Ghoulies/Ghoulies II / Old Very Negative Reviews

 My re-evaluation today is a tab more positive than when I wrote user comments for Ghoulies (1984) and Ghoulies II (1987) in the past. I wanted to include these and in a separate blog post fresh (and brief) thoughts. Both films were watched with written user comments were from February 2007.

For the first film:

Bottom-of-the-barrel film-making has Jonathan(Peter Liapis), the son of a powerful Satan worshiper, possessed by his dead father's spirit after he inherits the man's estate. Everyone, from his girlfriend Rebecca(Lisa Pelikan)to his other seven friends..all will fall prey to the ghoulies, a nasty group of puppet monsters. Jonathan, and his green eyes, will seemingly bring his father's life back through the conjuring of spells and supposed sacrifices, but really figuring out what the hell is going on is anyone's guess since it's obvious the ones behind the making of this so-called film seemed to have no idea. The story itself is stupid, rife with obnoxious, idiotic characters like Jonathan who act incredibly moronic. Jack Nance, oh boy, gets handed one rotten role as the man who somehow rescues Jonathan(he and the infant's mother who takes his place)from being sacrificed to Satan by Malcolm, the father. There are two other demonic servants for which Jonathan conjures up that do his bidding as well.

The film is loaded with silly death sequences and it's blatantly obvious that the ghoulies are puppets guided around by puppeteers so the film has no scares whatsoever. This film will only apply to those who adore the worst kind of bad cinema. Horrible, horrible horror film. May be of interest to those who watch the long-running detective series LAW & ORDER:SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT since one of this film's victims is Mariska Hargitay..heck, everyone has to start somewhere even if it's in this hunk of garbage.

For the second film:

The killer demon puppet ghoulies return to wreak havoc in a circus whose once popular live attraction, Satan's Den, has been losing money for months. Larry and Uncle Ed(Damon Martin & Royal Dano)have to make some profit in days or else face being closed down by stuff-shirted suit, Phil Hardin(J Downing), who wishes to turn the exhibit into ladies' mud wrestling. Their assistant is Nigel(great character actor Phil Fondacaro), a dwarf who loves quoting Shakespeare. Nicole(Kerry Remsen)is Larry's love interest, a young woman who participates in a dancing girls act(..she once walked the wire in another circus event, but grew afraid of heights after the unfortunate death of her brother).

The ghoulies this time have stop-motion scenes where we actually see them walk, but mostly they're confined to popping from the corners of screens where we can not see the arms of puppeteers guiding them. They exit the Satan's den towards the end and let loose a violent frenzy on innocent paying customers. There are some cheesy melodramatic moments between Larry and Nicole accompanied by soft music. Hardin is merely a villain here..a one-dimensional carciature simply in the film as a business-type menace consumed by greed. Royal Dano pretty much plays his Uncle Ned a pathetic, alcoholic failure.

Terrible, but not as agonizingly painful(well, it is rather painful, but not as much..)as the first film which doesn't exactly make this a glowing review. There's this monsterously huge demon they conjure that loves to eat the little ghoulies thanks to a "demon spells conjuring book" in Uncle Ned's possession.