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It’s a version of a movie that hasn’t been seen since 1983. It wasn’t even supposed to exist. But we can tell you definitively that yes, Virginia, there is indeed an outage lasting longer than 2.5 hours Gremlins.
And in its first-ever screening, a small number of fans, who happen to be leading the new generation of horror films, were able to see it on Thursday night.
The audience initially had no idea what they were in for. The invitation to “watch a movie no one has seen before” was sent via text message to select members of the horror community and was presented by Verve’s 1201 Films production team and Scott Glassgold. “You will never forgive yourself,” the letter read.
“It’s an archival show, in a way,” he says Gremlinssaid legendary director Joe Dante describing the evening and what was about to be shown. He warned that this was a rough copy, full of greasy pencil marks and missing scenes, and said he hoped the assembled audience would not substitute the finished film that lived in their heads for the imperfection that was about to be shown.
The audience was one of today’s most prominent horror players: Final Destination: Bloodlines Filmmakers (and Gremlins 3 The Book) Adam B. Stein, Zach Lipofsky, Drew Hancock (companion), Rob Savage (The bogeyman), Dan Burke and Robert Olsen (Novocaine), Brian Duffield (Whales fall), Akeelah Cooper (M3GAN), Guy Busiek (ready or not), Atomic Monster producer Michael Clare, Adam Robitel (Escape room) and 20th Century Studios president Steve Asbell, among others.
Everyone was there to see the curtain pulled back behind a monster movie that blended horror and comedy, helped earn a PG-13 rating, launched Chris Columbus’ writing career, and provided a set of rules that a generation of movie watchers lived by.
Produced in late 1983, the assembly cut took approximately 2 hours and 35 minutes, about an hour longer than the film released in June 1984, which is now fondly remembered as an 1980s classic. While rumors of its existence have circulated for years, it was only this year that Dante came to terms with its existence.
He gave away the only known surviving copy – his personal VHS copy, for Jimzoo! – to the Gremlins Museum, an online archive and display of Gremlins Props to Gremlins fanatic Ian Grant.
Grant then spent months cleaning up the material, digitizing it and making it display-worthy.
The cut features plenty of unseen character arcs and alternate takes. The first Gremlin doesn’t appear until an hour later. Once the bad little buggers show up, a lot of time is spent on them (the chaos at the bar lasts 10 minutes or more). Yes, we even see them walking. Phoebe Cates’s speech about why she hates Christmas cannot be found in this version.
“This is a very unusual offer,” Dante said. “You don’t usually go back into the archives and take things out of the trash and show them to people, warts or whatever.”
