What I learned from Ghoulies II - classically-trained dwarf actors ROCK!

The original Ghoulies film is one of those movies that almost everyone has heard of, yet somehow no one has seen.  Of that minute percentage who actually HAVE taken the plunge and seen the first flick, the number is even more minute who have seen any of the sequels.  Well, call me a glutton for punishment, because I'm about to embark on this Homeric journey.

Ghoulies II was released in 1988, three years after the first film and after a whole lot of rethinking and retooling of the premise.  The original was much more of a Satanism/black magic/witchcraft horror film than a "little demons attacking people" movie, and I'm betting that a lot of people walked out of the theaters in 1985 feeling more than a little gypped that the Gremlins ripoff that they just paid five dollars to see hardly even featured any stop-motion puppet killing action.  Well, fear not, citizens - this is the movie where the Ghoulies series effectively becomes all about the creatures.  Never say that Charles Band doesn't give the audience what they want.

And yep, Band is back as the executive producer of this film, swept in just before he opened up Full Moon Features and introduced the world to a very different sort of tiny homicidal threats with Puppet Master.  As I understand it, this was actually one of the very last projects done for Empire Pictures, and I'm not entirely sure that this movie and that incident are mutually exclusive.  Interestingly enough, it's Albert Band, Charles' honest-to-christ FATHER, who handles the directing duties this time, and much like pretty much every Full Moon Feature, the movie has a decidedly low budget but makes the most of its limited resources.  Michael Bays and Steven Summers of the world take note - you CAN make a good-looking film without $150 million freakin' dollars.

THE MOVIE!!

From what I can gather, this movie takes place a short time after the first, as the creatures that escaped from the Graves household/Satanic stronghold are still on the loose.  The flick quickly introduces us to our two main hero characters - Larry (Damon Martin) and his uncle, Ned (Royal Dano).  They run a haunted house at a traveling carnival, and are driving a gigantic truck (with a pretty nifty-looking "Satan's Den" sign on the side) toward the next carnival.  Through some miraculous incident that's full of Dark Knight-style coincidences, wouldn't ya know that the Ghoulies wind up stowing away in their truck.

There's five of 'em this time.  I'm not going to describe them quite yet, but rest assured, they have characteristics that make them endlessly amusing (and at times annoying) to watch.  Just to partially sate you - because I'm sure you're all hanging on every word of this review - one of them is a freaky-looking flying squirrel-Ghoulie hybrid that emits noises like that little rat thing that hangs around Jabba the Hutt.  Yes, really.

Back at the carnival, we meet our secondary hero character, and this guy is really the movie's ace in the hole.  His name is Sir Nigel Penneyweight, and he's played by Phil Fondacaro, a dwarf who has a pretty damn impressive filmography.  He is the assistant of sorts at Satan's Den, whose job is to utilize his acting chops to scare the crap out of the customers.  His intricate plan?  Running around while dressed up like a gorilla.  He also constantly quotes Shakespeare and talks up his thespian past.  All things told, he's the most likable guy in the movie, and Fondacaro steals the show.

What other vital plot points do I need to talk about?  Oh yeah - our HUMAN villain character.  It seems as if a lot of the attractions at the carnival have been losing money, and Philip Hardin - the son of the guy who owns the carnival - has been dispatched to lay the gauntlet and tell everyone that any attraction that isn't turning ap rofit will be shut down.  And you should know where this is going - Satan's Den hasn't been making a profit for 16 months, as Hardin (played with plenty of douchebaggy zeal by J. Downing - and yes, folks, that is his name on IMDB), and they have until the end of the weekend to turn business around.

Immediately after this, we get our first kill - some nameless blonde who served as this flick's PG-13 "slut" character.  Since we don't even get the requisite nude scene from her, it's not worth recapping, although her primary attacker is the dude shown above - commonly known by fans (this series has fans?) as the "Toad" Ghoulie.  The action smash cuts to Ned, now drunk and performing some of his old-school magic tricks.  The Ghoulies show up, and the crusty old geezer becomes convinced that he's managed to perform "real" magic and call up demons.  I've got to say that Dano is also pretty damn likable in this movie - he's got kind of an M. Emmet Walsh vibe.  I can't say the same for Damon Martin.  He tries and everything, and maybe it's because he's got a nice old man and a dwarf surrounding him, but the dude is just very forgettable.  Sorry, Damon.

We get an...unforgettable sequence inside Satan's Den, as two bastard kids and a group of cool '80s rebels go inside to explore.  It's also worth noting that the group of teens consists of two perfectly happy hot couples...and Bill Butler!  Bill is a personal favorite of mine, having appeared in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood and Texas Chain Saw Massacre III, and as one of the select few group of humans who can recognize this guy from sight, I can report that he owns every role he's in.  Since he is our resident dork character, he makes our next victim, as the Ghoulies stretch him out on a torture rack and slice him in two with a guillotine.

This section of the movie also shows us the power of the "Rat" ghoulie - a creature who kinda-sorta looks like Splinter and vomits adhesive green glop on people.  To demonstrate this, just before Butler eats it, he covers one of the happier couples in the slime, causing them to become eternally stuck with their mouths intertwined and with the guy groping the girl's tits.  Yup. 

From here, we get one of the most wonderful scenes in movie history.  People begin flocking to Satan's Den after hearing about the Ghoulies from the bastard kids, and they are treated to some show once inside.  They catch the Ghoulies in the act of mummifying Bill Butler (and man, just typing those words made me all kinds of giddy), then begin chanting "Rats!" at the Ghoulies in an attempt to get them to...I don't know what.  Just to oblige the crowd, two of the creatures - "Rat" Ghoulie and the de facto leader of the group whom I'll refer to as "Mogwai" Ghoulie - slap hands, causing the denizens to erupt in cheers.  It's way more glorious than it sounds, believe me.

It's here where the string of amazingness comes to an end, as old man Ned gets offed in an extended (read: never-ending) scene where he realizes the error of his ways and attempts to conjure up some kind of demon-eliminating spell.  I've got to say that this move was a bit of a surprise; Ned was a pretty likable character, and normally, in horror movies, the crusty old guy is safe.  Oh, well. 

Well, this causes Larry to go into all sorts of depression - for all of a minute.  The next morning, he has a conversation with an until-this-point completely inconsequential character named Nicole, whom Phil Hardin had been attempting to woo earlier in the film.  Nicole, played by Kerry Remsen, is one of the carnival's belly dancers, and we get our movie's two-minute romance subplot as she relates this tragic past story about how she used to be a tightrope walker and saw her brother die in a horrific accident.  Or something.  It ends with Larry shoving his tongue down Nicole's throat, so mission accomplished.  From this point forward, Nicole is heavily featured, so get used to her and her sterling acting skills (/sarcasm) from this point forward.

Inside Satan's Den (I never get tired of typing that), Sir Nigel sees the Ghoulies firsthand, and eventually so does Larry.  This does nothing to persuade Phil, already stricken with greed over the spook house's newfound success, as the attraction remains open.  There's this whole fascinating bit where the Ghoulies attempt to slice another park-goer in half before they are stopped by the carnival's Strongman and Rajah-fortune teller guy.  It's here where Hardin fully embraces being the all-out dick that you suspected he was at the beginning, sensing the money to be made from these creatures and offering a thousand bucks for anyone who brings him one of the Ghoulies alive.

And, the Ghoulies have escaped from Satan's Den, which means that this movie has officially entered its "s**t hits the fan" stage.  The Ghoulies wreak havoc on the carnival, causing a bunch of accidents and even a couple random explosions.  Not one of the better s**t hitting the fan sequences I've seen, but it gets the job done.

With that, it's time for Hardin to get his comeuppance.  He goes through some kind of metaphysical transformation first, realizing the pain and destruction that his greed has caused in a metamorphosis that would make any screenwriter piss himself.  However, amidst all the chaos, amazingly, he doesn't forget that nature is calling.  He retreats to one of the carnival's bathrooms, and...yeah.

Karma's a bitch, ain't it, Phil?

I'm going to play like Vince Russo and break kayfabe here - it's Saturday morning as I'm typing this, and my weekly Saturday morning headache is starting to get unbearable, so let's wrap this up quickly.  Our remaining heroes - Larry, Nicole, and Nigel - attempt to stop the Ghoulies, but nothing seems to work.  Nigel hits upon the idea to "fight fire with fire" and use magic.  Lo and behold, it works, as a massive, behemoth-ified version of the green "hobgoblin" Ghoulie pops forth from the dirt and promptly eats all of the other Ghoulies. 

Only, now our heroes are left with this big beast to contend with.  Thinking quickly, they hide a stick of dynamite inside Nigel's gorilla suit and toss it to the big lug.  And he eats it.  And he explodes. 

The day after (or something resembling it), Larry and Nicole head out on the open road, already madly in love after their two-hour courtship, and Larry leaves the spook house in the hands of Nigel.  All things told, another mega-happy ending...at least until the camera pans over to the men's bathroom, and we hear the familiar giggly laughter.  Yup - the miniature "hobgoblin" toilet Ghoulie is still alive.  The screen fades to black...and we are then treated to an unexpected bonus in the form of the admittedly awesome song "Scream Until You Like It" by W.A.S.P. as the end credits tick by.

What more do you really need to know about this movie?  Do you really need me to pass judgment on it?  Well, let's see what else I can conjure up.  The tone for this sequel is VERY different from what the original movie gave is - in addition to the vastly different villain cast, it's also a lot more lighthearted in nature.  In my humble opinion - it was the right move.  The comedy in this movie may not be laugh-out-loud funny, but it's amusing most of the time.  The "rats!" bit alone is worth whatever it costs to buy a used DVD copy of this film.  I paid $2.98.  It's well worth that. 

More than anything else, Phil Fondacaro is a riot in this movie as SIR (capitalized because he corrects any and everyone who calls him MISTER repeatedly in this film) Nigel.  In a movie where more than a few people phone it in, Fondacaro invests as much heart, soul and spirit as his diminuitive frame can muster, and it shows.  Every time he's on screen, Ghoulies II becomes a better movie.  You've got to hand it to any movie that can make a Shakespeare-quoting, somewhat pretentious dwarf its most likable character, but that's what we get, and Nigel makes some hero.

What else am I missing?  Oh yeah - the fact that this movie features creature effects from John Carl Buechler, a pretty well-known makeup/FX guru in the horror field.  He is the man responsible for the makeup on movies like Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and Prison as well as the director of Friday the 13th Part VII (and I've got to hand it to the guy for remembering Bill Butler when casting that film).  He's not quite Tom Savini, but he's pretty damn good - any time you see his name in the credits, get ready for some awesome hand-made creature effects.  It's a shame that this movie was rated PG-13; I would have loved to have seen a bit more red stuff flying around with Buechler behind the scenes.

That should about wrap it up.  If you liked the first Ghoulies...eh, you might not like this one, since they're almost unrecognizable as far as being from the same series.  But hell, I liked it.  That should be enough.

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