Ghoulies II

Those hostile little beasts are at it again in this adequately entertaining sequel. It takes quite a while for it to really get started, but the final half hour is worth waiting for. It's actually played fairly straight for a while, with comedy elements getting introduced more and more as the movie goes on. The Ghoulies themselves are definitely cute in an ugly sort of way, and are a genuinely amusing bunch. Fortunately, some of the human characters manage to be almost as interesting.

After an attempt to kill the Ghoulies fails, they hitch a ride with a truck carrying the contents of "Satans' Den", a house of horrors for a travelling carnival. They hide out inside Satans' Den for a while, intermittently killing people, until the big finale when they finally break out. The place has been hurting financially, but when patrons get a look at the Ghoulies and assume them to be part of the act, business starts booming.

I have to be partial to any movie featuring the following elements: an appearance by old Hollywood pro Royal Dano, who's in fine form as drunken old Uncle Ned, a song by the metal band W.A.S.P. ("Scream Until You Like It"), old school effects (puppeteering, stop motion animation, etc.), a role for Italian exploitation veteran Romano Puppo ("2019: After the Fall of New York"), and a carnival atmosphere (even if done on a budget). Production design, by Giovanni Natalucci, and cinematography, by Sergio Salvati, are both well done.

The enjoyable cast features familiar faces from other horror films: Kerry Remsen ("Pumpkinhead"), Sasha Jenson ("Halloween 4"), Starr Andreeff ("Dance of the Damned"), William Butler ("Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III"), and Donnie Jeffcoat ("Night of the Demons" '88). Damon Martin ("Pee-wee's Big Adventure") is our likable young lead, Phil Fondacaro (who played the title role in "Troll") the engaging Sir Nigel Penneyweight, and J. Downing the appropriately odious money man Mr. Hardin.

Overall, agreeable entertainment for genre fans; produced and directed by Albert Band, veteran director and father of Charles Band of Empire Pictures and Full Moon fame.

Six out of 10.

This time the focus is much more on the ghoulies themselves. And they're all ready to have some fun at the carnival!

There's lots of fun to be had here. You get to see ghoulies eat off a clowns arm (hoorah!)and my favorite scene features a ghoulie running over a man with a bumper car. Priceless.

Oh yeah, one of the more subtle moments I had to rewind a couple of times was when the mummy pops up and the kid kicks it back and you can hear the mummy say 'ow!'

Sure these films can be laughed at, but I have a feeling the movies are laughing with you. It's all very tongue in cheek and not to be taken too seriously. The only moment I think that was to be taken seriously was the terrible moment where the girl is talking about an incident that happened when she was younger; ala Pheobe Cates in Gremlins.

Still, that moment passes quickly and is completely forgettable.

I find these 'Ghoulies' films to be completely charming. If you're into Gremlins and Critters and Munchies and the like, check'em out.

My review was written in August 1988 after watching the movie on Vestron video cassette.

Assembly line filmmaking (in this case, Charles Band's former stomping ground Empire Studios in Rome) is the curse of "Ghoulies II", a lame followup belatedly debuting this fall in video stores.

First pic, a shameless "Gremlins" imitation that emerged as Empire Pictures' top box office attraction, was a west coast-lensed horror comedy spotlighting cutesy John Buecher hand puppets. Sequel features a few more puppets and is set in the Carolinas, but lensed on gaudy sets in Rome with a nondescript cast.

A priest (British thesp Anthony Dawson) tries to destroy the little title demon, but they escape, holing up in a failing carnival show run by Royal Dano and his nephew Damon Martinl Presence of the supernatural critters perks up attendance, staving off the foreclousr efforts of meanie J. Downing, but the ghoulies start killing people, a no-no even for a Grand Guignol attraction.

Preposterous climax has the good guys conjuring up an oversize monster (it doesn't look much better than its pintsized ghoulies) to knock off the beasties.

Albert Band (father of defunct Empire's majordomo Charles) directs with apparent disinterest, just cranking out another title in a production slate. These doll-like figures just aren't scary and the attempted black humor falls flat. The inherent contradiction of producing fantasy films without imagination is evident in bold relief.

Technical team, largely Italian, delivers competence within a creative vacuum. Dwarf actor Phil Fondacaro sticks out as way too talented for this material.

This is the rare case where a sequel is actually better than the original. Considering that original is the cheap and nasty Ghoulies, it's really not much of an accomplishment. Anyway the plot here is that the Ghoulies make their way to a carnival where business is poor. Their presence manages to help business pick up but of course they do what Ghoulies are meant to do and start killing people.

What makes this a better movie than the first? Well for starters the carnival setting is more interesting. The special effects for the Ghoulies is improved over the first. The cast is better, helped in large part by veteran Royal Dano and "little person" Phil Fondacaro. But ultimately it's the camp humor that this movie has that elevates it above the previous movie.

All this being said about how it's an improvement over the first Ghoulies, it's still not a very good movie. It's watchable enough for a movie of its kind. But let's not get carried away and say it's anything better than that. So, better than the first Ghoulies but still not very good.

You normally think of cinematic greats such as the Godfather 2, Terminator 2, Empire Strikes Back and Aliens as 'superior' sequels. Not many people ever mention the eighties horror 'Ghoulies 2' in the same breath as any of the affore-mentioned films. However, it is head and shoulders about its predecessor. Although, that's not saying much.

The original was about a wannabe sorcerer who conjured up a load of evil little critters, aka, 'ghoulies' only to have them turn on him. Sadly, the first film centred on the – pretty bland – humans, whereas the real stars of the show were the nasty little puppets who terrorised people. I'm guessing this was more to do with budget constraints, but, this time round, they seem to have learned from their mistakes. The ghoulies are the stars.

They're in it pretty much all the way through. Yes, the human characters are still pretty bland, but at least you don't really notice when the monsters get going. You could naturally pick faults in the film by saying how the ghoulies are about two feet tall and would probably find it difficult to actually hurt someone (let alone savage them to death), but we'll just skip that one and assume they are capable of killing tonnes of people.

It's hardly scary. There's not an awful lot of tension of scares in it (unless you're that afraid of rubbery-looking monsters) and you have to majorly suspend your disbelief to imagine that creatures can walk around a packed fairground and not be seen until it suits the script's needs. But, if you like cheesy eighties horror/monster movies, then give this one a go (and ignore the sequels – the series truly peaks here – and that's saying something!).