Directed By: Luca Bercovici
Budget: $1 million
Continuing on my 80's comedy horror spree i've turned my attention towards 1984's ghoulies a film that tries really tries.
This film to me is a really hit and miss gem of the 80's comedy horror scene. It some times tries to hard to be funny by using occasional tired tropes of the time.
We have not one but two stoners, one jock, one weirdo and your typical beatnik angular women. This does one thing a lot of other horror films does not though,
it has little to no nudity! whether this was a choice to try and make it more family friendly i'm unsure. I can't find anything that alludes to this being the case though.
So we join Malcolm Graves ready to sacrifice a little baby to his gods. This is to give him ultimate power, we see the ghoulies watching on as he prepares his knife.
Suddenly a woman from the congregation shouts out to stop and gives the baby a necklace to protect it from evil. This makes Malcolm unable to touch or harm the baby, while he's distracted killing the woman an old man from the congregation run off with the baby.
Cut to 25 years later we join Jonathan Graves and his girlfriend Rebecca who are looking around the house which has been left to him by Malcolm, yes he was the babies father. It's funny we are supposed to believe these two are only mid twenties they and later on their friends are clearly thirty or older. Slowly but surely Jon starts to turn to the dark magic his father was practicing. When Rebecca says they should throw a house warming party Jon agrees.
Later on when they bored trying to find something to do Jon suggests they try and summon a demon. He sets up a circle of protection then goes about summoning. Of course in true horror movie tropes nothing happens off the bat. Then as soon as they all leave the basement a little ghoulie demon pops up. Later on Jon discovers the demon and goes about summoning more.
Among some of the demons he summons are two little people demons called Grizzel and Greedigut. They teach him how to power his magic up even more. Unfortunately it's all been planned by Malcolm, he uses the demons to manipulate Jon into summoning him back from the grave. All while this happening Rebecca is concerned over Jon becoming more distant and the dark arts he's getting mixed up in, she ends up leaving him but he makes the demons cast a spell that makes her go into a mindless compliant state.
Jon does one last big spell, this is the one that brings Malcolm back to life. The ghoulies then proceed kill or knockout all of Jon and Rebeccas friends as Malcolm in a needs them to do his last spell. Jon realizes the ghoulies have been working against him and tries to fight back against Malcolm he uses his magic versus him. Grizzle and Greedigut seem to have a turn of heart when they try to help Jon by warning him. Oh and the old guy from the beginning shows up again too.
Suffice to say not much else happens but despite that the film is good enough for me not warrant an ending spoiler. I'm not against this film in way it's just not as good as some of the other star 80's comedy horrors i'm used to like Re-animator or RotLD. it's still a decent watch even for just the sheer cheese factor of this film and trust me it's on full Edam factor here.
THN gives Ghoulies a rather decent 3 out of 5 stars and a watch at least once recommendation.
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