiday Relations: Heavily atmospheric Christmas plot elements, but not essential.
OVERALL: 3 out of 4

During WWII, a new form of folklore developed as a product of the machine age.  In order to account for the unexplained (or unclaimed) mechanical mishaps that accompanied the new machinery of war, most especially aircraft, the notion of "gremlins" was started by the British Royal Air Force and gradually spread around the Allied armed forces.  These gremlins were mischievous little imps who inhabited and sometimes sabotaged aircraft.  The creatures became part of popular culture in children's author Roald Dahl's first published book, The Gremlins, in which the gremlins are persuaded by an RAF pilot to join forces against the Nazis.  The illustrated children's book was picked and published by the Walt Disney Company to adapt into and promote a film version, which was developed but never came to fruition.  By the time a movie called GREMLINS actually did come to the screen, it was nothing like Disney had planned.  Actually, it had nothing to do with the Disney version whatsoever (although the director had read the book), but it's an interesting bit of gremlin trivia.
GREMLINS was a spec script (a script written without initial payment for the purpose of being sold to a studio, as opposed to a commissioned script) written by Chris Columbus (who would later go on to be known for directing blockbusters such as HOME ALONE and HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE) for the purpose of displaying his writing talent to studios so he could receive commissioned projects, but when Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg read GREMLINS, he quickly bought it up, declaring it one of the most original things he'd come across in years.  Spielberg tapped Joe Dante, a director he'd worked with before on THE TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, to direct the film, with Spielberg producing.
Unlike THE POLTERGEIST, released two years earlier in 1982, which many people have suspected that Spielberg had held as strong or stronger an influence as producer on the film than Tobe Hooper, the director, Dante is clearly the pervading influence in GREMLINS.
The film, if you haven't seen it, revolves around a magical creatures called the Mogwai, furry little semi-intelligent creatures unknown to the modern world, one of which amateur inventor Rand Peltzer discovers in a hidden-away shop in Chinatown and buys as a Christmas present for his teenage son Billy.  The little Mogwai, named Gizmo, comes with a set of very important instructions though: keep him away from bright light, especially sunlight; do not get him wet; and most important of all, do not feed him after midnight.  Naturally, all three rules are broken during the course of the film (duh), first of which being an accident where water is spilled on Gizmo, causing him to multiply as balls of fur explode from his back like popcorn and grow into full-sized Mogwai.  These new Mogwai are not nearly as well behaved as Gizmo though, and when they're mistakenly fed after midnight, they transform into green, reptilian monsters who gleefully wreak havoc (including the deadly sort) across the small town on Christmas Eve.
Dante is well recognized for his affection toward B-horror movies and Looney Tunes, and that's what GREMLIN delivers.  The result is well summed up in a surprisingly controversial monologue delivered by Phoebe Cates' character, in which she describes her reason for disliking Christmas, being a childhood experience in which her father died while playing Santa (described in gruesome detail).  It's a movie that melds the ridiculous, the gruesome, the nasty and the funny with Christmas, and it's not always clear cut as to whether you should be sickened or laughing.  I think it's fairly clear that Dante is laughing.  Not everyone was in on the joke though, and film critic Leonard Maltin gave a famously scathing review of the film, so when Dante made the sequel six years later, he cast Maltin in a cameo as himself reviewing the first film, then being attacked by gremlins.  I think that's fair.
Although the film was a huge hit and well received by most audiences, arguably its most significant part in film history is standing hand in hand with a fellow 1984 Spielberg production, INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, in spurring on the creation of the PG-13 MPAA rating.  While TEMPLE OF DOOM is well recognized for its sacrifice scene involving a torn-out heart, PG-rated GREMLINS horrified parents expecting a Spielberg family film filled with funny little creatures, with gross-out moments like a gremlin exploding inside a microwave and getting shredded in a mixer, as well as brutal deaths such as an old lady rocketed out of a window on her hot-wired elevator chair and a teacher's body found with a hypodermic needle stabbed in the buttock.  These things sound exaggerated and ridiculous, and they're meant to be, but I suppose when you're sitting in a movie theater with your kids who are excited to see furry little Gizmo from the previews, it could be a bit much.  Less than two months following the film's release, the PG-13 rating was introduced at the suggestion of Spielberg himself, who had had similar problems in the past with his films JAWS and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. 
GREMLINS is definitely a twisted Christmas movie, and it's easy to understand why some people would simply be sickened by its remorselessness, but it's meant to be read as something of a live-action Looney Tune.  Everything is over the top in this caustic black comedy, with Gremlins wielding pistols and smoking multiple cigarettes at a time.  It's like a cartoon for grown-ups.  One of my favorite bits is the town grinch, Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday), who is such an unabashed villain, ruthlessly foreclosing people's homes over Christmas and threatening Billy Peltzer's dog.  Her inevitable demise is a bit gnarly, but the comic intentions, however devious, are not in question when you see a body with feet stuck straight up in the air.
It may be the most caustic Christmas comedy with mainstream appeal (BAD SANTA stands somewhat outside of "mainstream"), but it's an amusing and cathartic send-up of the holidays, with a crackerjack sensibility for dark, dark, dark slapstick comedy.