Ghoulies

This movie made a nice sum of 35 million at the box office, yet many consider it a poor movie at best. So how did it make this much money? With a good ad campaign, that's how. This movie was the first small creature attack movie to come out after the very successful Gremlins the previous year. Critters, which most consider the better film, came out a year later and made a lot less than this one. Then there was the famous scene of the creature coming out of the toilet. It made it look like a Gremlin type movie...funny with a bit of charm to it. It fooled my parents and we saw this dog in the theater when I was ten. We knew it wasn't quite what it was advertised as though as soon as it started as it has a scene where a guy rips out a woman's heart. It isn't all bad though as there are some scenes here and there that are good, but overall this one is just bad as it is not just about little creatures, but a bunch of other satanic stuff as well as this guy throws a party and does rituals and accidentally raises this one evil guy. Sounds better than it is though as there are no stars in this one and none of the actors in this one can act. You do though get to see the little person who played ET.

This is an mid-1980s horror comedy indeed, except it was lacking both ingredients actually. It is, however, a very typical Charles Band movie, for good and worse. Was "Ghoulies" a memorable movie? No, not by a long shot. It was just too silly and empty to really be entertaining.

"Ghoulies" is about a young man who inherits an ancestral home. A house where black magic was used to conjure forth demonic creatures. Lured in by the dark magic, the young man unleash the demonic beings once again.

The characters were lacking personalities and depth, but fitted right into the rest of the movie though. The acting performances were nothing impressive either.

As for the creatures, well they were probably impressive back in 1984, but by todays standards not so much. It was puppets, blatantly obvious, and again typical for Charles Band. And the special effects, well let's not even go there.

This movie wasn't particularly entertaining, and I will never watch it again, that much is certain.

Jonathan Graves (Peter Liapis) inherits his Satanist father's mansion. He throws a party and starts conjuring up Ghoulies, which are sort of demonic goblin things. This is a garbage Gremlins knock-off with no humor, charm, or entertainment value. The best thing about it is that it has one of the coolest movie posters of the 1980's, with the Ghoulie coming up out of the toilet. It's just not a fun movie at all. It's nasty and cheap. Avoid this mess. See Gremlins instead. Or you can just skip this one and watch the better Ghoulies part 2. But yeah, Gremlins is better than that too. So just watch Gremlins or even Critters over this dreck.

As an infant, Jonathan Graves is absconded from his father, Malcolm (Michael Des Barres), the leader of a black magic cult, when Malcolm almost sacrifices Jonathan in a ritual. 25 years later, Jonathan (Peter Liapis) learns that his father has passed away and he has inherited his estate, including a large home that is now in disrepair. He moves there with Rebecca (Lisa Pelikan), and soon after begins acting strangely, instinctively following his father's footsteps.

If you're a fan of campy, cheesy horror films, as I am, Ghoulies is a must see. Everyone else should probably avoid this film. This is a Charles Band production. Charles Band means Empire/Full Moon, and Empire/Full Moon is almost a guarantee of some campiness/cheesiness. Not many of Band's films, however, approach the sublime ridiculousness of Ghoulies. We're almost in Troma territory here, but Ghoulies is played much more seriously than the typical Troma production, and in this case, it works to increase the entertainment value.

Since Ghoulies was made in 1984, it features most of the mid-80s horror film clichés. Shortly after moving in, Graves throws a party, so we get big hair, tight miniskirts, skinny ties, recreational drug use, and so on. We also get our eventual fodder for our body count, although in this case, it is worth noting that writer/director Luca Bercovici introduces a "twist" near the end that significantly decreases the body count.

Liapis is the focus of the film, though, and without him, Ghoulies might be more boring than campy. His absurd overacting, often in solo scenes, takes up a majority of screen time. Still, just the brief presence of two demonic minions, Grizzel and Greedigut, would alone make Ghoulies a must see, especially given how everyone continues their attempt to play the film seriously when they appear. And I haven't even mentioned the other ridiculous minions, which are obviously puppets and "dead props" (Band seems to love puppets), and were the beginning of a horror industry attempt to cash in on the success of Gremlins (also seen later in such films as the Critters series and Munchies). We also get zombies, a Star Wars-like battle of wizards, sunglasses as a major plot device, an evil doll, an attack with a 5 foot long tongue, and some probably unintentional homoerotic subtext. Who could pass all of that up? The film gets a 7 out of 10 from me--an 8 out of 10 would have been in order, except for the inexplicable absence of gratuitous nudity.

Note that while Ghoulies is tagged "comedy/horror", it's very unlikely that it was intended to be a comedy in any way. Even if Band applied the label to the film prior to release, it was probably because even he realized how ludicrous the film turned out. At any rate, it would be misguided to watch it expecting intentional humor.

A surprise hit in the horror film-drenched 1980s that spawned several sequels, GHOULIES was one ii a long line of puppet movies from the old Empire Pictures, the same folks who would soon bring us RE-ANIMATOR. In GHOULIES, a young man moves into an old mansion and before you know it, he is attempting to conjure up a bunch of hellish critters to do his bidding. Soon enough, he has them going after his enemies. The ghoulies themselves are hand puppets that look pretty ferocious for hand puppets. The conjurer, played by an insufferable actor named Peter Liapus, has been possessed by a dark spirit that resides in the old house. A little too much time is spent on the guy and his conjuring, but once the ghoulies get going, watch out! This comedy horror film stands out among many similar flicks from that era. It was obviously inspired by GREMLINS, but in the end it in no way resembles that now-forgotten classic. Worth a look if you can buy the idea of puppet monsters. PUPPETMASTER had the same theme and look, and was also an Empire Pictures job, if I am not mistaken.