Why gremlins is an ingenious screenplay, AKA Chris Columbus , WTF?!

OK, so i'm watching Gremlins with the crew a week ago, and enjoying reliving my childhood with a nice kids flick from the 80's (coincidentally released the year of my birth), and all is going well. I'm laughing at the 80's power suits, the special effects are sufficiently half-assed, and the haircuts are definately worth the price I paid for the disc ($14.95 for both Gremlins 1 & 2, it would have been a crime not to snatch it up).
As a complete aside, I was IMDBing Gremlins, to get some charector names, and one of the ads has possibly the best lead-off line I have ever read... "Ready for some Piranha action, in 3D?"
Hell yes I am!
So back to Gremlins, around 30 minutes in, Billy and Kate (the romantic teenage leads) are strolling through the city, and it's clear to anyone with even a modicum of screenwriting knowledge that the ensuing scene will be laying some emotional pipe. It will be a fleshing out of the charectors, we will learn where they stand in the world from 3 or 4 lines of dialogue, which is usually all you need from someone anyway, most people are pretty vacuous.
So it becomes clear by the end of this scene that Kate is not a fan of Christmas, in fact quite opposed to it, as highlighted by the line "while most people are opening up presents, some people are opening up a vein."
Wow. Really? in a PG movie? we can say "opening up a vein" in a movie aimed at under 12s? Awesome. Now how about we have Paddington Bear on the cover of his next book sitting in a squat, on a dirty mattress, with one wellington off and his toe on the trigger of a shotgun. Back cover, brains and blood splattered on the filthy wall, with little bits of yellow plastic from his rain hat stuck throughout.
But that isn't even the harshest part of gremlins. This is dead set, no doctoring, straight out of the movie, around 1 hour in.



That's right, Kate hates Christmas because she found her father dead in the chimney, dressed as Santa Claus.
Now, let's just take that in, in all it's disgusting glory. First of all, you have to think of the heartache that was caused by her father not showing up for Christmas. Then there's the weeks of agonising waiting, wondering if he's OK, worndering what happened. And you have to think that there was some point when Kate and her mother must have considered the possiblilty he was having an affair, adding a real sense of abandonment (as well as male trust issues) to the whole thing.
Then, in the middle of all of this, they get the cleaners in to sort out a problem with their chimney, AND FIND THEIR DEAD, DECOMPOSED, STINKY FATHER/HUSBAND DRESSED AS SANTA CLAUS STUCK IN THE CHIMNEY.
Holy crap, that shit is fantastic! Tarantino couldn't have come up with something as gruesome as that. And to have the whole story delivered from a cute teenager playing with a destroyed Christmas tree makes it feel like something out of The Shining.
And then, when it couldn't get any creepier, you have the whole thing rammed home with the capper of "and that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus". Like that is the major issue. Forget you found your father in the chimney, probably had to watch while they got a crane in from the nearest construction site to drag his rotting carcass out of your chimney, maybe it broke after they got it out and your fathers legs went smacking off the roof onto your trampline and bounced around for a while like that bear that gets tranquilised on Youtube, the major issue is definately that that night ruined your childhood illusion of Santa Claus.
And as a last note, how did that ever pass muster with the suits at the studio?
Did not one person say "yeah Steven, love the movie, gremlins are cute, actors are fine, but whats with the dead father in the chimney? That's a little dark there, bud. Is everything OK at home with Chris? No marriage troubles?
Might want to think about a rewrite".
Peace,
Broke