A terrified monkey helped settle how Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984) would bring its creatures to life. During a test with a Gremlin head, the animal ran around the editing room and defecated on everything, Dante recalled.
The production needed to create plenty of creatures on a tight budget. With stop-motion already ruled out, the team considered putting monkeys in Gremlin suits. A trainer brought in a rhesus monkey to try the idea.
“We actually did get a monkey and put a head on him and watched him careen around the editing room, pooping on everything in terror,” Dante said in 2014. “We decided it wasn’t really going to work out.”
Creature effects designer Chris Walas, who’d been advocating for puppets, identified Dante as the person behind the monkey proposal in 2024. Dante confirmed it: “It’s hard to believe, but yes, it is true.”
The test settled the decision in favor of puppets. As Walas recalled: “That pretty quickly convinced Joe to go with my line of thinking, which was puppets.”
