As Secrets Of The Mogwai streaks up to the halfway point with the speed of that Lightning Gremlin from Gremlins 2, I was hoping that the show might pull out something special to mark the fact that we’re already 50% through the season just to put this already awesome show over the top.
Hey, guess what? Somehow how it did it!
In an effort to fill out the mystical, untapped world that the Mogwai and Gremlins exist in, the show’s writers have been taking little pieces of Chinese andother asian cultures and mixing them with references to other fantasy movies that’s resulted in a colourful rogues gallery while the Gremlins work up their threat levels. As a result, Riley Green somewhat resembles a western Lo Pan from Big Trouble In Little China, the scheming Meng Po had a touch of Yubaba from Spirited Away and the shapeshifting Odd-Odd felt reminiscent of Chinese theatre – however, the coolest reference is yet to come, as with the luridly titled Always Stab Or Run we get the mother of all Hong Kong, fantasy movie references. The frickin’ Hopping Undead!
After reuniting after evading the mind wiping tea of Meng Po, Gizmo, Sam and Elle make it to the aptly named Spooky Forrest detailed in Grampa Wing’s journals. It’s a certainly fitting description as the constant mist and skeletal trees definately give of a palpable, “spooky” vibe, but it’s not the unnerving surroundings, or even a random, knife wielding bandit that’s going to cause them touble – no, it’s the horde of hopping vampires/zombies known as the Jiangxsi (or Jiāngshī, if you’re super anal about these things) that suddenly bear down on them and turn the hapless Bandit into one of their own.
Now suddenly stuck in a zombie scenario, our heroes find that Grampa’s earlier warnings of “always stab or run” were only half accurate as stabbing actually does very little and they speedily take the George Romero route and hole up in a nearly, dilapidated house. It’s here that they meet the decidedly strange Randish (who is human) and his companion, Theodore (who is, in fact, a radish) who has been hiding out from the Jiangxsi for a bit too long.
Meanwhile, on Riley Green’s boat, the Gremlins, led by their leader, Claw, has escape confinement, multiplied thanks to a handy toilet and attempted to take over the ship, murdering the captain, throwing all the henchmen overboard and generally screwing up the other escape attempt that Sam’s kidnapped parents, Fong and Hon were trying to put into action. Defending themselves against the frenzied attacks of various giggling, green, dickwads, the villainous Green finally figures out how to control the Gremlins as it seems that Claw actually has a desire to take the boat and see the world. Ergo, something that Green can use to strike a deal.
So, let’s get straight to addressing the hopping, fanged, elephant in the room that is the fortuitous nature that I now live in the period of Earth’s history when a Gremlins cartoon intersects with two of my favorite kung-fu movies of all time. I have been a gargantuan fan of both Sammo Hung’s Encounters Of The Spooky Kind and Ricky Lau’s Mr. Vampire for decades, so to see the hopping dead show up on the exact same episode as the Gremlins finally cut loose is something of a fantasy/horror jackpot for a guy like me.
Amusingly tweaking their origins to make this zombie plague born from a government bureaucrat who was so indecisive, he couldn’t even decide if he should stay dead, they’re even all kitted out in official garments from the Quing Dynasty, are resistant to all forms of punishment and can turn people like them with a scratch of their long fingernails. Simply put, for a kids cartoon version of the legend, they’re perfect (although some might gripe that once transformed, a victim becomes a carbon copy of the rest) and the show doesn’t even pull any punches as they’re (bloodlessly, of course) knifed, axed and in some cases, suffer some noticable severing of limbs in an effort to skoe them down. Those of you familiar with the Jiangxsi, will know that only a parchment scrawled with a certain blessing can freeze them in their tracks and I was delighted to also se me this is the case here as Sam, Giz and Elle do Lam Ching-ying proud and make like hus character from numerous kung-fu horror comedies.
However, while the introduction of the hopping dead into the Gremlins universe is incredibly cool, a call back to something more traditional to the orginal films us what puts episode five cleanly over the top and it’s the survival attempts to Wing’s parents in the face of a rapidly growing Gremlin horde that seals the deal.
When I first heard that Secrets Of The Mogwai was going into production, I struggled to wonder what an animated Gremlin rampage in a children’s TV show could possibly look like, assuming that it simply couldn’t be done. Thank you Secrets Of The Mogwai for proving me wrong. While the brutality is obviously toned way down, that nasty edge is still there (Claw slashes the ship’s captain to death just to steal his hat) and it reaches its peak with Fong taking a leaf out of Lynn Peltzer’s handbook and obliterating Gremlins much in the style of that jaw dropping kitchen sequence from 1984. While watching Gremlins pop like green, zits in the face of a stolen wand that emits daylight, the true showstoppers are when one Gremlin gets doused with acid and awesomely melts down to the bone right in front of us and another gets pureed by getting hurled into a ceiling fan. Even the shot of Hon jabbing a grinding tool into the chest of a Gremlin evokes Lynn with the butcher knife and another shot that sees a creature burst against a porthole evokes that iconic microwave pop to perfection. The scene even throws in a killer running gag about Hon getting covered in variously different sprays of green goo from a variety of sources that he’s terrified is more acid.
If I had any lingering doubts about Secrets Of The Mogwai managing to correctly deliver an accurate (if age-appropriately toned down) approximation of the nastiness of the original films, it went out the window the second that Gremlin melted and on top of that, we get a kooky new friend in Radish, actual motivation for Claw (his schematics for trashing world monuments are adorable) and the continuing indignity for that liquefied vomit Gremlin who seems doomed to spend existence blinking from the confines of a jar.
A full (green) blooded episode that shows us exactly how much guts the show has – before spraying them from the blades of a ceiling fan.
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