Someone Found a Three-Hour Version of Gremlins
Someone Found a Three-Hour Version of Gremlins
Worth staying up after midnight for.
In the Gremlins multimedia franchise, cute little furbabies called Mogwai have a dreadful secret: they’ll turn into anarchistic, bloodthirsty green demons—Gremlins—if they eat anything after midnight. An amalgamation of old World War II-era cryptid tales, Looney Toons-inspired hijinks, and other influences from director Joe Dante’s childhood, the Gremlins series also borrows a touch from the Aliens series. Before coming out loud and proud in Gremlin form, the Mogwai must first enter egg-like cocoons, covered in the same sort of slime that you see dripping from the double-barreled fangs of xenomorphs.
As it turns out, the original Gremlins film has undergone its own transformative gestation, going from a bite-sized hour-and-46-minute romp to a nearly three-hour beast of a film. For those counting, that’s over an hour of additional Gremlins content, much of which had never been seen by anyone outside of the film’s original production team. According to this fantastic report on Indie Wire, a VHS tape containing this cut of the film had apparently been sitting on Joe Dante’s shelves for the past 43 years. It was only when Ian Grant, creator of the Gremlins Museum, reached out to ask Dante if the original “rough cut” of the film exists that the director pulled the trigger on letting it out into the world.
Dante sent Grant VHS tapes of both the Gremlins assembly cut from 1983 and a second tape of additional Gremlins outtakes. From there, Grant took it upon himself to edit the content of the two tapes together, reworking the audio as he went so it contained versions of the final film’s sound effects and score. Although it hasn’t been signed off on by Gremlins intellectual property holders Warner Bros. and Amblin Entertainment, Grant still organized a screening of the film for the writers of the upcoming Gremlins 3, as well as the head of 20th Century Studios and a handful of other big names in modern horror.
Like Gremlins 2’s theater full of chaotic green freaks, the crowd went bananas at the screening. Now, Gremlins star Zach Galligan and others close to the project are jockeying for Warner Bros. to officially release Gremlins: The Rough Cut either as a special edition DVD or as an extra on a future Gremlins 3 physical release.
It’s a shame, of course, that most film studios seem less and less interested in releasing physical media at all, let alone with extensive special features. In our humble opinion, the entire entertainment industry should take lessons from the Limited Run way, where we pretty much spend all day trying to dream up bonuses and extras to include in our physical game releases. Spoilers: that approach is great for home video, too!