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“
Portuguese gremlins. Its Portugals answer to "Gremlins" if the question was how can we rip this off without spending any money and maybe having watched this twice.
”
— Abed, "Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care"
Joelho-Alto Prejuizo Moral ( in English: "Knee high hijinks") is 1985 a low budget Portuguese horror movie. It features small imp like creatures who terrorize a village and are hunted by an old man. The foreign film is a blatant rip off of the 1984 American movie "Gremlins". It deviated by adding different colored monsters which were meant to be a metaphor for World War II: blue ones were good, green ones were evil and red ones were indifferent. It is a favorite of cinephile Abed Nadir who appreciates it for its campy qualities despite it's plagiaristic nature and shoddy production values. It's first appearance was in the Season Six episode "Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care".

Plot

In a remote village, tiny terrors known as Joelho-Alto Prejuizo Moral made their presence known during the Christmas holidays. A young man unwittingly opened a box which held a creature. Once it escaped it wound up in a kitchen where it attacked a chef and got covered in salt which caused it to multiply. Drawn to romance the creatures then attacked two young lovers while they were having an intimate moment in a barn. One of the creatures hid inside a Christmas present and shocked a girl who opened the box. Another monster was at a church where it attacked a priest who briefly managed to turn it good by splashing the creature with holy water.

Unfortunately the light shining through the churches stained glass window created a rainbow which shined on the monster. Exposure to the light turned it more evil and it it attacked the priest again. A pair of young lovers tracked down an old man who knew a lot about the creatures. He educated them on the specific rules regarding the mischievous ones which need to be understood in order to defeat them. The young man asked him if their enemy had was any known weakness and the old declared they had just one: himself. He then preceded to kill several creatures that had entered the house with a shotgun.

Trailer

The rules

1. Heat will make them evil.
2. Salt will make them multiply.
3. They are attracted to love.
4. They hate Christmas.
5. Holy water makes them good.
6. Rainbows make them more evil than the first time.

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