Hello and welcome back to KID NOSTALGIA, your online guide to monster, science fiction and horror movies ranging from the oldies to more modern releases, from the classics to more obscure films – ones like this! Empire Pictures presents a Charles Band production “GHOULIES” a Luca Bercovici film starring Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelikan and Keith Joe Dick. They’ll get you in the end! Charles Band returns to the blog with the most blatant Gremlins (1984) knockoff you’ll ever see combined with the worst actors and ugliest puppets ever to grace the earth. I’m talking about GHOULIES, the franchise that ran too long with only one good one which was Ghoulies II (1987). There’s nothing else to really say in the intro, so let’s get into it. But first, I must warn you that, as always, this post will contain spoilers, so viewer discretion advised.
In a short prologue, we see a ritual take place overseen by several of the titular Ghoulies, done by a man to sacrifice his son, but the mother intervenes so the father, Malcolm Graves, makes her the sacrifice by making a Ghoulie burst out of her chest. In case they needed to knock off Alien (1979) while they’re at it. The special effect here is pretty nasty, considering 13-year-olds could just go and watch this. The mother manages to save the baby though, as she places a protective talisman around his neck stopping him from being sacrificed while another cultist in cahoots with the mother escorts him. 25 years later after Malcolm is dead, the kid, Jonathan Graves (Peter Liapis), now adult, inherits his large estate with his girlfriend, Rebecca, and the two decide to quit college to work on renevating the place. While in the basement, Jonathan discovers a magic book in the basement and can’t get his head out of it. They then throw a party with all their friends with college, which mainly consists of drunk 35-year-olds trying to convince everyone they’re actually 20 by having the most ridiculous collars in history, smoking about 8 packs of cigarettes a second, drinking themselves senseless, and hitting on every woman on site – so yeah, a pretty accurate interpretation of young adults. After a while of filler, Jonathan suggests they do a ritual for “fun.” There’s always that one girl at sleepovers that just pulls an Ouija out of nowhere and the girls will ask it if their crush likes them and then forget to say goodbye, thus conjuring Cthulhu. The ritual is to conjure a demon, which doesn’t seem to work, but when everyone leaves the basement, a Ghoulie appears. I must say the sets to this look nice. Oh, and also, Jonathan has the clown doll out of Poltergeist (1982) apparently. Nothing else happens that night, so everyone leaves, but the next day, Jonathan makes a load of preparations that look like house cleaning, but it’s really him preparing for more rituals. He manages to conjure several Ghoulies outside and some… look uglier than others. Jonathan becomes their master, and despite them acknowledging this, they’re really controlling him and have been ever since he found the spell book. The puppetry doesn’t look too bad, but they’re no Chris Walas puppets.
Rebecca discovers that Jonathan is doing rituals, but he somehow convinces her to stay by saying that he’s doing it to find out about his parents, and that somehow works, so immediately after they decide to have sex! Anything this woman gets, she deserves at this point, like what the hell! However this is all just a ritual and she realizes that, and finally decides to leave, and Jonathan summons two people of short stature that have dressed up like they’re in medieval times called Grizzel and Greedigut. Rebecca makes the mistake of returning to try and convince Jonathan to leave with her, but discovers that his eyes have turned glowing green like he’s auditioning for the Charles Band knockoff of Dune (1984). She decides to actually leave, but he hypnotises her into staying and her eyes also turn green.
The two of them invite all of their friends back to conduct a ritual to re-animate his father for some reason, and sure enough, he comes out of the grave and takes command of the Ghoulies, making Jonathan powerless. Everyone snaps out of their trance after the ritual, and Jonathan offers to let them all stay for the night. This is where the movie really starts.
The carnage starts with “Toad Boy” and his girlfriend who, while necking outside, are attacked by some in the pond. Afterwards, Malcolm shapeshifts into a woman to lure “Dick” (Keith Joe Dick) so Malcolm can strangle him with his tongue. Meanwhile, Jonathan breaks the speel that he put on Rebecca and apologises, seemingly now out of his trance. Back to the killing, another one is killed by Grizzel and Greedigut, another has a Ghoulie chucked at his face by Grizzel, and the rest are offscreen. The Ghoulies then attack Rebecca and kill her by making her fall down the stairs, but Jonathan prepares to re-animate her and discovers that all of his friends are dead. Malcolm then turns up and wants to sacrifice Jonathan to steal his youth. Grizzel and Greddigut decide to help Jonathan after LITERALLY KILLING ALL OF HIS FRIENDS, but they’re powerless against Malcolm. However, the estate’s “caretaker” turns out to be the cultist who saved Jonathan in the prologue and he turns up and has the dumbest magic fight I’ve ever seen with Malcolm. Animated laserbeams everywhere! The ceiling collapses on the two fighting, and everyone is re-animated and run outside to escape in their cars. It seems to be over, but Ghoulies appear in the back of Jonathan’s car. The end. That is literally the end. I guess that’s where the tagline comes from, because “they got them in the end.” This movie is kind of a mess but it’s sort of entertaining just the same. For a Charles Band knockoff, the Gremlins parts are limited to little puppet monsters killing people, it actually tries to do something different with the occult plot, but the pace is off and doesn’t get into it until the 50 minute mark. The sequel is far better in pace but it’s a lot less original but it’s a pretty entertaining popcorn monster movie, but I should probably save my opinions on part 2 for my review of that. There are far worse Gremlins knockoffs, e.g, Hobgoblins (1988), but this one’s not great. Next to Ghoulies III (1991) and IV (1994) though, it’s a masterpiece. For now though, that’s it for me. Later!
Kid Nostalgia 