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Sadly Over-hyped

Absolutely Fantastic

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

GHOULIES was, I think, the first rip-off to come out after the success of GREMLINS. Many, many others followed, many of them stretching out into series of their own: we had CRITTERS, MUNCHIES, LITTLE DEVILS: THE BIRTH and many more besides, each of them films about ugly little monsters doing their best to hurt or kill people. In fact, producer Charles Band would go on to riff on this topic time and again with his Empire/Full Moon production banners; we had the likes of DOLLS, PUPPET MASTER and many more besides, but GHOULIES was there first. Does that mean it's any good? The answer is yes and no.Fans expecting the quality of the Joe Dante film, a decent script, and intelligence should look elsewhere. This is a film that has none of that. What it does have is a low budget, some cheesy actors and the kind of special effects that have dated badly by today's Hollywood standards. It's a campy '80s horror film complete with those laser-eye special effects that were so popular after the debut of light sabers, and more bad acting than you can shake a stick at. It's a film where all the clichés are present and correct, from the assembled weirdos and nerds who made up the cast, to the spooky old house, the Satanist lurking in the basement and much more besides. The ghoulies themselves are almost incidental to the story, appearing in a handful of scenes as the minions of a black magician out to bump off the innocent teenagers who've gathered for the party from hell.Although this is a film aimed squarely at kids, it's a pretty unpleasant ride with some cheap gore effects and evidence of heavy cutting, so one can only wonder what the uncut version would have been like. I enjoyed the look of the ghoulies, which were animated by John Carl Buechler, even though it's obvious that they were made on a budget, and at least the movie is fast paced, running through the usual clichés at speed. A few notable actors pop up, like Jack Nance (ERASERHEAD) as an old guy with a hidden secret and Mariska Hargitay (daughter of Mickey) as a pretty potential victim. There's a brief turn for scream queen Bobbie Bresee and a couple of evil dwarfs, although I do find it slightly repulsive when dwarfs are cast as evil folk purely due to their size, although I suppose their presence is played for laughs here and they are quite sympathetic.Anyway, folk who watch this know what to expect, and as a trip down memory lane it serves as a fitting reminder of just how cheesy and campy the 1980s really were for horror films. Not a great film by any means, this is, however, quite a bit of fun and it did extraordinarily well at the box office, which meant that three sequels followed.

This picture has the rank of being not just one of the earliest, but also one of the most whacked-out flicks that Full Moon ever produced, and it was one of their biggest ever hits. I do like it but not all that much. It's very cute but it's definitely nothing great. In fact, it's a wee bit of an endurance test! My first and primary annoyance: It isn't really about the ghoulies! They're mere window dressing for a strange and complicated story, and the ones that do appear are laughable! They look like s****y old diseased sock puppets, and that's not easy for me to say because the sequel is one of my all-time favourite horror movies, I'd strongly urge you to check out that one it you wanna see a Ghoulies movie done right. It's so horribly in-your-face and dead to-the-max 80s! From the wardrobe to the attitudes and practically everything, particularly when it comes to some of the more cartoony and obnoxious smaller characters, like that old guy who's constantly wearing shades.. What the hell was that asshole on at the time!? Break dancing scene, what the f**k!?! I really can't stand the red-headed Lisa Pelican as "Rebecca", she's so embarrassingly melodramatic with all of her lines and whenever the camera's focusing on her face she's always off in a fog and terribly posing as if like Sophia Loren! Awful actress. I also didn't like the two dwarf characters. Now I've nothing against those kinds of people, in fact to me their performances were actually very good, but they weren't monsters, and in my opinion to jerk around with the audience that they are when there's already supposed to be little monsters running around is just bogus. It's the same cheap gag that they would later base the entire rotten fourth 'Ghoulies' movie around. I positively adored the spirited performance of Michael Des Barnes as the delightfully fiendish "Malcolm Graves". He really gives it his all and even though he goes ridiculously grandiose with it, it sure works. I can't recall ever seeing another horror movie villain quite like him. I love all of his charmingly bizarre inflections, how he goes from softly-spoken to roaring in a second! And it's so awesomely wrong when he demands to kiss his son to steal his soul!! I thought he was far more charismatic than the guy who played his son, I just found iy plain cringe-worthy whenever he was trying to be commanding. They also should've ditched the silly and unnecessary narrating. It was like I was watching Troll 2 all over again.. I think that I may have liked this better if they'd have just done away with any pretence of it being about little monsters and made it a straight-up story of resurrected sorcerous evil battling against its estranged offspring it could've stood on its own merit surely! I mean they certainly should have kept the ghoulies in it, just not made it out as if the entire movie was about them.. And you know, I'm wrong in a way because the marketing did pay off big time for the studio, and if I don't quite get it then I'm still very glad because it allowed them to create some later gems that I do wholeheartedly love and regard as classics. It's such a weird little mish-mash of a flick. By degrees it's a crazy party horror movie, then a domestic drama, then it's an epic magical fight of good vs evil - it's everything except a solid horror that knows what it wants to be, and that's a bit of a shame. I'm not saying it isn't fun, but it's a mess. It's a fun mess! Everything about it is extremely tacky and rough but that could perhaps only add to the appeal for some fans. It's certainly not lacking in creativity. It's a fun and entertaining piece of horror trash if you're in the right frame of mind and is worthy of a watch every now and then. "Shut up, goddammit!"

Ghoulies (1985) * 1/2 (out of 4) Lame rip-off of GREMLINS has a man moving into an old mansion where he eventually decides to bring out the title creatures who of course go on a killing spree. Apparently this thing started off as a higher-budget R-rated horror film but then the budget was slashed and they decided to aim at the kid market. Well, this here was obviously a mistake because what remains in the film is a semi-horror film that's too tame to go all the way yet at the same time there's really nothing here that would appeal to children. I think the producers forgot that they were trying to aim this at kids and instead us poor viewers were left to suffer. The story itself is a pretty silly one that takes way too long to get going. At just 82-minutes this film seems twice as long and this might be due to the fact that the actual ghoulies don't appear until around the forty-minute mark. Even when they do arrive they don't exactly bring any excitement with them as they're just not scary enough to have any impact. A lot of the violence is also off screen so gore fans aren't going to get any of that here. Even worse is that there are a couple sexual scenes here that have been toned down and in this condition they just really don't serve any purpose to the film. Of course, in a R-rated film they might have at least been used just to show off some cheap nudity. The performances are pretty much what you'd expect from a film like this. John Carl Buechler does a fine job with the special effects but sadly they're not used nearly enough. GHOULIES might appeal to those who enjoy bad 80s movies but the rest should just stay clear.

This must be the worst 80s movie ever. Because the acting is bad, the Ghoulies don't do much and its another Gremlins rip off. Let me give you a quick summary of the movie. Its about a young man who moves into his fathers house. Who somehow died, {we don't really know}. As he lives with his girlfriend. Later in the movie he goes down to his basement to clean up as he finds something strange in the basement. As he has a look into the box he finds some cloths I don't know. Then he takes it out of the basement he puts it on he starts to turn evil as he later on summons the Ghoulies, then turns into a bad guy summons his dad back to life as Wolfgang safes him. In the end everyone lives happily ever after. so I give this movie * out of ***** and also please no more gremlin rip offs.