I read the book back in elementary school, saw the film in the theater on opening day, and have the movie on both VHS and DVD. It’s pretty awesome that they kept the “film break” sequence in all formats.

The VHS contained yet another variation on this scene where the picture seemed to lose tracking (for those of you that remember the little tracking knob on the old players!) and become a little jumpy before ultimately stopping on a scrambled frame (much like the old PPV used to look if you didn’t buy the movie but tried to watch). The Gremlins then do static-filled hand puppets over the screen (the same ones from the Theater sequence), and the TV appears to flip through channels, including a news cast and what appears to be a war movie, before stopping on channel showing a cow being branded with a Gremlin face. You then realize that the Gremlins have invaded a John Wayne movie, and Wayne doesn’t seem to happy about it. He tells the Gremlins in his famous drawl that they need to leave or there’ll be trouble. The channel then flips to a quick scene from the original Warner cartoon, “Fallin’ Hare,” where Bugs Bunny encounters a Gremlin of his own (not a Dante-style Gremlin, though… This is the actual cartoon from 1943). The channel flips back, and we find the Grmelins in a western shoot-out with John Wayne. Wayne successfully takes down all the Gremlins (who die typical overly-exaggerated Western-style deaths), and tells us that he are safe to go back to the movie. The screen then changes to the same olt-tyle off-the-air title card (featuring a Gremlin of course), that is used elsewhere in the movie on TVs around the Clamp building when the channel is off-line, and the movie resumes.

For those that have a copy of the DVD, you can actually see this sequence in one of the Easter Eggs included on the disc. Go to the “Special Features” menu, highlight the Gremlin hand in the bottom-right corner, and press the Enter/OK button.

Personally, I like the Theater version the best. This is probably because seeing it happen in an actual packed movie theater as a 10-year-old kid was awesomely mind-blowing — and as an adult because there are so many cameos, self-referential nods, and obscure cinematic references going on there — but I still love the other versions as well.

For those who are also interested in the novelization, or those that are just huge Gremlins fans, it’s also worth noting that the book was written based off of an earlier version of the film’s script, so there are some different/expanded versions of existing scenes and a few that didn’t make it to the final movie included here.

Also — yes, I promise this will be the last bit — there is an AWESOME fan film that was made by a guy named Sacha Feiner that basically features his vision for an updated DVD-version of the sequence. I’m not going to bother describing it in detail here (it’s 7 minutes long!), but it features the Gremlins invading classic films like Batman, Indiana Jones, The Exorcist, and The Goonies (my personal favorite because it during the scene where the policeman accuses Chunk of prank calling about Gremlins!). Feiner is a professional movie maker, and he actually did this with puppets and computer work, and it looks just as good as any of the real versions.

You can check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/batgremlin#p/u/13/REGCV6z3VkM

Thanks for reminding me about the book Micah!

“Gremlins amok in a genetic lab! Boy, high concept time in Hollywood. Sounds like big b.o. And good box office too!”

There are sequences like this throughout the book. Really fun stuff.

Thanks for sharing.