The Gremlins Characters: Gizmo, Stripe, and the Three Rules Nobody Follows
Keep him out of the light, especially sunlight. Don’t get him wet. And never, under any circumstances, feed him after midnight. Three rules, one small furry creature, and an entire Christmas Eve’s worth of chaos when a small town breaks all of them. Gremlins is a 1984 comedy horror film directed by Joe Dante, written by Chris Columbus, and executive produced by Steven Spielberg, starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday and Frances Lee McCain, with Howie Mandel voicing Gizmo. Here’s who was who in Kingston Falls, who played them, and the fact even devoted fans forget about opening weekend.
Gizmo (voiced by Howie Mandel)
The mogwai, and the only creature in the movie anyone actually likes. Struggling inventor Randall “Rand” Peltzer finds him in a Chinatown antique shop as a Christmas present for his son Billy; the shop owner, Mr. Wing, refuses to sell, but his grandson does it anyway, on the condition Rand remembers the three rules. Gizmo is friendly, docile, and completely incapable of following them once he’s out of Mr. Wing’s care.
What casual fans forget: Gizmo was almost the villain. Early drafts had no separate character named Stripe at all; Gizmo himself was supposed to transform into the lead gremlin. Spielberg overruled it, because he felt Gizmo was too cute to turn on the audience, and the character survived the whole movie exactly because a studio executive protected him from his own script.
Stripe (voiced by Frank Welker)
Named for the mohawk-like tuft of white fur on his head, Stripe is the aggressive gremlin who leads the rampage through Kingston Falls. He tricks Billy into feeding the mogwai after midnight by sabotaging his bedside clock, survives the movie theater gas explosion that kills the rest of his brood, and makes a run for a Montgomery Ward department store to spawn a fresh army before Gizmo finally exposes him to sunlight through a skylight.
What casual fans forget: Stripe wasn’t always meant to exist as a separate character. He’s the direct result of Spielberg’s Gizmo decision: once the studio decided the cute one couldn’t turn evil, the film needed a new character to carry the menace, and Stripe is what got written in to fill the gap.
Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) and Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates)
Billy works at the local bank in Kingston Falls, fears his dog Barney will be put down by the town’s widowed miser, and ends up the reluctant point man for a monster infestation he accidentally created. Kate is his co-worker and girlfriend, and the one who gets the film’s single darkest scene: her father disappeared one Christmas Eve when she was nine, was found dead in the family chimney days later, having broken his neck falling while dressed as Santa to surprise them. It’s why she hates the holidays, and it’s played completely straight in an otherwise cartoonish movie.
What casual fans forget: Corey Feldman is in this movie too, as Billy’s friend Pete Fountaine, the kid who accidentally spills water on Gizmo and starts the whole disaster. The same year Feldman was tormenting mogwai in Kingston Falls, he was also hunting pirate treasure as Mouth in The Goonies, though Goonies wouldn’t hit theaters until the following summer.
Rand and Lynn Peltzer, Mr. Wing, and the rest of Kingston Falls
Randall “Rand” Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) is Billy’s father, a struggling inventor whose gadgets never quite work, which is its own running joke against the one gift he brings home that works too well. Lynn Peltzer (Frances Lee McCain) is Billy’s mother, who ends up defending the house against a gremlin invasion solo while the family’s away. Mr. Wing (Keye Luke) is the antique shop owner who refuses to sell Gizmo in the first place and returns at the end to reclaim him, scolding the Peltzers for their carelessness before relenting when he sees the bond Gizmo has formed with Billy. And Ruby Deagle (Polly Holliday) is the miserly widow gunning to have Billy’s dog put down, whose fate during the gremlins’ rampage is one of the film’s more notoriously mean-spirited jokes.
Remember when a Chinese antique dealer’s grandson leaned in and warned Rand Peltzer, dead serious, “Keep him out of the light. He hates bright light. Especially sunlight, it’ll kill him. And keep him away from water. Don’t get him wet”? Every kid who saw this movie in a theater in 1984 repeated those rules to a sibling within the week, and got at least one of them wrong.
Why it endures
Gremlins opened June 8, 1984, the same day as Ghostbusters, and finished a close second that weekend, $12.5 million to Ghostbusters’ bigger number, before going on to gross $148.2 million domestically and $212.9 million worldwide against an $11 million budget. It was the fourth-highest-grossing film of 1984, behind only Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The violence in Gremlins and Temple of Doom, released the same summer, was blunt enough that Spielberg himself pushed the MPAA to create a new rating between PG and R. Two months later, PG-13 existed. A sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, followed in 1990, and a third film is set for release in November 2027, with Zach Galligan confirmed to return.
The honest bottom line
Gremlins gets filed as a cute Christmas movie because of Gizmo’s face on the poster, and then it spends its second half killing side characters with genuine cheerfulness. Both things are true at once, and that whiplash is the whole point: a movie that dared kids to fall in love with something adorable and then showed them exactly how fast adorable can turn on you. The rules were never really about a mogwai. They were about what happens the moment you stop following them.
FAQ
Who are the main Gremlins characters?
Gizmo and Stripe (the mogwai/gremlin, voiced by Howie Mandel and Frank Welker), Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan), Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates), and Billy’s parents Rand and Lynn Peltzer (Hoyt Axton and Frances Lee McCain).
What are the three Gremlins rules?
Keep the mogwai out of bright light, especially sunlight, which will kill it; never let it get wet; and never, ever feed it after midnight.
Is Gizmo a gremlin?
No. Gizmo is a mogwai, the friendly species Gremlins are spawned from when the rules get broken. Gizmo never becomes a gremlin himself in the original film.
Did Gremlins really create the PG-13 rating?
Steven Spielberg pushed for it after Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom both drew complaints for violence in a PG-rated summer; the MPAA created PG-13 within two months of Gremlins’ release.
Is there a Gremlins 3?
Yes. A third film is set for release November 19, 2027, as a direct sequel rather than a reboot, with Zach Galligan confirmed to return.
Meet the whole cast, mogwai included, on the Gizmo and the Gremlins deep dive, then see how the same summer’s box office race turned out for the other guys in our Ghostbusters characters guide. Every fact on this page is checked before it ships, here’s how that actually works.