A refresher: Billy (Zack Galligan) and his girlfriend Kate (Phoebe Cates) are taking a break from fending off drunken mogwai when Kate tells a long, dark story about why she stopped believing in Santa Claus: When she was 9, her dad dressed up at St. Nick, slipped and fell on the roof, broke his neck, and got stuck in the chimney. He wasn’t discovered until they turned on the fire and smelled his c.o.r.p.se.
The infamous, shockingly monologue midway through the otherwise upbeat comedy horror classic has taken on a life of its own over the years.
Gremlins fans ironically share the clip around this year of year (a YouTube clip of the scene, below, has been titled “The Worst Christmas Story Ever”), while also pondering how in the holy holidays that scene ended up in the final cut, given its tonal disparity from the rest of the film.
Galligan has his theory: “If you really look at Phoebe Cates’s role, she doesn’t really have a whole lot to do in the film if you take that story and her Christmas secret away,” he told us during a recent interview at San Diego Comic-Con before recalling his memories of its production.
The executives at the film’s distributor, Warner Bros., immediately flagged it, Galligan says.
Famed director Chris Columbus, who wrote the screenplay for Gremlins before helming hits like Home Alone and Harry Potter, shared a similar recollection with us in 2020.
Columbus even admitted that it was his favorite sequence in the film, and that both Dante and producer Steven Spielberg helped save it when dealing with the studio.
