Ghoulies II

Larry (Damon Martin) and Uncle Ned (Royal Dano) are driving a truck to an amusement park with their attraction Satan's Den. They have to stop in a repair shop and four demons sneak and hide in the truck. They arrive at the carnival and hide inside the Satan's Den. The arrogant owner of the carnival P. Hardin (J. Downing) threatens to fire the employees if their attractions are not profitable and assigns the dwarf Sir Nigel Penneyweight (Phil Fondacaro) to work with Larry and Ned in the Satan's Den. He also hits on Larry's girlfriend Nicole (Kerry Remsen). When the audience sees the demons in the Satan's Den, they believe that they are part of the attractions and the entertainment becomes a sensation. But when people are attacked by the demons, there is panic in the carnival. Now Larry, Nigel and Nicole try to use an incantation to get rid of the creatures.

"Ghoulies II" is a funny and cheesy franchise similar to "Critters" and other "evil toys" in the late 80's and early 90's. The plot is silly with one dimensional characters and gruesome scenes, but entertains and is cult. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

A paper-thin plot: Ghoulies II picks up a short time after the first movie, a few of the little nasties stow away on an amusement park ride and bring big bucks to a dying fair. The creatures are mad after an attempt to kill them, so the creatures go on a rampage through the fairgrounds, ultimately leading to an explosive conclusion.

Sounds corny? No matter what anyone says, this is utterly fantastic. I refuse to totally dismiss this, because I find it quite engaging, in a guilty pleasure sense. I have to say it blew me away! This might all sound corny, like a bad B-movie, but that is not the case. My rating: 7/10.

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.

Royal Dano ("Go back to the hell that spawned you!") is Uncle Ned, a sweaty old drunk who operates a spook house called "Satan's Den" at a traveling carnival with his teen grandson Larry (Damon Martin) and dwarf sidekick Sir Nigel (Phil Fondacaro). When an @$$hole businessman takes over and threatens to close them down, Ned uses a satanic book of magic to call up five little mutant monsters (gator, cat, rat, fish, bat) to help with business. They do, but naturally being the demons they are, can't help themselves in the killing department as characters bite it with a pendulum, switchblade, carnival ride, electric wires, bumper cars and other toned-down PG-13 silliness. A giant monster that looks like a rejected extra from HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP shows up at the end to burp and explode.

Dennis Poali's script attempts to create sympathetic characters, but there's too much juvenile humor and other than some brief stop-motion, the creature FX are cheap rubbery puppets. If you recognize names like Mickey Knox, Romano Puppo and Anthony Dawson, it's because this was, surprisingly enough, filmed in Rome.

Grade: 3 out of 10