While the brood of Gizmo run caca through the streets, Billy and his BFF unite through a sharp need for each other, and combat the Gremlins with the cinematic power of Snow White. And like the smartest of dumb kids, he fails all three resulting in a reptilian infestation that nearly consumes his absurdly quaint small town. Not only does young Billy Peltzer have to worry about feeding and exercising his young Mogwai, he has to adhere to the 3 rules: no bright lights, don’t get him wet, and never, never, never feed him after midnight. The nostalgic idealism of the Boy & His Dog BFF relationship is stretched into goofy and gooey glee in Joe Dante’s family friendly horror romp, Gremlins. You may fool yourself into the role of master, but your new best friend truly reigns over your daily chores. Plus, parents delight in leveraging your love for something cuddly with the threat of the pound or…gulp…greener pastures. You even scour the backyard for a safe place for it to take a squat. You feed it, you walk it, you vaccinate it, you monitor its breeding. Whether dog, cat, or snake, that creature’s life is in your hands. Owning any pet comes with a lot of responsibilities. That sounds kinkier than I’d like, but I yam what I yam. By necessity, they are not the warmest of associations, but they’re all pairs that I’ve related to or desired at some point in my maturation. The movies I selected below are buried deep in my being. Picking Godzilla is easy, obvious, and not fun. I’m not talking Howard the Duck and Lea Thompson here (although that fowl coupling holds a special place in my heart as well), but those unnatural, rather horrifying companions that occur in the weirdest of flicks (hmmmm…maybe I am talking Howard the Duck). Watching Anne Hathaway’s discovery of her…special connection with that kaiju across the sea rekindled my deep-seated love affair with monstrous friendships. Who doesn’t love a friend who can and will stick up for you? The other aspect was simply that lugging around a My Pet Monster could act as a talisman for the strength I feared was absent from my own persona. Part of that attraction certainly stemmed from my only-child status the symbiotic relationship between Jack Kirby’s Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy was painfully appealing to this basement-bound TV brat. Like most horror geeks, I’ve always sided with the beasts. While I am ready to hear your hyperbolic rants on how this kaiju fairs against the granddaddy of them all, I think it’s best if we avoid those comparisons, and simply appreciate how Nacho’s movie captures the somber drone of A Monster Calls while elevating to the heights of an epic genre party film. This weekend Nacho Vigalondo’s Colossal stomps into New York and Los Angeles to establish itself as the new King of the Monsters.
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