Joe Dante is probably the best director of big-budget family comedies that Hollywood's ever had, with utterly delightful - and frequently hilarious - results coming from virtually everything he's ever made.  He worked with Pino Donaggio for a while - on the hilariously naff Piranha and The Howling - before being forced to work with Jerry Goldsmith on Twilight Zone: The Movie - and he hasn't looked back since, employing Goldsmith for every theatrical film he's made.  Their first collaboration together after Twilight Zone was Gremlins, which remains Dante's most popular movie (though I wouldn't say it's his best by any means) - everyone who was anyone in the 1980s saw it and remembers the delightful story of how a cute little critter bought as a Christmas present from a strange merchant in Chinatown spawns evil offspring who cause mischief wherever they go.  It has some wonderful moments in the movie - especially the now-infamous stairlift scene - and allowed Dante to gently parody the kind of sweet kids' movies that were (and still are) the norm - presumably with Executive Producer Steven Spielberg not quite realising - and pay homage to a variety of pieces of classic cinema.

Goldsmith's score is unlike anything he has written either before or since.  A combination of wicked humour (totally belying the recently-developed idea that the best way to score riotous comedy was with dead-straight music), thrilling action and touching tenderness, it's one of his most instantly-endearing works.  Overtly melodic from start to finish, it features more strong themes than most film composers muster in their entire careers.  From the wonderful opening fanfare to the picture of suburban bliss, with delightful pizzicato strings (a staple of opening scenes in Goldsmith/Dante collaborations) in "Late for Work", to the hilarious synth theme for "Mrs Deagle", the old bag, to the Prokofiev-inspired action motif of "Gizmo Saves the Day", to the twee and endearing "Gizmo Theme", to the absolutely rollicking "Gremlins Rag", this is a score with yet another delight waiting around every single corner.

The most instantly-striking aspect of the score is Goldsmith's integration of synths.  While the action sequences and some other parts are scored reasonably straight with a standard orchestra, for much of the score Goldsmith relied heavily on synthesisers; some pieces are played almost entirely by synths.  The composer managed to extract sounds out of the electronics that could never be produced by real instruments - from the almost whistle-like effect for Gizmo himself to the slight air of flatulence for Mrs Deagle to the wailing cat incorporated every now and again - it's clear Goldsmith just had a riot with this one.

The end title piece, the "Gremlin Rag", is justifiably one of Goldsmith's most famous themes.  Performed here entirely by synths, it's so joyously silly and yet so wonderfully catchy that it's difficult to think of anything that could come close to matching it as Goldsmith's best theme for a family movie.  You couldn't forget it once you've heard it and it's cropped up in numerous unexpected places - rather bizarrely, it was the piece that my high school wind band practiced over and over again, every week.

The one bad thing about Gremlins is that you can't buy it.  A rather poor soundtrack album was released by Geffen Records at the time of the film, featuring only 16 minutes of Goldsmith's brilliant score, but you won't find that anywhere today.  A bootleg was released on Mogwai Records along with Goldsmith's score for Dante's section of Twilight Zone: The Movie, with reasonable enough sound, but if there's a Goldsmith score out there that's just crying out for a Deluxe Edition treatment from the Varese CD Club, well, this one's it.  Unbeatable comedy music. 

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