Midnight At The Mall (Gremlins) | Mark Davies

Midnight At The Mall, limited edition artwork by Mark Davies.

Story Behind The Artwork

‘Gremlins’ was on my wish-list of pieces way back in 2016 when planning my first ‘Lost in Hollywood’ collection but it didn’t come to fruition as I wasn’t convinced that I had the concept to do it justice. Since then it has always been a case of timing, or bad timing. ‘Lost in Hollywood 2’ was released in April 2019 and the third instalment was in May 2020 and considering ‘Gremlins’ has achieved cult status as a Christmas film I always wanted to get it done at a time that it would resonate the strongest with all of my collectors who have pestered me for it! It’s kind of ironic actually as the film was released in June but sod it, it’s a Christmas film!

Bloody hell did I love Christmas as a kid, just genuine family time where the magic shone bright. One of the memories was circling which films we wanted to record to VHS from the ‘Radio Times’ magazine whilst cramming in the ‘Quality Streets’ and randomly ‘Eddy Grant’ playing in the background, an album that became a ‘must play’ each Christmas. I’ve just put it on now actually, the beauty of ‘Spotify’, no more dropping the needle and scratching my Mum’s vinyl!

Anyway, I’ve got a story to tell… I have set the scene within a retro shopping mall, a slight deviation to the department store but it’s always good to do something a bit different, bigger and brighter but ultimately darker. What you see is all hell breaking loose caused by a right little shit who started off all cute and then got fed at the wrong time and turned into a monster. Amongst the chaos there are some lovely details to seek out, ‘Rand Peltzer’ who was a struggling inventor has finally got his break and recognition and now thrives within the mall. Cast your beadies out of the windows and you will probably wonder what the feck is the town hall from ‘Back To The Future’ doing there. Who knew but apparently the same set was used to film that scene as was used in Gremlins.

This film is so damned good and the memories that it stirs up are even better! Do they make films as good as this anymore? Probably but just different. This was the piece from this new collection that influenced the release date as I wanted to make sure it could be on collectors walls for the festive period. What you have seen throughout 2020 was planned in the main last year albeit with a few deviations. I worried if I could get into that Christmas spirit in Autumn when creating the piece but because of the effects of Covid-19 and the growing need to look towards Christmas much earlier it has actually been great to embrace it now. Bollocks to bah humbug!

I know this piece is on a good number of people’s Christmas lists and I hope you love it as much as I did creating it. As Eddy would say, it’s just a harmless piece of fun, however, one must always remember with Mogwai, comes much responsibility!