Ghoulies

1985 "They'll get you in the end."
4.2| 1h21m| PG-13| en| More Info
Released: 18 January 1985 Released
Producted By: Empire Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

A young man and his girlfriend move into the man's old mansion home, where he becomes possessed by a need to control ancient demons.

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jacobjohntaylor1 This is not a very good movie. Gholies 2 is a great movie. Gholies go to collage is a great movie. Gholies IV is a great movie. But this is not very good. It is not very scary. The story line is awful. The ending is awful. Do not see this awful movie. It had great sequels that have nothing to do which this movie. Do not waste your time. And do not waste your money do not see this movie. It is awful. It is not scary. I need more lines and I am running out of things to say. This movie is awful. Do not see it. It is awful. It not scary. It is just pooh pooh. Do not see it.
BA_Harrison No doubt Ghoulies was rushed into production in order to cash in on the success of Joe Dante's Gremlins, but there is a yawning chasm in quality between the two films: Gremlins is ingenious, anarchic, demented, loaded with terrific black humour, features excellent creature effects and stars the yummy Phoebe Cates; Ghoulies is moronic trash with dumb characters and bargain basement monsters.The film's uninspired plot sees a young couple, Jonathan and Rebecca (Peter Liapis, who is way too old for the part, and Lisa Pelikan), move into a creaky old mansion where they discover a collection of books on black magic. After reading one particular book, Jonathan becomes obsessed with conducting Satanic rituals, unaware that he is being controlled by the spirit of his dead father, who seeks to return from the grave.The 'ghoulies' of the title are diminutive demons that appear to kill the couple's friends (most of whom are so obnoxious that their deaths are more than welcome). Shonky rubber hand puppets created by John Carl Buechler, these critters have none of the mischievous charm of a gremlin (or even a Critter, for that matter) and are neither funny or scary—just embarrassingly bad. Also serving to irritate: two devilish dwarfs, Grizzell and Greedigut (Peter Risch and Tamara De Treaux), and a silly happy ending that sees all of the dead characters miraculously return to life unscathed.
Matt Therault If the cover of your movie has a creature popping out of toilet. I your movie, you better have a creature popping out of a toilet. It's Chekhov's gun. There was no ghoulie that ever popped out of a toilet. I was waiting the entire movie for a puppet to pop out of a toilet, and never got it! Aside from that this movie is still pretty bad. The main actor has some weird green eyes that glow when he "invokes" them (I guess). I don't really know, because they don't explain it, and they show up when he is "more" menacing than he normally is. I also didn't understand why they had to wear sunglasses towards the end. He could turn his weird green eyes off when he wanted. He didn't need the sun glasses. I also didn't get why the main character decided he had to quit school to clean up a house. Why wouldn't you just clean up the house after school??? It didn't make any sense. The movie is filled with pretty subpar acting. For some reason a female costar that seems like she was already in her fifties, but her actual age hadn't caught up to her yet. The ghoulies were the best part, but you only see them for maybe, maybe, 10 minutes out of the whole movie. There were also these two dwarfs that showed up for no real reason except to drink some liquid, and fight against their original master (maybe?)
Foreverisacastironmess This picture has the rank of being not just one of the earliest, but also one of the most whacked-out flicks that Full Moon ever produced, and it was one of their biggest ever hits. I do like it but not all that much. It's very cute but it's definitely nothing great. In fact, it's a wee bit of an endurance test! My first and primary annoyance: It isn't really about the ghoulies! They're mere window dressing for a strange and complicated story, and the ones that do appear are laughable! They look like s****y old diseased sock puppets, and that's not easy for me to say because the sequel is one of my all-time favourite horror movies, I'd strongly urge you to check out that one it you wanna see a Ghoulies movie done right. It's so horribly in-your-face and dead to-the-max 80s! From the wardrobe to the attitudes and practically everything, particularly when it comes to some of the more cartoony and obnoxious smaller characters, like that old guy who's constantly wearing shades.. What the hell was that asshole on at the time!? Break dancing scene, what the f**k!?! I really can't stand the red-headed Lisa Pelican as "Rebecca", she's so embarrassingly melodramatic with all of her lines and whenever the camera's focusing on her face she's always off in a fog and terribly posing as if like Sophia Loren! Awful actress. I also didn't like the two dwarf characters. Now I've nothing against those kinds of people, in fact to me their performances were actually very good, but they weren't monsters, and in my opinion to jerk around with the audience that they are when there's already supposed to be little monsters running around is just bogus. It's the same cheap gag that they would later base the entire rotten fourth 'Ghoulies' movie around. I positively adored the spirited performance of Michael Des Barnes as the delightfully fiendish "Malcolm Graves". He really gives it his all and even though he goes ridiculously grandiose with it, it sure works. I can't recall ever seeing another horror movie villain quite like him. I love all of his charmingly bizarre inflections, how he goes from softly-spoken to roaring in a second! And it's so awesomely wrong when he demands to kiss his son to steal his soul!! I thought he was far more charismatic than the guy who played his son, I just found iy plain cringe-worthy whenever he was trying to be commanding. They also should've ditched the silly and unnecessary narrating. It was like I was watching Troll 2 all over again.. I think that I may have liked this better if they'd have just done away with any pretence of it being about little monsters and made it a straight-up story of resurrected sorcerous evil battling against its estranged offspring it could've stood on its own merit surely! I mean they certainly should have kept the ghoulies in it, just not made it out as if the entire movie was about them.. And you know, I'm wrong in a way because the marketing did pay off big time for the studio, and if I don't quite get it then I'm still very glad because it allowed them to create some later gems that I do wholeheartedly love and regard as classics. It's such a weird little mish-mash of a flick. By degrees it's a crazy party horror movie, then a domestic drama, then it's an epic magical fight of good vs evil - it's everything except a solid horror that knows what it wants to be, and that's a bit of a shame. I'm not saying it isn't fun, but it's a mess. It's a fun mess! Everything about it is extremely tacky and rough but that could perhaps only add to the appeal for some fans. It's certainly not lacking in creativity. It's a fun and entertaining piece of horror trash if you're in the right frame of mind and is worthy of a watch every now and then. "Shut up, goddammit!"