Gremlin

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This article is about the fictional creature. For other uses of the name, see Gremlin (disambiguation).

A gremlin is a mythological mischievous creature. Gremlins are depicted as mechanically oriented and extremely devious.

The concept of the Gremlins as responsible for sabotaging aircraft is first recorded among airmen of Britain's Royal Air Force during World War II, in particular the men of the high altitude Photographic Reconnaissance Units (PRU) of RAF Benson, RAF Wick and RAF St Eval. The story attempted to explain the accidents which often occurred during their flights.

[edit] The gremlin in popular culture

The lore of the gremlin sometimes known as gremal was first published in issue 13 of the servicemen's fortnightly Royal Air Force Journal dated April 18, 1942 [1] although that article states the stories had been in existence for several years, and there are later recollections of it having been told by Battle of Britain Spitfire pilots as early as 1940.[2] The author of the first article was Hubert Griffith. Later sources have sometimes claimed that the concept goes back to World War I, but there is no print evidence of this.

Children's author Roald Dahl would have been familiar with the story of the gremlins, having carried out his military service in the 80th squadron of the Royal Air Force in the Middle East. Dahl had his own experience in an accidental crash-landing in the Libyan Desert. He recovered and briefly resumed serving in Greece and Syria but his frequent headaches soon caused him to be relieved of active duty. In January, 1942 he was transferred to Washington, DC as Assistant Air Attache. There he eventually authored his novel The Gremlins, in which he described male gremlins as "widgets" and females as "fifinellas". He showed the finished manuscript to Sidney Bernstein, the head of the British Information Service. Sidney reportedly came up with the idea to send it to Walt Disney.

The manuscript arrived in Disney's hands in July, 1942 and he considered using it as material for a film. The film project never materialised but Disney managed to have the story published in the December, 1942 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. About half a year later a revised version of the story was published in a picture book published by Random House. The book is going to be republished in 2006 by Dark Horse Comics. Thanks mainly to Disney, the story had its share of publicity which helped in introducing the concept to a wider audience. Issues #33-#41 of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories published between June, 1943 and February, 1944 contained a nine-episode series of short silent stories featuring a Gremlin Gus as their star. The first was drawn by Vivie Risto and the rest of them by Walt Kelly. This served as their introduction to the comic book audience.

Falling Hare (1943), in which a gremlin torments Bugs Bunny

It was at this point Robert Clampett created his 1943 Bugs Bunny film, Falling Hare. With Disney's film being the inspiration, this short has been one of the early Gremlin stories shown to cinema audiences.

Bugs is featured as relaxing at an air field, reading the book Victory Through Hare Power and is amused when the book mentions gremlins, accusing them of "diabolical sabotage". Bugs then hears (and feels) odd clanking sounds which upon investigation reveal a gremlin trying to detonate a blockbuster bomb with a mallet. Bugs pursues the gremlin aboard a bomber which is then put into uncontrolled flight by the gremlin. Bugs tries to keep the plane from crashing even as he is violently assaulted by the gremlin at every turn.

The Bugs Bunny cartoon was followed in 1944 by Russian Rhapsody, another short showing Russian gremlins sabotaging an aircraft piloted by Adolf Hitler.

Nightmare at 20,000 feet (1963)

A 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" directed by Richard Donner, featured gremlins in this "aviation monster" sense, as William Shatner was a passenger watching helplessly as the creature attacked the plane. This episode was remade as a segment of 1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie, in which John Lithgow played the passenger watching in terror as the gremlin ripped apart one of the passenger jet's engines in mid-flight (the shared experience would be alluded to when Shatner guest-starred on Lithgow's television series 3rd Rock from the Sun in 1999) . The 1993 "Treehouse of Horror IV" episode of The Simpsons included a segment titled "Terror at 5½ Feet", an obvious parody of the Twilight Zone episode. In the segment, Bart Simpson played Shatner's role, watching as a gremlin worked at removing the bus's left rear wheel.

A promotional poster for Gremlins.

A movie called Gremlins, directed by Joe Dante, was released in 1984, followed by the sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch in 1990. The gremlins in these movies had nothing obvious to do with aircraft in particular (though one of the characters makes a reference to the myth), although they were portrayed as adept at subverting or sabotaging mechanical systems, especially in the second movie which took place in a high-tech office tower. This building has talking elevators and all sort of contraptions that often malfunction. Also, a reference to the earlier mythologies was mentioned in the first film. In the films, gremlins are creatures that originally start out as cute animals called mogwai. The fact that Gremlins mess with machinery harks back to the old myths.

In a 1990 episode of Tiny Toons titled Journey to the Center of Acme Acres the main cast encounters few subterranean dwelling gremlins which bared a striking (only recolored) resemblence to the gremlin in Falling Hare who also possessed the same michievious disposition (at least when Monty stole the world's largest gold nugget which belonged to them originally).

[edit] Other gremlin references

In 1943, the Buster Brown shoe company sponsored a radio show entitled "Smilin' Ed McConnell and the Buster Brown Shoe Gang" which featured a mischievous character named "Froggy the Gremlin."[3] The show moved to TV in 1950 as "Smilin' Ed's Gang"; when host Ed McConnell died in 1955, he was replaced for one season by Andy Devine and the show renamed "Andy's Gang". Froggy was portrayed by a rubber puppet.
In the fantasy world of Orc Magazine Gremlins are one of the six different green-skinned races that collectively call themselves "Orcs". Gremlins, who live in the world of "Orc Magazine", are described as having green scaly skin, sharp teeth, hairless monkey-like bodies and large pointy ears. They lay eggs that are covered with a sticky substance that is highly toxic to most animals. While Gremlins are mute and behave like primitive animals, they posses photographic memories and are capable of drawing photo-realistic pictures. Gremlins also excel at other forms of art such as painting, music, sculpture, wood carving, etc...
In the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game system, the Gremlin (and several variations) appear as diminuitive humanoid monsters with varying degrees of motivation to cause mayhem and mischief. In some variations they have a magical aura which ensures that all things that can go wrong will.
George Harrison is known to have had a jokey belief in "wilburys", which were gremlin-like creatures that allegedly interfered with recording equipment, led to the name of his super-group, the Traveling Wilburys.
Artist LeRoy Neiman created the "Femlin," a tiny nude female cartoon character who appears on the "Party Jokes" page of Playboy magazine.[4]
In the early 1970s, the American Motor Company (AMC, which was purchased by Dodge/Chrysler in the 1980s) produced a compact hatchback called the Gremlin.
In the 1974 Robert Calvert album, Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters, Arthur Brown vocalised the "The Song of the Gremlin," in which the creature claims that it "focused the magnifying glass that brought the downfall of Icarus."
In the episode Don't Forget the Motor City (1987), The Real Ghostbusters have to battle an army of gremlins that have taken over a Detroit auto plant. They succeed in trapping the creatures in a glass cage with a car that keeps changing form, thus preventing them from destroying it.
A gremlin of the war-time variety appears in a scene of the 1991 TV movie Cast a Deadly Spell.
While Roald Dahl was famous for making gremlins known world wide, many returning Air Servicemen swear they saw creatures tinkering with their equipment. One crewman swore he saw one before an engine malfunction that caused his B-25 Mitchell bomber to rapidly lose altitude, forcing the aircraft to return to base. Critics of this idea state that the stress of combat and the dizzying heights caused such hallucinations, often believed to be a coping mechanism of the mind to help explain the many problems aircraft faced whilst in combat.
In the twisted comedy, Dead Like Me,"Gravelings", the creatures that cause death to happen are evil creatures based on gremlins.
The TV series American Dragon: Jake Long featured gremlins in the episode "Jake Takes The Cake".
In Mahou Sentai Magiranger one of the monsters the heroes face is a Hades Beastman named Garim who is in fact a gremlin. This monster is reused in Power Rangers and is named Jester the Pester.
The Gremlin is the name of a one of the Incredible Hulk's foes from Marvel Comics.
Gremlin is Monster in My Pocket #35. He was allied with the good monsters in the first issue and then disappeared, apparently replaced with Hobgoblin in the second. In the video game, he was the boss of the stage 4 construction site. He stood on the hook of a crane and threw balls. If defeated while in motion, he was flung a great distance.
The buzz droids featured in the film Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith were said by George Lucas to have been inspired by the concept of Gremlins.
An episode of 7 Days involves a creature that is thought by the characters to be a gremlin. It was accidentally picked up during a backstep and proceeded to destroy the sphere. It was also capable of manipulating time and people's perceptions of time, making one character move extremely fast (without the ability to slow down) and making the main character suffer from temporary slow movement through time (he precieved a test as being conducted at hyper speed and another test that was supposed to be 30 minutes long seemed to last 30 seconds). It was theorized that this creature (or more of its kind) were the inspiration for tales of gremlins and for the strange time fluxuations often cited as occurring in the Bermuda Triangle.
An episode of Ben 10 featured creatures called Megawhatts, These playful little creatures which look like balls of light and like to play tricks on people and destroy electronics could be Gremlins or Foo Fighters.
In the roguelike computer game ADOM, gremlins are monsters that multiply on water and are extremely sensitive to light. Also, items called "fluff balls" turn into gremlins when exposed to sources of water.