Gremlins is very possibly the first horror movie I ever saw (it's either that or Poltergeist, both around age 5), so it obviously looms large in the Collins Canon. And yet I never got around to reading the novelization until now, despite having heard about the insane things it added to the mythos. To be fair, Joe Dante (something of an authority on these films!) has dismissed some of author George Gipe's ideas as nonsense, so it's not like the book was merely giving us a peek into some of Dante and screenwriter Chris Columbus' ideas that didn't make it to screen. That may have diminished some of my interest. But still: aliens?

Yes, Gipe's take on the story goes off the rails on its very first page, with the phrase “Mogturmen, the inventor of the Mogwai species.” Gipe goes on to explain that Mogturmen wanted to create a species that could adapt to any climate or condition, gentle but highly intelligent, and able to reproduce itself easily. Despite some drawbacks, like their weakness to light, the experiment was considered a success and three planets across the many galaxies were chosen to inspire the inhabiting species. And yep, you guessed it: Earth was one of those three.

(For the record, Dante says that as far as he's concerned, they were Chinese creatures that spawned from the mating of a dragon and a panda.)

Given that this info dump occurs in the book's first two pages, one might think this will be a completely altered take on the film we know and love. But honestly, other than that, it actually plays out pretty close to what we saw on screen in 1984 (and every Christmas since). The rest of the changes are, for the most part, the sort of thing you would expect from any novelization of the era.

By that, I mean that conversations go on longer, minor characters (particularly Judge Reinhold's Gerald and his boss at the bank) get more development, and the deleted scenes the die-hard fans have watched on the DVDs over the years are still intact. Dante has said that the movie's first cut ran about 40 minutes longer than the final version, so there's a good chance some of this other material was indeed part of the plan.

The biggest difference (besides the alien stuff) is probably Kate's petition against the evil Mrs. Deagle, which carries on throughout the story but is only briefly mentioned in the final cut. Mrs. Deagle plans to buy up all the houses/buildings behind on their rent and then sell them all for profit to a chemical company named Hitox, which will destroy the town just as easily as the Gremlins can.

It's easy to see why this stuff was mostly dropped from the film; even with what's left, we have plenty of reasons to hate the woman, and there's no real need for a full-blown secondary antagonist (possibly the same thinking that led to much of Reinhold's performance being trimmed).

One fun thing that Gipe does is explain some of the seeming plot holes in the movie, such as why Stripe is able to run through the snow (which is just frozen water) without multiplying. Per Gipe, the water needs to be warmer for it to work. He also adds a beat that kind of explains why the Peltzer family doesn't take the rules as seriously as they should. When Rand (Hoyt Axton) buys the Mogwai from the owner's grandson, the kid tells him the rules but also tells him that Gizmo will eat anything, including washers and cardboard.

But Gizmo doesn't exactly LIKE these things, he just does them to amuse his longtime companion. Now that he's with a new family, he doesn't feel the need to humor them just yet, so when they try to get him to eat some junk, he refuses. So now they feel everything the kid said was probably exaggerated or downright false, and they let their guard down.

More amusingly, there's much more to the scene where Billy goes to the cops and tries to explain what happened. Naturally, they do not believe him, but here, they bust his balls and ask him to clarify the rules. And to my delight, they actually ask the same questions we would see a few security guards ask Billy in Gremlins 2 six years later (“What about time zones?” “What if some food gets stuck in his teeth?”).

Whether this scene was scripted and dropped is unknown (the online drafts for the film are of its original R-rated form, before there WERE any rules to break), but I want to believe Dante liked Gipe's idea and repurposed it for his sequel.

Along the same lines of Gipe seemingly peering into the future (at one point, has Kate wish she was trapped in an office building instead of a bar – give it a few years!), he lists a few historical examples that resulted from Gremlin interference. Most of them are just totally made up, or are perhaps just the author tossing in a little joke for those in the know (like the 1969 Super Bowl, which was a historical upset).

However, he chalks up a particular NASA disaster to the little demons, and of all the names he could have chosen, he goes with the Columbia, which nearly twenty years later was the name of an actual shuttle that suffered a massive catastrophe, killing all aboard.

We also get more insight into the Gremlins' scheming ways. On par with the “Oh, by the way, they're designer aliens“ explanation, Gipe also has the creatures talk to each other. There's a throwaway explanation that their minds work much quicker than they can speak, hence why they only utter incomprehensible gurgles, but Gizmo and Stripe have full-blown conversations.

Interestingly, Stripe himself doesn't know the “rules“ but desperately wants to, so he practically begs Gizmo to share his knowledge about how they reproduce and become stronger. The Gremlins also work to frame poor Barney the dog for some of their mischief, knowing that Mrs. Peltzer will lock him up to punish him and allow them to roam the house without the dog interfering.

This sounds silly, and it often is, but it actually shines a light on the biggest difference between the book and the movie: Gipe's take lacks humor. We don't see the sight gags, like the Burger King proudly standing in the middle of the otherwise quaint, locally-owned businesses of the rest of the town, or all the wacky stuff going on around Rand when he calls from his inventor's convention.

The smokeless ashtray running joke is also MIA, and while the Gremlins still invade a screening of Snow White, they neglect to sing along to “Hi Ho.“ Even Spike's escape has some onscreen whimsy that Gipe neglects; the villain just somehow survives the explosion instead of missing it entirely because he went across the street to get some candy.

Gipe also lets Mr. Futterman stay dead (to be fair, that was indeed a late change delivered via off-screen radio DJ), and gives a much more violent death for the science teacher. He even kills off one of the Mogwai that spawned from Gizmo, having it wander outside at night and get stuck out there, immolating in the morning sun. It's not the worst idea to really sell how important it is to keep them out of the light, but man: do it with one of the first Gremlins! Not a cute lil Mogwai!

I do wish some of the ideas made it to the screen, whether they were his invention or not. My personal favorite was the payoff for the ever-falling sword by the Peltzer's front door. In the movie, it falls several times, and later, Billy grabs it off the wall and uses it to cut a Gremlin's head off. It was a good moment, but Gipe's take was far more memorable: Billy rushes in, slams the door, reaches over to grab the sword he knows is about to fall, and then cuts the thing's head off—all in one action.

That would have been great to see! And when Mr. Futterman inspects his antenna here, he sees the Gremlins still tearing it apart, allowing him a little bit of payback as he grabs a rifle and kills a few. In the movie, they're already down from the roof and about to hit him with his plow. Denying us the sight of Dick Miller kicking ass is never a good thing.

But those are exceptions to the rule. There are enough alternate/added parts here to make it a must-read for die-hards, but I doubt anyone would find this version superior unless you hate humor in your horror. The blend of Dante's zany sense of humor and the genuine threat posed by the Gremlins is precisely what makes the movie work as well as it does. Without the former, it just comes off as a standard “town is besieged by monsters“ movie (albeit a somewhat slow-paced one; the book is well past its halfway point by the time Gipe gets to the kitchen scene with Billy's mom, which occurs a minute or two *before* the halfway point of the movie).

That said, it's certainly a better take on these characters than the one I wrote when I was four, preserved by my mother for decades and presented here as my holiday gift to you all. Enjoy!

The GREMLINS Are… Aliens?

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