A 3-hour rough cut of Gremlins has been discovered
A surprise recovery from Joe Dante
Head on over to The Gremlins Museum Collection site for a full story on a recent amazing discovery for fans of the Gremlins movies! The curator of the site revealed that this month, he was speaking to Chris Walas, who created the Gizmo and Gremlin effects for the original 1984 film. Walas would reveal that the famous Dorry’s Tavern sequence in the movie (which featured the titular creatures running amok and bending the rules of reality into fun, cartoony sight gags) originally featured 20 minutes of material, in which director Joe Dante could pick and choose from for the final cut.
This prompted the curator to ask Dante himself about the existence of a rough cut. Dante would eventually uncover two VHS tapes and send them to the curator. One tape was labeled “11/23/83 – Gremlins 1st Assembly” and one was labeled “Gremlins outtakes.” Dante had noted that he wasn’t exactly sure what all was on the outtakes video tape, but he invited the curator to take a look anyway.
A rough 3-hour assembly cut
The curator was no doubt presented with a holy grail for Gremlins fans and, God bless him, he will somehow be sharing his findings with the fans with a digital remastering of the material. According to the site, the footage from the VHS tape includes “longer and alternative takes, deleted plot points, larger character arcs, raw camera audio with animatronic puppet sounds, and a movie which at times has a completely different feel. Creature sounds are largely temporary, far removed from the polished, iconic voices later provided by performers such as Howie Mandel, Frank Welker, and Mark Dodson. The rough cut total runtime clocks in at 2 hours and 35 minutes, an almost hour longer than the final theatrical cut.”
Meanwhile, the outtakes VHS is said to contain approximately 40 minutes of deleted and alternate material. The site announced, “Some of these moments overlap with the rough cut, while others are entirely unique sequences written and filmed but cut before the assembly stage. Scenes long rumored to exist such as Barney knocking over Mrs. Deagle’s snowman and full mogwai walking shots are confirmed here for the first time.”
What’s next?
The curator has teased the editing of the digitized footage. The video is straight-up VHS quality, but luckily, it’s still very watchable. The audio is another story. According to the site, the audio is VERY rough. With large parts of the dialogue incredibly inaudible. While the raw track would’ve been replaced in post-production, the curator is doing their best at remastering the sound with some foley and ambience, and arranging the existing Jerry Goldsmith score to fit the scenes.
The big question is, how will people get to see this when completed? The curator makes sure to note that the footage was personally gifted to him by Dante, but it’s still a Warner Bros. property and not his to share. Walas and the film’s star, Zach Galligan, are interested in special screenings of the “Screening Rough Cut” and if Warner Bros. wishes, they could possibly include it on a future Blu-ray release as an extra feature. Unfortunately for now, we can only wait and see.
However, the curator of the museum is updating the page, as he goes, to include details of the extended footage, so check it out!
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