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Midnight Mutant's "Grandpa" and Gremlins


FroggoGamer

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I was just watching Gremlins 2 today, haven't seen that movie in decades. It came out 1990, the same year Midnight Mutants. It got me thinking if the game and the movie had any tie ins at all or if one had any influences in the game. I'm probably stretching here but it is just a few interesting coincidences. In Gremlins 2, there's a "Grandpa Fred" who is doing a cable access Elvira type TV show, and he uses the Gremlins in a sense to spice up the show. Also, the name Midnight Mutants could even be a play on the Gremlins, as the Gremlins could be described as mutants, and in the second movie, the gremlins themselves drink a variety of potions that mutated them in a variety of ways. One of the main bosses in the game appears as Dracula, while Christopher Lee, who actually played Dracula in the Hammer films, played a mad scientist in the film.

 

It could be just one big coincidence but it'd be cooler if it wasn't.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don't think there were any real, intentional connections between the two. I haven't seen Gremlins 2 in forever, but Robert Prosky's Grandpa Fred and his show were very possibly inspired by Al Lewis' Super Scary Saturday horror & sci-fi movie showcase on TBS, which ran from 1987 to 1989.

I posted this in another thread recently, but Al Lewis' visibility was somewhat high in the late-80s and early-90s (relatively speaking, of course). Besides the ever-present Munsters reruns and TBS horror hosting gig, he also hosted movies for a budget video company (1, 2), had his own NYC restaurant, and I'm sure that was all in addition to the usual public appearances/autograph signings you'd expect of a celebrity of his stature. I'd imagine he was recognizable enough to kids to make licensing his image for Midnight Mutants make sense, and since everyone knows who Grandpa Fred was based on, yeah, I think it really just boils down to enough people knowing who Al Lewis was at the time.

 

Everything else, from the gremlins/mutants thing to Christopher Lee, just seems like a stretch to connect the two properties where no connection exists (beyond the Al Lewis "Grampa" character himself).

Edited by King Atari
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