IT was filmed in the summer, released in June and no one but the movie’s star thought it was going to be a hit.

But alongside the likes of Die Hard and Home Alone, Gremlins has become a bit of a Christmas classic.

It may be about monsters that run amok in small town America but with the snowy backdrop and festive lights, director Joe Dante once described it as It’s A Wonderful Life meets The Birds’.

Gremlins’ legacy lives on – more than three decades later – to such an extent that the film’s star Zach Galligan recently completed a tour of the UK’s cinemas for a series of special screenings.

He said: “It completely altered the trajectory of my life. I knew it was going to be a hit but if you had told me that almost 34 years later that it’d still be this cult film I would say that you were a crazy person.

“Following the rise of the internet, nerd culture has embraced the film and has decided it was one of the seminal movies of the 80s. And like Die Hard, with its Christmas setting, it has morphed from a summer movie into a Christmas movie.

“So now it’s become my generation’s It’s A Wonderful Life.”

Zach starred as Billy Peltzer when he was just 19 and it was his first major movie.

He got the part opposite Phoebe Cates when he impressed Steven Spielberg without even knowing it.

Zach added: “I’ve never had this confirmed by the man himself but Joe Dante said Spielberg watched the audition tape and, at the end, the scene was over but Joe didn’t call ‘cut’. So there was kind of one of those interesting three or four second periods where the director thinks: ‘Let’s see what these actors do’.

“I was shoulder-to-shoulder with Phoebe at the time. We were screen testing together and we were supposed to be facing forward kind of like two people walking down the street side-by-side.

“I didn’t know what to do when I ran out of lines so I put my head on her shoulder and sighed like: ‘Wow, look how lucky I am to have just done an audition with this beautiful woman’. Spielberg saw it and said: ‘Look at that, he’s already in love with her. No acting even needs to take place’.

“He got up and started to leave the room and Joe and Mike Finnell, the producer, said: ‘Where are you going?’ Steven was like: ‘I don’t need to see whoever is left on the tape. These two are perfect’.”

Zach started filming about a month later where he met the other big star of the movie – Gizmo.

Gizmo is one of the film’s mogwai, the cute, furry, seemingly harmless creatures that spawn the demonic gremlins.

The relationship between Billy and Gizmo is one of the key elements of the film so did animal lover Zach end getting attached to the creature despite it being a puppet?

Zach said: “I know people would like me to say yes but I’m not going to go that far because at the end of the day it really did seem mechanical.

“The only thing that really helps with the performance is the actor’s imagination and willingness to completely throw themself into story and willingly suspend disbelief.

“It’s no more difficult to hold an amazing mechanical creature in your hand that looks like an exotic pet than it is to pretend an actress you just met that morning is your wife. The creature I did form a bond with was the dog.

“He was a wonderful animal and they made me cuddle with him and give him treats for about an hour every day so that the dog would really like me.

“The dog’s name was Mushroom and probably the most heartbreaking thing about Gremlins was that when I said goodbye to him on the last day of shooting that was the last time I saw that animal after spending months with him.”

Mushroom was not the only dog that had an impact on the production.

Gizmo’s look was influenced by Steven Spielberg’s dog.

Zach added: “They did a lot of prototypes and Spielberg kept saying he didn’t like it.

“They got very frustrated and what they eventually noticed was that Spielberg had a dog, a King Charles cavalier spaniel, and so they made Gizmo that colour.

“They brought it to him and Spielberg says: ‘There you go. That’s perfect’.”

With all of its puppetry, Gremlins was also a classic example of a practical effects movie of the 80s before the CGI (computer-generated imagery) era.

Zach told Weekend: “I was amazed about the whole thing. This movie was probably the last time that filmmaking was really magical to me.

“I still love movies but they’re not magical to me because I simply know too much about how they are made.

“I was all excited about seeing special effects. The whole experience was mind blowing.

“It wasn’t hard to picture what it was going to look like on screen because Gizmo looked exactly like what I was holding in my hand.

“There was no CGI or embellishments of any kind. That’s why it has that feeling of reality as opposed to CGI which, to me, clearly looks like humans reacting to stuff that’s not there.”

Although Zach admits he is glad that the filmmakers did shelve their plans to use dressed up monkeys as gremlins. No, really.

He said: “I thought that was a myth but at the 30th anniversary reunion for Gremlins, Joe Dante confirmed it.

“They gave it a shot. They put them in gremlins costumes and thought they would behave in a certain way that was convincing and it was a disaster.”

Perhaps the film’s zany, experimental nature was why few involved thought it would be a success.

Zach added: “We had a 30th anniversary reunion about three years ago with Joe Dante, Chris Walas and Rick Baker and a bunch of people who had worked on the film.

“And much to dismay and somewhat surprise apparently I was one of the only people who really absolutely believed it was going to be a hit.

“Everyone else was a lot more sceptical. My view was that Spielberg had put his name prominently on the poster and it was clear that he really liked this project and wanted to be a part of it.

“Even though he wasn’t around much his involvement in it was pretty palpable.

“At the time, in the spring of 1983 when we did the movie, ET was one of the biggest movies. It was enormous.

“I just said if Gremlins does 20 per cent of what ET did it’s still going to be a massive hit.

“Spielberg had such a hot streak that I just couldn’t see 80 or 90 per cent of the people that liked his movies were just going to not show up.”

Now rumours persist that a new Gremlins film is on the cards, the first in more than 25 years.

Zach said: “It’s been written. I heard about that in August.

“I’ve been wanting to do it for a while if only to stop people asking me about it.

“Gremlins 2 really bombed so I think they were hesitant to revive the franchise because Hollywood is addicted to success and sneers at failure.

“I think it’s fair to say the internet revived interest in the project.”

  • Gremlins is available to watch this Christmas on Amazon's Prime Instant Video which is free for Prime customers