The son of an evil sorcerer inherits his father’s house and finds books of Satanic rituals. With a few magic words, he summons the demonic Ghoulies along with a pair of dwarf devils, and plans a far greater ritual that requires multiple sacrifices.
One of the killer hand-puppet films that followed Gremlins, Ghoulies was a masterpiece of marketing, making enough money for Charles Band to start up Full Moon Entertainment. The sales pitch was quite clever. They made everyone believe that this was a light-hearted film about fuzzy little creatures that caused havoc and played practical jokes. Actually, it was a slow, overly dramatic, Satanic horror film. The “Ghoulies” are hardly in the picture and never do anything of importance. I suspect that the original script didn’t include them and when Gremlins was a hit, the fur-bags were added without making any substantial changes.
As for the non-puppet part of the film, I’ve seen a lot worse, but that doesn’t mean it has anything of interest. It makes little sense, isn’t frightening or funny, and mainly involves one of several sorcerers standing around with glowing green eyes, or a bunch of supposedly college-age partiers having dinner and hitting on each other (don’t expect to see skin from that; this is a PG-13 that should have been PG).
However, I did have fun watching, mainly from my wife giggling and saying “How cute” whenever a Ghoulie was doing one of its evil deeds. The hand-puppets (which are sometimes stop motion and sometimes marionettes) are far from intimidating. I hope that when the forces of evil come to my town, they will forget about calling forth giant demons or plagues, and will instead unleash a hoard of maladjusted Muppets.
This is one of those very few “so bad it’s good” films. Just make sure you’ve got someone nearby to say “Awwww, the furry little guy is trying to bite his eye. How cute.”
It was followed by Ghoulies II, Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College, and Ghoulies IV.