The original screenplay for ‘Gremlins’ was very gruesome
The 1980s was a wild time for Hollywood filmmaking, with seemingly anything passing through studio executives, especially if it screamed ‘merchandising’. Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters leapt to international success, James Cameron’s Terminator series kicked off, Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop started taking names, and Gremlins became one of the most unlikely festive favourites when it was released in 1984.
Produced by the iconic American filmmaker Steven Spielberg, with a script penned by Chris Columbus, who would later go on to write The Goonies and Home Alone, Gremlins was destined for popularity. Headed up by horror director Joe Dante, the film follows a young man who mistakenly breaks three important rules concerning his new fantastical pet bought by his father in Chinatown.
A strange comedy-fantasy-horror hybrid, whilst Gremlins feels like a family film, look closer, and you’ll notice that the movie has a creepy heart that would prompt nightmares in even the hardiest of children. Yet, the final script for the movie was far tamer than the original version, which would have caused PTSD, let alone nightmares.
Originally penned as a gory R-rated movie by Columbus before Spielberg chose to alter it, the first script for the film depicted the titular gremlins taking part in a number of sinister death scenes. Speaking to Collider in 2020 about the inspiration for the movie, Columbus stated that much of his early influences came from the classic Universal monster films, with The Mummy, The Invisible Man and Creature from the Black Lagoon prompting him to write his own horror.
In addition, Columbus was inspired by the rodents that were dashing across the floor of his New York apartment, telling the publication: “I was thinking about these mice running around at night, they would scurry by my finger if my hand was over the bed… that’s how I came up with the idea of Gremlins”.
These rat-like creatures were previously far more vicious, too, with one scene in the original script depicting the decapitation of the protagonist’s mum, Lynn, played by Francis Lee McCain. Laughing at the brutality of his previous script, he recalls, “Hard R, mom’s head comes rolling down the stairs, Billy and Kate go into McDonald’s and none of the food is eaten but all of the people are eaten”.
Whilst we agree that it was probably right to cut out Lynn’s decapitation, we can’t help but mourn the loss of that McDonald’s scene, especially since it would have perfectly fit the comic tone of the movie, even if the moment would’ve been a little dark.
Coming across the script in the early 1980s, Spielberg advised that Columbus should tone down the script to “reach a much wider audience,” with the iconic filmmaker ultimately helping Gremlins to become an international critical and cultural phenomenon. It is this delicate balance of mature violence and family values that modern cinema so dearly misses, with the recipe being perfected by Spielberg.
