Oh man, folks, am I abundantly glad that this has wandered into new release territory by virtue of it coming out on Blu-ray this week, or so saith blu-ray.com, anyway.

Because today we’re talking Gremlins, and whether you’ve seen it a hundred times over or this is your first time, you are in for a true treat from an American horror legend, Joe Dante.

You might remember him, by the way, as a bona fide Master of Horror from his work Homecoming, featured on the anthology series of the same name.  This was one of his first major pieces, and with good reason.  It features Rand Peltzer, well-intentioned crackpot inventor who’s just brought home a special Christmas present–a Mogwai.  This adorable, musically-inclined little fuzzball has three special rules.  Quote along if you know the words:

1. Do not expose them to bright light.  Especially sunlight; it’ll kill them.

2. Do not get them wet.

3. Never, NEVER, feed them after midnight.

And thus began one of the greatest horror-comedy hybrids ever made by man, Gremlins.

Thoroughly deserving of Blu-ray release as it is, at once, a freaky horror flick, a laugh-riot comedy, and of all things, a CHRISTMAS MOVIE, it manages to do a series of different tasks undeniably well because it never really takes itself seriously at any point.  There are plenty of great scares in here, and a host of in-jokes as well (check out Mrs. Deagle’s cats’ names, or the horror story about Christmas and the chimney), so both the casual viewer and the rabid fan are all well rewarded here.

For crying out loud, watching two hundred little green sociopaths cheerfully singing along to Hi Ho, It’s Home From Work We Go from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is cool on an order of magnitude beyond most anything at the theaters today.

There’s a lot more that can be said about Gremlins, but it boils down to one critical point–it’s hilarious, it’s scary, and it’s just about anything you could want in a movie.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale gets to do something it hasn’t had the chance to do lately, and busts out a whopping ten out of ten for this freaky, funny Christmas story gone horribly awry.