Advertisement

'Gremlins' fans call out Tory MP over speech

Gizmo (Credit: Warner Bros)
Gizmo (Credit: Warner Bros)

If you’re going to use Gremlins as a metaphor, you’d better be getting the plot right.

Sadly, this has not proved to be the case for chief secretary to the treasury Liz Truss, who, bizarrely, is being taken to task online over evoking Gizmo in a recent speech.

In attacking environment secretary Michael Gove’s recent announcement to ban plastic straws and curbing the use of wood-burning stoves, Truss used a number of filmic references, among them Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

But it’s the Gremlins reference which she’s being pulled up on, and rightly so.

“Those familiar with the 1984 film Gremlins will recall how the cute Gizmo, when fed after midnight, turned into a slime-soaked baddie Stripe,” she said, accusing Gove of heavy handedness in policy.

Stripe (Credit: Warner Bros)
Stripe (Credit: Warner Bros)

“In much the same way, there’s a tendency for governments and bureaucracy to multiply and exert further control. And before you know it, gremlins are everywhere.

“There is a temptation to feed these creatures after midnight.”

Perhaps she’d seen the film recently, which brought it to mind, but if so, she clearly hadn’t been paying careful enough attention to the plot.

As anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the plot of Gremlins will tell you, Gizmo does NOT turn into Stripe. The multiplying part, as hackneyed a metaphor as it is, we can deal with. But not the flagrant factual inaccuracy.

Take it away Twitter…

With her birthday coming up next month, maybe someone needs to sort her the Blu-ray.

Read more
Michael Douglas calls out Hollywood sexism
The Trump jokes in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Roseanne Barr says she’s ‘lost everything’