Despite the studio wanting to cut the scene, director Joe Dante, alongside producer Steven Spielberg, vehemently opposed its removal because it was Dante’s favorite part of the film. It was also Christopher Columbus’ favorite moment in “Gremlins,” but as the screenwriter he had less sway in the decision-making process. According to Columbus in his Yahoo! interview, it took Spielberg and Dante’s stature and rallying for the scene’s importance to persuade Warner Bros. to keep the speech.
The Christmas story had drawn controversy before. Columbus clarifies to Yahoo! that the monologue was not taken from an urban legend, as one might initially believe. Instead, it was inspired by Gahan Wilson’s cartoon from Playboy in 1964 (via The Washington Post). The cartoon depicts a chimney worker informing a shocked middle-aged couple, “Well, we found out what’s been clogging your chimney since last December, Miss Emmy.” Santa Claus lies on the bottom, his belly no longer a bowl full of jelly but brittle bones, causing his red suit to melt into the ground. His skeletal face is slack-jawed and has hollow, black eye sockets. It’s an incredibly eerie image. Wilson had told The Washington Post he received “more angry mail than anything I ever did. You can mess around with religion, but when you kill off Santa Claus, there’s an uproar. You never know.”
Even when only spoken of in “Gremlins,” the gruesome Christmas tragedy has a devastating impact. But despite how unsettling it is, the scene carries a meaningful message that the holiday season does not always have to be joyous and is often a profoundly painful time for so many people. Without this scene, “Gremlins” might not have left as lasting an impression as a truly twisted and offbeat Christmas movie.