Harbour Highlights: Gremlins 2 - The New Batch

“We can't let them get away. All they have to do is to eat three or four children and there'd be the most appalling publicity.”

Welcome to Harbour Highlights – and not just any Harbour Highlight but the 50th in our series of cult and classic favourites, handpicked by the staff of Harbour Lights. And what better way to celebrate such a milestone than with one of the best cult classics of the past few decades – Stephen’s pick of Gremlins 2: The New Batch?

Following the success of 1984’s Gremlins, the studio was naturally keen to get a sequel made as quickly as possible.

However, director Joe Dante was worn down after making the first film and none of the scripts the studio tried – Gremlins in Las Vegas! Gremlins on Mars! – managed to capture the same tone as the original.

After a few years of trying, the studio’s desperation led to them offering Dante the rare chance to have full creative control as long as he made a film called Gremlins 2. The result is one of the more anarchic, innovative and meta Hollywood productions of all time, a truly joyous example of a filmmaker let loose, packed full of biting satire, witty one-liners, background gags and scenes that playfully break the fourth wall (and, at one point, the film itself).

Like many cult favourites, the film was perhaps too ahead of its time, leading to it not recapturing the box office success of its predecessor.

However, the film has been rediscovered over the years and is now held up as one of the strangest, most original and most creative sequels ever made.

Help us celebrate the 50th Harbour Highlight with a very special screening of it, back on the big screen.