The Vintage Reader

The summer of 1984 was mostly miserable for me, and for reasons that I shall not go into here, Gremlins was a big part of that. So much so that for years I shuddered every time I saw one of those icky furry Gizmo toys with the rubber faces. It wasn't until many years later, when my husband made me watch it with him, that I caught the sly humor and sheer ridiculousness of the movie, and admitted that it wasn't that bad. But I still never caught on that it was taking on E.T., the movie that made the summer of 1982 suck almost as much as the summer of '84.