Joe Dante’s 1984 horror comedy Gremlins never spawned much of a franchise. In addition to a tremendous amount of tie-in merchandise, there’s been one live-action sequel, and an additional animated series on Max. Other than that, however, the brand has remained dormant. What some fans might not know, however, is that Gremlins actually appears to be part of a larger shared universe of films.
As mentioned, the core Gremlins franchise consists of Gremlins, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, and the animated series Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai. But it’s during the final few minutes of the original film that something quite surprising happens. Of course, you’ll have to be a fan of Joe Dante’s earlier film, The Howling, to catch the reference.
Actor James McKrell had a small role in The Howling as Lew Landers. The character is a reporter shown through several scenes in the 1981 film. It’s a role that McKrell would then reprise towards the end of Gremlins. Lew Landers can be spotted on Billy’s living room television set, reporting the events that just transpired. It seems as though he moved from The Howling’s Los Angeles setting to an area closer to Kingston Falls – New York, perhaps. And considering the ending of The Howling, it’s not surprising he’d want to move.
Now this more or less places The Howling (and potentially its many sequels) in the same universe as Gremlins. Interestingly, however, there’s still more to uncover. The Howling features a scene where characters Terri and Chris investigate Eddie Quist’s apartment. His walls are lined with newspaper headlines of all sorts of grotesque varieties. One of these headlines reads as follows: “DEATH BY MAN-EATING PIRANHAS.” It doesn’t take much to associate this with Dante’s first feature, Piranha.
Now we have Piranha, The Howling, Gremlins, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, and Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai set in the same world of monsters and magic. If that’s not enough, however, Dante’s later film Explorers seals the deal. Joe Dante’s troubled 1985 film about kids-turned-space-explorers is a fun and flawed little movie. It also includes a newspaper gag with several headlines that seem to further connect the aforementioned films.
The kids gather to read a newspaper which highlights their spacecraft as a possible “UFO Scare” or “Swamp Gas.” One of the other headlines is a clear reference to Gremlins: “Kingston Falls ‘Riot’ Still Unexplained.” Fans of the movie know that there was no riot. It was, of course, the work of gremlins. An additional headline sports a much more subtle reference to The Howling: “Arson Suspected in Colony Spa Blaze.” This refers to the werewolf colony being set on fire at the end of The Howling.
Overall, Joe Dante tends to share his love of cinema by planting all sorts of Easter eggs in his movies. The original Gremlins alone has its own gags referencing films like The Time Machine and Forbidden Planet. But it’s certainly fun for fans to connect the dots and conceive their own timeline for how films like Piranha, The Howling, and Gremlins can all co-exist in a single universe.