Ghoulies II (1988)

Movie Info

Here come the stop-motion Ghoulies…for just a second…

The ghoulies are back and raiding a travelling carnival.  Hiding out in an attraction called Satan’s Den, the evil creatures become the hit of the carnival.  As the ghoulies drive people to Satan’s Den, Larry (Damon Martin) and his uncle Ned (Royal Dano) begins to question the attraction’s success and uncover the darkness inside.  The ghoulies however aren’t going to go peacefully and the horror is about to break out of Satan’s Den…and are hungry for flesh!

Directed by Albert Band, Ghoulies II is the follow-up to the popular low-budget Ghoulies of 1985.  The movie was met by worse reviews than the original film.  Ghoulies II can often be found packaged with the original Ghoulies on DVD.

Furry ghoulies taste great!!!

Ghoulies was a bad movie that was fun; Ghoulies II is a bad movie that isn’t fun.  What originally came off as a rip-off of Gremlins had to try to find more direction in this film, but took away the few things that made Ghoulies different than Gremlins.

Ghoulies was just full of weirdness.  The movie had strange dwarf actors (for no reason), killer clowns, and a shapeshifting zombie magician…plus, the ghoulies.  Here, we get a more standard horror film, with the extremely non-threatening ghoulies sometimes attacking people and other times performing for them.  It of course ends up with a giant ghoulie running around the park and blowing up.  Fortunately we finally get the ghoulie in the toilet promised by the original Ghoulies poster.

The ghoulies continue to be pretty cheesy.  They were created by John Carl Buechler for the original film (he later went on to direct Ghoulies III:  Ghoulies Go to College), but they still just look like rubber puppets.  This film did add a few moments of stop motion animation that doesn’t really help the case, but it does at least change up the special effects a bit.

Finally…a Ghoulie in the toliet

The movie doesn’t have much star power and does feature one of the final performances of the prolific actor Royal Dano.  Dano’s past in good films can’t help this one and horrible supporting performances by most of the cast makes the acting almost as bad as the visuals…though I do always like it when Phil Fondacaro shows up.

Ghoulies II probably isn’t worth your time.  The first Ghoulies has some bad movie fun, but Ghoulies II doesn’t really even have the energy of the first film.  Despite being a rather average follow-up, the ghoulies continued on trucking.  Ghoulies II was followed by Ghoulies III:  Ghoulies Go to College in 1991.

Related Links:

Ghoulies (1985)