Producer Mike Finnell recalled how Columbus’ monster movie script ended up in the hands of Steven Spielberg. Finnell said:
“Chris Columbus, when he was a film student at NYU, lived in a crummy apartment like we all did as starving students. And he would hear mice in the apartment, running around. He realized that [in] most monster movies — ‘Godzilla,’ ‘King Kong’ – the monster’s big. But in a way, something small is scarier, because they can hide. So he came up with this idea and he wrote this spec script. Somehow it got to an agent and CAA sent it out as a writing sample because they thought that nobody would make it. It was just too nuts.”
Nuts, how? Dante said on the “Gremlins” DVD commentary track that Columbus original draft was far darker. There is a scene about halfway through the film wherein the character Lynn (Frances Lee McCain) fights with gremlins in her kitchen. She ultimately wins the day by shoving one gremlin in a blender, and locking another in a microwave oven. What’s more nuts than that? In the original draft, Lynn was decapitated and her head was thrown down a staircase.
Dante also recalled a scene wherein the gremlins eat a dog belonging to the protagonist Billy (Zach Galligan). Finnell also recalled, “There was one scene where Billy and Kate go into a McDonald’s and all of the people are half eaten, but the burgers are untouched.” Most notably, the original draft had a darker fate for Gizmo. Mogwais are first furry critters that metamorphose into gremlins if they eat a meal after midnight. In Columbus’ draft, Gizmo transformed into Stripe, the film’s scariest gremlin. But Spielberg dictated that Gizmo remain cute and furry throughout and that Stripe be a different creature.
If you want to see all the differences, you can read the full R-rated version of “Gremlins” over here.
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