Celebrate the long weekend with this, one of the best Gremlins 2 references we've ever seen
It’s an inarguable fact that Gremlins 2: The New Batch is not only a superior film to the original, but to many (maybe even most) of the cinematic comedies of its era. (Actually, we’re sure several people, including many members of The A. V. Club staff, could argue it, but it’s a holiday weekend and we’re the only ones here, so the declaration stands.) Among its other merits, the movie is the closest director Joe Dante has ever gotten to making a full-on live-action cartoon (which is a shame, since he also made an actual Looney Tunes movie), and its gleeful embrace of chaos is endlessly refreshing for audiences revisiting it, trying to remember if it was actually as bonkers as they remember. (Yes.)
We could rant about this movie for hours—the Ted Turner-style “End of civilization” video! Christopher Lee playing a character named Dr. Cushing Catheter! The Tony Randall Gremlin!—but we’d be letting ourselves get distracted from the real reason Dante’s film is in our heads today (more than usual, that is): A picture taken by one of the film’s stars, showing that while gremlins themselves might burn away in the sunlight, some things are eternal.