Ghoulies - the adventures of a man and his quest for puppet creature domination

In the great pantheon of movies that lined the shelves at my often-mentioned and no doubt mysterious Greatest Video Store Ever, one of the ones that really sticks out in my head is Ghoulies.  While the Lick Ness Monster saw a ton of old-school and schlocky horror movies as a kid, for some reason, just the sight of this video box sent me running away screaming.  Giving this one a watch wasn't even an option.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that the mental image of a green, goofy-looking demon popping out of my toilet is one of my hidden phobias.

At any rate, it's been a LONG time since I've seen this one.  I eventually did see it sometime around 1992 on TBS and remember virtually nothing about it.  Even worse, since Wikipedia really sucks when it comes to the Ghoulies series and has virtually no notable information about it, I'm going to have to wing it with my own cutting journalistic integrity.  From what I can gather, this flick is a bit of a pre-Full Moon Productions project from no less than Charles Band himself, back when he ran a company called Empire Pictures.  Mr. Band was even set to direct the movie until passing on the honors to Luca Bercovici, a dude who has actually appeared as an actor in things ranging from Frightmare to the Wesley Snipes vehicle Drop Zone.  All things considered, he does a decent enough job doing the thing that I most admire - handling a $5.99 budget and a shoestring cast and making something reasonably resembling a film.  With that, THE MOVIE!!

The flick starts off on what's admittedly a pretty creepy note.  The dude you see in the above picture is running a patented Horror Movie Satanic Ritual, complete with the ever-popular downward-pointing Pentagram of Doom behind his pulpit.  He is all ready to sacrifice a baby until the mother stops him, at which point the guy goes into a fit of rage and informs the GOOD satanist that "YOU WILL TAKE HIS PLACE!"  All things told, a 17-star opening.

After the opening credits (which has some very mirthful and Pupper Master style music), a helpful narrator informs us that the baby was actually Satanic Master's SON.  Wow.  Brutal.  At any rate, that very baby is now all grown up and has just inherited dear ol' dad's secluded house.  His name is Jonathan Graves, and he's played by Peter Liapis.  Having seen this guy in a few other films and TV projects, I can report that Liapis is actually a pretty damn charismatic actor, able to pull off over-the-top stuff and everyman relatability with equal ease.  He's kind of like Christian Bale, if Christian Bale actually had talent.  I can't say the same for Lisa Pelikan, who plays "Rebecca," his girlfriend in this movie who makes the move into the house of death with him.  You've seen more raw emotion from Jessica Alba on sedatives. 

What this scene accomplishes is twofold: (1) it establishes that Jonathan's freakin' FATHER is actually buried on the premises in a fenced-in and very poorly disguised grave, and (2) introduces us to Wolfgang, the caretaker of the property who essentially served as Jonathan's de facto father growing up.  Since the Law of Economy of Characters clearly states that screenwriters generally do not introduce new characters into films for no apparent reason, we can reasonably guess that this guy will play some role later.  Oh yeah, spoiler alert.  Once inside the house, Jonathan promptly finds his dad's old ceremonial garb and book of incantations, at which point his poodle-haired girlfriend tells him that it's time to throw a party with all of their rockin' college friends.

After some classic '80s movie party scenes (including a legendary break-dancing routine by one of the party guests who kinda-sorta looks like Kiefer Sutherland), Jonathan (above left, along with his ever-supportive girlfriend) decides that the best party game would be to do one of the rituals from his mysterious book.  Seems like a sound enough plan to me.  He performs it - in a deep, profundo, overly theatrical voice, no less - and while it doesn't happen immediately, it works.  Soon enough, two miniature creatures appear from the nothingness in a special effect that must be seen to be believed.

From this point on, Jonathan undergoes a kind of sinister transformation.  He withdraws from school under the premise of "fixing up the house," and while he does that by day, by night, he begins practicing more of DAT BLACK MAGIC.  His first motions as Newfound Satanic Leader?  Calling forth a group of the ghoulies (finally) and creating a rain storm completely centralized within his basement.  Why?  Just because he can.  It should also be pointed out that when he performs these magic spells, his eyes occasionally flash green.  Because nothing says evil like snakey green eyes. 

In the midst of that second spell (the rainstorm), Rebecca catches him wearing his official ceremonial robe and brandishing a large spear and freaks out on him, causing Jonathan to promise to cut it the hell out with his devil worship.  And he seems oh-so-sincere.  This lasts all of five minutes of screen time, as Jonathan (along with one his Ghoulie pals) attempts to entrance Rebecca during sex, causing her to walk out on him for good. 

Well, this makes our beloved hero/villain go batshit criz-azy, as he uses his magical abilities to summon two imps named Grizzle and Greedigut.  I should also point out that Grizzle and Greedigut aren't puppet creatures like the rest of Jonathan's helpers, and instead are played by two honest-to-christ little people (Peter Risch and Tamara de Treaux, for those who absolutely, positively need this information) who put more heart and soul into their performances than anyone in the movie besides Liapis.  This movie has to be seen to be believed.  Anyway, he utilizes the imps to re-summon Rebecca to the house and take control of her mind and spirit (or something), and then begins setting up Act Three of the film - the legendary Satanic movie ritual, which in typical Satanic movie ritual fashion is ridiculously complicated, requiring seven people to work and to be performed during a full moon.  So you know what this means - yup, another '80s party, although this one isn't quite rockin'.

Have I mentioned before that this movie has given us sporadic narrative updates from the same guy who told us about Jonathan and his dad at the beginning of the film?  Well, we have.  Rest assurred, it's going somewhere.  At the dinner party, Jonathan takes command of his friends by yelling at the sky and causing the screen to flash white.  Remember how I said the ghoulies being conjured was the special effect to end all special effects?  I think that this may be the new champion.  The ritual takes place (with all of the secondary characters now donned in white robes, no less), and we get our payoff, as Jonathan's daddy RISES FROM THE GRAVE!

Coolness.  Turns out that this guy was really controlling his son's actions this whole time to facilitate his own return.  From here, the movie becomes a sped-up slahser flick, as the various party guests pair off and get laid while  a combination of Malcolm Graves (that would be Jonathan's dad) and the various critters roaming about the premises begin mowing them down.  The best death in this sequence is definitely Malcolm, posing as a hot blonde, choking the movie's resident womanizer to death utilizing his three-foot monster tongue in a sequence that no doubt inspired that awesome nurse scene in Nightmare on Elm Street 3.  This movie is picking up in a big way.

All of the secondary characters get killed off, leaving us with the Luke-Darth Vader confrontation between Jonathan and Malcolm.  We get our explanation for Malcolm's actions, as he explains that the ritual is about gaining the youth of his son.  In one of the most incestually homoerotic scenes in movie history, Malcolm attempts to drain his son's life by kissing him on the lips.  Yes, really.  All appears lost, until we are given a new savior.  The man, the myth...the caretaker.

Yup, the dude who had been invisible since the beginning of the movie is in actuality some kind of all-powerful sorcerer, and he's here to save the day.  In a battle very heavy on animated lightning bolts, he is able to overcome Malcolm and end this threat once and for all.  Not only that, Malcolm's death brings all of Jonathan and Rebecca's moronic college friends back to life, leaving us not only with the happy ending...but the mega happy ending.  The fact that some of the ghoulies stowed away in Jonathan's getaway car (along with Rebecca and Kiefer Sutherland guy) doesn't seem to diminish the sunniness too much...it's portrayed more comedically than anything else.  Eh, as someone who is used to modern horror movies with their M. Night Shyamalanadingdong nonsensical twist endings, this was a welcome change.

You know, reading through the above recap, you've probably noticed that there is only one picture of the titular Ghoulies contained in the every-few-paragraph visual aids.  That's not an accident.  For a movie called Ghoulies, they are basically there as window dressing.  Grizzle and Greedigut actually play the biggest role out of all the creatures Jonathan conjures up, going through a kind of babyface turn by the end of the movie and assisting Jonathan in his battle for the ages with his father.  The obvious answer is that this movie was released in 1985, a mere year after Gizmo and Stripe dominated the box office, and that Charles Band did his best to sneak in "hey, this is just like Gremlins" into his black magic movie.  Seems accurate enough to me.

That little caveat aside, this movie was actually a damn fun time.  I'm a big sucker for religious-themed horror movies in general, especially ones that don't take a big shift in tone midway through (not looking at you at all, The Reaping), and Ghoulies was good and gloriously ridiculous for its entire running time.  It's goofy, it's dumb, and it's woefully short on special effects quality and Shakespearian-esque dialogue, but that's just the way I like it.  I'll REMEMBER this movie.  There are movies with $150 million budgets every summer that I walk out of that I can't remember a single detail of two days later.

Of course, that is to be expected from a film produced by Charles Band.  He was renowned for this sort of thing - taking horror and fantasy scripts, producing them on the cheap, and adding a whole heap o' camp value.  After founding Full Moon Pictures a few years after this movie was released, he made this style of film-making into a virtual factory that cranked out scores of these types of films, and if you want to see this maverick/direct-to-video horror master in his formative stages, look no further.  This movie is full of that patented Charles Band charm.

Finally, Peter Liapis is just aces in this movie.  He hams it up when he has to, and pulls off the more restrained scenes very well.  Knowing that he has a role in the final movie in this series, I'm looking forward to shooting through the rest of the Ghoulies series...but I'm told that I have two movies that focus MUCH more on the creatures to get through first before coming full circle on Jonathan Graves.

*** 1/2 out of ****.  Highly recommended for my fellow horror fans.