Editorials
[Script To Scream]: Gerald Dies And Gizmo Becomes A Butterfly In ‘Gremlins’!
A film lives many lives before it ever hits the screen. The script is usually revised multiple times before a single foot of film is exposed (or the digital equivalent thereof). I’m not just talking about smaller stuff like dialogue polishes and the addition or deletion of scenes. Many times the core story is reworked in profound ways. Sometimes it’s downright shocking how different the final film can be from the initial drafts.
In this new (semi-regular) feature for Bloody-Disgusting, I’m going to take a look at some early drafts of scripts for horror films that you may have already seen and discuss the differences, whether they took a turn for the worse, better or just different. There are also a handful of scripts for sequels and remakes that never happened that are worth checking out – just to see what might have been.
These aren’t script reviews, and only rarely will I be breaking the stories down on a beat-by-beat basis. I’m just going to point out some cool, interesting and/or disastrous choices that happened along the way. Each installment will be different, and each installment will be fun. I’ll also be including sample pages (when available)* so you don’t have to take my word for it!
*This applies only to older and previously released films that are already part of the culture. We’re not in the business of leaking or sabotaging projects in development.
First up is Joe Dante’s Gremlins, written by Chris Columbus. Hit the jump to check it out! For years people have talked about how dark Chris Columbus’ first draft of Gremlins was. Many of us have heard the story in which, after the kitchen confrontation scene, Billy arrives home to find his mom’s severed head tumbling down the stairs.
The version I have (Seventh Draft – February 18th, 1983) doesn’t contain that scene – Mrs. Peltzer lives. Suffice to say that brutally killing Mrs. Pelter wasn’t an idea that was going to stay around for more than a pass or two, especially considering that this is an Amblin film. However, some of that darkness is still very much on the page. For instance, it’s very clearly spelled out that The Futtermans die. Even though the film alludes to their demise (and Gremlins 2 obviously retcons their survival), it’s never explicitly stated*. It is here. It’s only a minor deviation (if you can even call it that) but it’s an interesting one.
*EDIT – Reader Adam Harmless has correctly pointed out that they are declared on the radio as surviving in the film. I can’t believe I forgot about that!
One of the huge differences in this draft is the character of Gerald, the douchey Junior Vice President of the bank where Billy works. In the film he’s an enjoyably smug dick played by Judge Reinhold at the top of his affable game. His character is there to provide a counterpoint to Billy’s current path in life, something that’s accomplished handily in the first act. After that, he more or less disappears.
In the February 18th, 1983 draft he has a much bigger role and a more completely developed arc. Not only does he join Kate and Billy in their plan to blow up the Gremlins as they watch Snow White…
… he also gets the monologue. You know what I’m talking about. That amazingly black lump of coal that someway found its way into a PG Christmas movie. In the film, it’s a revelatory moment for Phoebe Cates’ character. But in this script, it’s all Gerald.
In this draft, the speech provides a sense of damage and some motivation for Gerald’s overall profit driven and Grinch-like perspective. It’s much easier to understand why the banker is such a jerk around the holidays if he had to smell his dad rotting in the chimney as a result of playing Santa.
I think the decision to give this speech to Cates in the film (and basically excise Gerald) is a wise one. From the beginning moments we’re rooting for Kate and Billy to end up together, and the personal nature of her disclosing this information to him (along with them taking on the Gremlins sans Gerald) ratchets up the intimacy factor.
So Columbus redeems Gerald a bit, and then he kills him.
Another huge change occurs at the end, in which Gizmo DIES and is reincarnated as glowing butterfly-like creature.
This is a cool effect, but it undercuts one of the major themes of Dante’s film. That American society is too clumsy, irresponsible and exploitative to properly interact with anything delicate or beautiful. In short, “this is why we can’t have nice things”. Because we make them ugly.
This theme is largely diminished, at least as overt text, in the earlier iteration of the story. Here, he simply just flies away.
All in all, I think the February 18th, 1983 draft is a fascinating look at the development mechanics of the project. But personally I prefer the final film that we all know and love.
What about you? Do you think Gremlins is perfect as is? Or would you have liked it better with some of these original elements present?
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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