GRIMLINS

GREMLINS (1984)
dir: Joe Dante

MAD #249, September 1984
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) is in Chinatown looking for a gift to buy an esoteric gift for his son and goes into a shop full of stereotypical Chinese curiosities.

At the store is a little furry creature called a Mogwai that the owner refuses to to sell him. His grandson sells it to him with three rules (only the first three are real). Boy George was a pop singer that was a female impersonator, featured on the Cracked cover.

The Peltzers live in Kingston Falls, where Billy (Zach Gilligan) works at a local bank. Their home is owned by the mean landlady Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holiday) who hates dogs.

Billy works at the local bank with Kate (Phoebe Cates) and he brought his dog. Mrs. Deagle comes in saying if she ever finds the dog, she'll put him to sleep for ruining her Christmas decorations. Billy, now at home, is an aspiring artist, and is father, an aspiring inventor, returns with the mogwai that Billy decides to call Gizmo (voiced by Howie Mandel). Zach's friend Pete (Corey Feldman) runs the tree stand and is disguised as a tree as a promotional gimmick.

Pete is over and accidentally pours water on Gizmo, which causes him to multiply. Billy tells his father who is working on an invention and just sees the reproducing mogwai as a money-making opportunity. The next day, Billy has his science teacher Mr. Hanson (Glynn Turman) look at it. Later at home, one of the mogwai unplugs Billy's clock, making him think it's before midnight, and he feeds them, which turns them into gremlins.

The new stage of gremlins wreaks havoc on the Peltzer home, the town, and school, and attack Billy's mother (Frances Lee McCain). She fights with the ones that are in the house.

Gizmo is the one mogwai who hasn't been transformed and Billy keeps him in his knapsack. Bright light kills them and Gizmo knows to use the flashlight as a weapon. The surviving monster mogwai jump in a pool at a YMCA and reproduce there. Billy goes to the police to warn them of the Gremlin invasion but they won't believe him. They go to Mrs. Deagle's house and rewire her stair lift when she's not looking to make it speed up. Billy goes to rescue Kate and she tells him she hates Christmas because her father dressed as Santa and got stuck in the chimney.

The "Kevin McCarthy" on the Wanted poster is not the Congressman, who would have been 19 then. It was the name of the protagonist in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The mogwai/Gremlins attack a screening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, but here it's a screening of the Barbara Streisand movie Yentl. They're finally done in by an explosion at the movie theater and eventual sunlight. Mr. Wing (Keye Luke, the only surviving member of the Charlie Chan cast) comes to the Peltzer household to take Gizmo back, saying this was the reason he wouldn't sell the mogwai in the first place.

GRUMBLINS
Cracked #209, January 1985
a: John Severin

I wouldn't call it virtue signaling but just stating a fact that when I point out that people were more prejudiced in the past, and Cracked and John Severin in particular were considered more so than most, even then. So was the character of Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

THROUGHOUT HISTORY WITH THE REAL GREMLINS
same issue
a:John Severin

The design comes from the WWII legend of gremlins being the cause of the problems with warplanes.

UPDATE:
Cover for Mexican version of MAD.

UPDATE 2:
GRIMLINS
Maniac #2, circa 1984
w: Jovial Bob Stine
a: Sam Viviano