For the second Charles Band produced horror of this October’s viewings (With at least one more to come) I’m checking out “Ghoulies” from 1984. This was a well known low budget horror back in the day that I was always aware of, but never got around to checking out. That is likely because it seemed obviously inferior to “Gremlins” (1984) and “Critters” (1986) while covering much the same ground. As a fan of the kind of imaginative low budget horror that Band usually producers though I think it’s time I gave it a chance. So let’s see if these little monsters can stand tall or not.
Dark Past.
Ghoulies is directed by Luca Bercovici in his directorial debut. Originally Band was going to direct this himself but back out when he was unable to secure Stan Winston to do the effects. It was written by Bercovici and Jefery Levy. The film had a difficult journey in it’s production. Warner Bros sued the production company to stop them using the name since they were at the same time developing Gremlins, though this was unsuccessful the production also ran out of funding which delayed release until after Gremlins had come out. Thus regardless of the truth, Ghoulies would always be seen as a Gremlins rip off.
The movie stars Peter Liapis as “Jonathan Graves” a young man unaware that he was meant to be a human sacrifice as a baby. He was saved from that fate by his father and raised away from his evil father. Obvious to all this, 25 years later he has inherited his fathers estate and moves in. On investigating the old mansion he finds various occult relics and is drawn to use them, eventually summoning the little demons known as Ghoulies. However, this was all an evil trap by his now dead father, the return from the grave and steal his son’s youth. Jonathan is joined by his girlfriend “Rebecca” (Lisa Pelikan) and a group of somewhat goofy friends. The friends are actually quite amusing to watch, though it’s probably a good job none of their roles asked a lot of them.
Black Magic.
The first act sets up the characters and the second shows Jonathan turning to the dark side. It’s not until the third act though that the Ghoulies really come into play. Before this they are just sort of hanging around. This puts it in line with a lot of low budget direct to VHS horrors that promised a lot on the cover and then delivered something barely related to it. In that regard, it’s not the worst I’ve seen, but it doesn’t contrast it well with Gremlins or Critters.
This is really an Evil Warlock story that happens to have Ghoulies on the side. This should be obvious by the lack of Ghoulies in these screenshots. A lot of that is probably due to the low budget, when the Ghoulies do get involved they are pretty much just launched at victims to bite them. Given the budget though, the creatures didn’t actually look too bad. I especially liked the variety (Back in the day I thought they’d all be the toilet Ghoulies from the poster). I’ve seen far worse in movies that cost more so credit for that. One creature that actually bursts out of a clown doll looked particularly cool.
On a side note: The scene from the poster with the slime Ghoulie popping out of the toilet was actually added later after the poster was made. That’s B-Movies for you! It’s almost blink and you miss it. It’s actually quite impressive that they did go back and add the scene given the budget issues they had. It doesn’t really add anything to the movie, but it was a cool visual. You can see the entire scene at the end of the trailer below.
Down The Pan.
Ghoulies has a reasonable amount of charm and is ultimately not terrible unless you actually put it up against the very good Critters or a masterpiece like Gremlins. While it doesn’t hold a candle to either of those it provides adequate entertainment for its (fairly short) run time. Fans of ambitious low budget horror will find something here to entertain them. This is a 5/10
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