Telemetric Bat Gremlin Movie Prop

Screen Used Flying puppet as seen in Gremlins 2: The new Batch

Introduction

Some of the best Gremlin creature designs came out of the Splice of Life laboratory in the Clamp Center (see also the Vegetable Gremlin). After drinking the "bat formula", this creature sprouted wings, conspired with the Brain Gremlin to get injected with liquid sunblock and flew out of the window to terrorize New York locals.

According to a Dick Miller article in Fangoria, as many as four different Bat Gremlins were constructed for various uses in the film. There's no true hero prop in my opinion, as the scenes where the Bat appears, constantly cuts between different puppets.

After the Bat Gremlin drinks the Bat Formula, you can see a full body wide "Matt" Gremlin with blue screened stop motion wings unfurling behind him. This puppet appears to be a brown pole-arm puppet as that was the only way to achieve a will body wide shot without showing elbow controllers in the shot. There would have been a hole cut in the wall from which all his telemetric controllers would have passed through. The blue screen wings would have been added optically in post production.

The following dramatic reveal shot shows the Bat Gremlin in all his glory. If you notice, the Bat is standing exactly in the same spot as the previous completely different style Gremlin so while filming they could very likely run cables through the hole already made in the back wall.

The Bat Gremlin's design is unlike any other Gremlin in the film as it's origin comes from the early R&D phase at Rick Baker's Cinovation Studios. Tom Hester came up with one of the early concepts for a "generic Gremlin" from which a few fully formed Gremlins were produced. Tom can be seen in this early photo holding one of this style along with some recent photos of the prototype Gremlin from our collection.

The animatronic Bat in the laboratory would have also been a pole-arm style puppet with a giant "pole" coming out of his back and controlled by various puppeteers behind the gray wall. The facial expressions, eye and ear movements would have been run into a 1989 era computer.

After Brain and Bat's chat about sunblock, he gets ready to head out into New York and run amok. As he gets ready to fly, the puppet turns to stop motion to achieve flight as it would have been next to impossible to show a wide shot of the Bat in flight.

The Bat stop motion work was done by Doug Beswick's team of talented animators with Jim Aupperle, James Belohovek, and Yancy Calzada and was filmed at the Chandler Group in Marina del Rey, CA.

Once the Bat Gremlin finishes his terrorizing tour of New York, the Bat puppet turns from stop motion into our newest acquisition, the telemetric "flying" Bat Gremlin. This incredible puppet was made to facilitate aerial shots where we needed to see a full scale Bat in the sky and give Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph something to act against.

This massive rig is shown in the photos below and was right up there with the various animatronics as one of the more complex to build. The filming camera was located in the front and it required two puppeteers to be airborne along with it to give the desired rear flying effect.

Once the Bat Gremlin finishes his terrorizing tour of New York, the Bat puppet turns from stop motion into our newest acquisition, the telemetric "flying" Bat Gremlin. This incredible puppet was made to facilitate aerial shots where we needed to see a full scale Bat in the sky and give Dick Miller and Jackie Joseph something to act against.

This massive rig is shown in the photos below and was right up there with the various animatronics as one of the more complex to build. The filming camera was located in the front and it required two puppeteers to be airborne along with it to give the desired rear flying effect.

We've been able to screen match various spots in these shots to match this puppet. If you look closely, this version of the Bat Gremlin has all his controllers coming out of the ears, so you really only see him from the upper face and down in the movie. He was built however to be able to move his feet, flap his wings, open/close his mouth, and move his hands.

The remaining Bats created were for the main "face" of Bat Gremlin hand puppet which you see opposite to the telemetric puppet.

There was also a dummy puppet (no controls) made specifically for Dick Miller to take and throw into the concrete. This one suffered pretty extensive damage due to being exposed to liquid while shooting.