Gremlins – Unintentional Classic Phoebe Cates dialogue

One movie that is and always will be as a stable of must watch movie viewing come Holiday time for me is Joe Dante’s highly inventive, 1984 classic, Gremlins. While most agree that it’s a terrific movie, the one thing about it that has always brought more than a few unintentional laughs is Phoebe Cate’s character explaining why she doesn’t like Christmas. Being good sports, Dante and Cates even did a parody of it in the sequel.

Cates as Kate
“The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve. I was nine years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn’t home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire. That’s when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He’d been climbing down the chimney… his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that’s how I found out there was no Santa Claus.”

Here is a look at a GREMLINS review by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel from their At the Movies program 25 years ago.