Glover’s Comedic Villain Develops Gizmo Into New Batch of ‘Gremlins’

When John Glover was offered the role of comedic villain Daniel Clamp in “Gremlins 2: The New Batch,” opening Friday, he quickly went out and rented the hit original.

“I only watched about a fourth of it because I got scared,” he admits. “There was a nice dog in it and I kept thinking that something was going to happen to the dog.”

Nothing happens to man’s best friend in “Gremlins 2,” though the two-legged residents of New York City aren’t so lucky.

“I play the world’s biggest developer,” says Glover. “He’s Donald Trump and Ted Turner. The nice little creature, Gizmo, is back in the old Chinaman’s shop. I buy the shop for the Clamp Chinatown Center and put Gizmo in my Clamp Tower. There’s a faulty water fountain there in which Gizmo gets water splashed on him and the gremlins take over New York.”

Appearing opposite Gizmo and those nasty little gremlins was both a blessing and a curse for the actor. “When they were close up, they used five people to move the gremlins,” he says. “It was like working with a human being. It was wonderful. At one point, when they moved the camera far back, they taped my arm to me and cut a hole in the little gremlin’s butt. I had to put my hand up through it and make the gremlin attack me. They took a fake arm and sewed it to the gremlin to make it look like I was holding him off by the neck.”

Glover admits he’s a bit of a goof who frequently has his

tongue planted firmly in his cheek--even when playing the venomous villain in such thrillers as “52 Pick-Up” and “Masquerade.”

“I think I am always funny,” he says. “Watch, it will be the kiss of death that I said that.”

The actor even managed to find humor in the “American Playhouse” production of “An Enemy of the People,” Arthur Miller’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s drama about a doctor who discovers his town’s waters are polluted. It airs Wednesday

at 9 p.m. on KCET Channel 28.

“I got this idea that Dr. Stockman was a clown,” he says. “When he was young his parents took him to the theater. He grew up in the theater and loved

flamboyance and theatricality. It’s such a vital play. Miller made it much easier for audiences of today to listen and hear.”