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.
