On Movies & Movie Collecting: My Copy of ‘Gremlins’ is On Its Way!

Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s midday – or nearly so – here in Lithia, Florida, on Thursday, June 2,2022. It is a hot, steamy early summer day in the Tampa Bay area. The current temperature is 86°F (30°C) under mostly sunny skies. With humidity at 63% and the wind blowing from the east at 8 MPH (13 KM/H), the feels-like temperature is 90°F (32°C). Today’s forecast is a repeat of yesterday’s: We can expect thunderstorms to pass through our area, and the high will be 91°F (33°C). Tonight, scattered rain showers will be around, and the low will be 70°F (21°C).

As I write this, my multiformat “combo” pack with Gremlins is marked as Out for Delivery. According to the tracking history on Amazon, the package was placed in an Amazon Prime delivery van at the distribution center in Seffner at 11:24 AM Eastern. If the weather does not get too nasty – the forecast calls for thunderstorms, but Hillsborough is a large county, so just because thunderstorms might form in Tampa, Lutz, or Zephyrhills, it does not follow that Seffner, Brandon, or Bloomingdale will be affected – and traffic is not too heavy, I might receive my package with Gremlins before 6 PM.

Right now, Amazon gives me an estimated delivery time of “before 10 PM today.”  It’s been my experience with Amazon Prime deliveries that packages usually arrive well before that cutoff time; except in a few anomalous situations when a driver leaves an order in his or her vehicle and forgets to drop it off here, the latest I’ve seen a scheduled delivery is between 7 and 8 PM. As the day progresses and the driver updates the progress of his/her deliveries, that vague “before 10 PM” will morph into something like “between 1 PM and 5 PM.”

I have not seen Gremlins since I watched it once or maybe twice during its theatrical run in 1984. I remember I liked it, but as is the case with so many movies that I watched when I was younger (especially as a teenager and young adult), I never felt compelled to buy it on any format, not even on VHS. I do not recall watching it on cable, either. But I do recall that it is wickedly funny and that I bought the novelization back in 1984. I just did not love it enough to buy it on VHS back in the day – videocassettes were pricey still then, and I tend to only buy movies that I really love or want to see because I missed them for X, Y, Z reasons – and never bothered to buy in any other format.

Until, of course, now.

I need to “grow” the Comedy section of my Blu-ray collection. Including Gremlins, comedy, and its various subgenres (dark humor, romantic comedy, comedy-drama) only account for 3.3% of my Blu-ray collection. That’s just a shade under the 3.4% for War, but Comedy is in 10^th place on my Genre Distribution chart on My Collection page on Blu-ray.com. (The top-ranked genre is, no surprise, Adventure, which tops the distribution chart at 14.9% of all my Blu-ray titles.)

I figured that since I have not seen Gremlins in 38 years, this film – which I believe was Chris Columbus’ debut as a screenwriter – would be an ideal choice. It has science fiction/fantasy, horror, and dark humor elements, plus Steven Spielberg executive produced it.

What’s not to like, right?

Anyway, regardless of what time my package arrives, unless my Amazon delivery driver is incompetent or something drastically tragic occurs, I’ll probably be watching Gremlins later this afternoon or early in the evening.

For those of you who like the technical specifications of Blu-ray releases, here are the ones for the 2019 Warner Home Entertainment release from 2019:

Video

• Codec: HEVC / H.265 (62.16 Mbps)
• Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
• HDR: HDR10
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Audio

• English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
• French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
• German: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
• Italian: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
• Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
• Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
• Czech: Dolby Digital 2.0
• Hungarian: Dolby Digital 2.0
• Russian: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0
• Note: Spanish 5.1=Castillian, Spanish 2.0=Latin, Japanese is hidden

Subtitles

• English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Japanese, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Russian, Swedish, Thai
• Note: Spanish=Latin & Castillian; Japanese is hidden

Discs

• 4K Ultra HD
• Blu-ray Disc
• Two-disc set (1 BD-66, 1 BD-50)

Digital

• Digital copy expired
• Digital 4K
• Movies Anywhere

Packaging

• Slipcover in original pressing

Playback

• 4K Blu-ray: Region free
• 2K Blu-ray: Region free

Well, I don’t have much in the way of personal news; I had a rough night – sleep-wise – and woke up a bit later than usual this morning. I’m tired and have a bit of a headache, so I’m not particularly interested in writing about anything more substantive than a new addition to my Blu-ray collection.

So, until next time, Dear Reader, adios. Stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.

Unless, of course, it’s raining.