It's that time of year again. The wind is beginning to chill, nature is starting it's transformation into beautiful decay, the days grow shorter, and all matters of spooks and shadows come forth to haunt the landscape once more, serving as harbingers of the most hallowed eve of the year...

...Christmas!

D'awwww, look at the lil' guy! Man, this is gonna be the best Christmas ever!

Or not.

- In the late 70s, Steven Spielberg intended to create a follow-up to Close Encounters of the Third Kind called Night Skies. Instead of nice aliens, this would be a particularly nasty set of buggers terrorizing a family on their farm. The project fell through, but several elements from the story were used for later Spielberg productions: the family-based horror became Poltergeist, the idea of one of the aliens befriending the family's son became E.T., and the gremlin-like monsters wreaking havoc became, well, Gremlins.

- Writer Chris Columbus's was inspired by the creepy noise the mice in his apartment made at night to write a script about little monsters.

- Tim Burton was considered a possible director, but he had never directed a feature movie before, so the job went to Joe Dante based, who had just worked with Spielberg on the Twilight zone movie.

- Both Judd Nelson and Emilio Estevez were considered for the role of Billy, while both Jon Pertwee (the Third Doctor) and Mako (Uncle Iroh) were considered for Mr. Wing.

- The studio was unsure about casting Phoebe Cates, who was mostly known for racier fare like Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Because the rest of the movie is so wholesome.

- The town used for Kingston Falls is actually a Universal Studios Backlot, the same used for Hill Valley in Back to the Future.

- That's Chuck Jones playing Billy's drawing mentor. Director Joe Dante's is a huge fan of Jone's Loony Tunes work, which can be seen in all the crazy stuff the gremlins get up to. You can see it even more clearly in the goofier sequel.

That's not the only thing you can clearly see in that movie.

- Both Speilberg and Composer Jerry Goldsmith also make appearances at that wacky inventor

convention.

- First onscreen use of the Amblin Entertainment logo.

- Everyone knows Howey Mandel did the voice for Gizmo, but just as awesome is Frank Welker, the voice of Fred Rogers, Megatron, Totoro, Doctor Claw, Jabberjaw, Nibbler, Abu the monkey, and pretty much every other animated character ever (pretty sure he's got one or two Disney princesses in there) as Stripe. It was Welker who recommended Mandel for the part.

- The movie theater appears to be playing "A Boy's life" and "Watch the Skies," which were working titles for E.T. and Close Encounters, respectively.

- The scene where Stripe attacks Billy with the chainsaw was thought up on set by Dante and actor Zach Galligan as a homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

- Hoyt Axton improvised nearly all his lines as Billy's father.

- The Santa Claus monologue wasn't popular with studio execs, but Dante refused to remove it, as it pretty much summed up the movie. Spielberg didn't like the scene either, but he allowed Dante to uphold his vision.

- Stripe is the only gremlin who doesn't sing in the movie theater. Watch out, we've got ourselves a badass over here.

- Columbus's original script is even darker than the finished film. Gizmo was originally gonna transform into Stripes the ringleader gremlin, leaving no nice gremlin for the audience to root for. And the gremlins were to outright kill and eat people, including the patrons at a McDonald's (leaving the burgers untouched, har har) and Billy's dog, the latter of which occurs shortly before Billy's mother's head was ripped off and thrown down the stairs to his feet. Spielberg and Dante eventually drew a line, as the movie wouldn't have found a large enough audience if they made it pitch black.

- Even with those elements removed, the movie still pushed the boundaries of a PG rating, to the point that it was this movie, in conjunction with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, that had Spielberg push for the existence of the PG-13 rating.

- Planned as a Christmas release, but released in the summer when Warner Bros saw there was no competition.

- I love the ending. It just outright tells the kids in the audience that a horrible monster hiding in your house is a very real possibility.

I mean, it scarred me for life, but I still love it.

http://youtu.be/BcWJaHZBEw0