Ghoulies

Ghoulies (1985)
directed by:  Luca Bercovici
starring:  Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelikan, Michael Des Barres, Jack Nance, Ralph Seymour, Mariska Hargitay
Genre:  Horror

     What can be said about a timeless classic like Ghoulies?  Many younger viewers who are accustomed to loads of cheap cgi in just about every current genre film made may not appreciate the puppeteering fx of the little ghoulies but I most certainly do.

Don't get me wrong I don't hate cgi and in fact I think it's necessary for a lot of applications.  However it's so easy and sometimes lazy to throw in a bunch of video game imagery instead of actually creating puppets, prosthetics, or even plain old stage blood.  And people can say whatever they want there are very, very few films that in my opinion have cgi that looks biologically correct.  But as I said I don't hate it I just hate the overuse or needless use of it.
   The movie is about a young man named Jonathan Graves (Peter Liapis) who inherits a home once owned by his father who he knows nothing about.  His father Malcolm Graves (Michael Des Barres) was a sort of cult leader who performed evil rituals in the basement of the home that included human sacrifice.  In the introduction to the film Malcolm in fact is trying to sacrifice his own son Jonathan as a baby in order to appease his evil lord.  But of course to his dismay an intruder named Wolfgang (Jack Nance) steals the baby and escapes the house before he can be sacrificed.  Shoot to present day or should I say 1985 when Jonathan and his girlfriend Rebecca (Lisa Pelikan) move into the house and attempt to fix it up and make it their home.  Soon Jonathan finds a book on sorcery and black magic, then he discovers the basement altar area, and before you know it he's conjuring up two little people to do his bidding. 
    

Soon the Ghoulies start appearing and Jonathan gets further and further caught up in his family's dark past but all the while he's a sort of patsy for the real plan which is to bring Malcolm back to life so he may complete his ritual of immortality and ultimate power.  Rebecca gets fed up with Jonathan's activities and even catches him in the act of performing a black magic ceremony in the basement.  She threatens to leave but Jonathan has one of his conjured slaves cast a love spell on her and she returns as basically a voodoo style zombie walking around in a trance. 
     The acting in the movie is fair, none of them are terrible by any means.  Jonathan and Rebecca have a couple of parties with their friends including the awesomeness that is Mariska Hargitay who plays Donna.  All in all everyone including the party extras did well enough to keep me lost in the movie.  There's nothing worse than a bad actor pulling you out of movie reality.  The effects are pretty decent for the time.  I especially enjoyed the tongue shooting out of a woman's mouth in one scene and strangling one of the party goers who thought he was about to get the lay of his life, meanwhile it was Malcolm in disguise.  I also really like the glowing green eyes in this movie for both Malcolm and Jonathan.  Very well done for light effects as I am not a big fan of light effects of the 80s and 90s.  The ghoulies themselves are great in my humble opinion I mean it's Howard Berger and designer John Carl Buechler who if you know anything about fx artists you know these are two of the best.  Especially Howard Berger a third of great KNB FX Group which is now just Nicotero and Berger since Kurtzman decided to be a jackass and try directing and writing, and all but failed. 

     I love Charles Band and his little monster movies.  Dolls, Blood Dolls, Demonic Toys, and the Puppetmasters...Band always has his hands in something involving dolls or puppets.  Makes you wonder why Mr. Band likes to play with dolls so much.  Then of course usually we have his brother Richard Band who does music for a lot of these films using melodic tones that truly capture the atmosphere of these strange horror films.  All in all Ghoulies is a bit scary, a bit silly, and a bit 80s so if your in the mood for that I highly recommend it.  As for the sequels well not so much don't waste a lot of effort searching them out.