Gremlins

Gremlins (1984) is Joe Dante's horror-comedy you can watch online on iFILM. It starts as a Christmas fable and ends as a small town overrun by scaly, cackling monsters.

A struggling inventor brings his son Billy (Zach Galligan) an odd gift from a Chinatown shop: a furry creature called a mogwai, named Gizmo. The animal comes with three rules. Keep it out of bright light, never get it wet, and never, ever feed it after midnight. All three break. Water makes Gizmo multiply, a late-night snack turns the cute offspring into vicious gremlins, and the whole town gets trashed on Christmas Eve. Phoebe Cates plays Billy's girlfriend, whose monologue about the worst holiday ever became a piece of movie folklore.

Dante made the film under producer Steven Spielberg, and it swings between kids' adventure and real menace so brazenly that it helped push the U.S. to invent the PG-13 rating. The gremlins were built as puppets and animatronics, no computer effects, which is exactly why their nasty, twitchy movement still works. It was a box-office monster and became an anti-cozy holiday staple. Stream Gremlins (1984) online on iFILM.