The movie Gremlins occurred during a time when horror and comedy was becoming increasingly popular. Long before the movie, the popular children’s author, Roald Dahl, coined the term “Gremlins” after publishing a book titled The Gremlins in 1943, based on the mischievous creatures, even Walt Disney wanted to create a movie in which Bugs Bunny battled the little beasts.
It wasn’t until the creator of the movie Gremlins, Chris Columbus, conceived the idea from his loft from sounds of mice scurrying around making him feel uneasy, hence a screen play was born, one that was never meant to be turned into a film until Spielberg got his hands on it. The movie become an instant classic, surrounding Gizmo as the main character whose voice was that of Howie Mandel, the Canadian comedian, host and actor. The other well-known actor in the film was Corey Feldman as Pete Fountaine, who prior to Gremlins acted in commercials, therefore this role gave him early acting credentials within his youth.
Anyone who was raised in the 80′s would have found this movie to be a part of their collection and remains a movie classic till this day.
From Wikipedia:
The notion of gremlins was first conceived during World War II, when mechanical failures in aircraft were jokingly blamed on the small monsters. The term “gremlins” also entered popular culture as children’s author Roald Dahl published a book called The Gremlins in 1943, based on the mischievous creatures.[3] (Walt Disney considered making a film of it. A Bugs Bunny cartoon of the era has him battling a gremlin on an airplane.) Joe Dante had read The Gremlins, and said that the book was of some influence on his film. In 1983, Dante publicly distanced his work from earlier films, explaining, “Our gremlins are somewhat different—they’re sort of green and they have big mouths and they smile a lot and they do incredibly, really nasty things to people and enjoy it all the while”.[4][5]