The movie that would've buried Jeffrey Combs' "career" if he'd gotten the part he auditioned for, GHOULIES has been hailed as "just a fucking rip-off of GREMLINS", as quoted from.... uh, some guy. Also, when you can see the fucking BOOM MIC (!) during a lightning storm conjuring scene, you know it's a sad day to be alive... Anyways, the movie itself opens on a black magic ritual being botched, as the sacrificial child gets a protection spell thrown on him, and mom takes it's place. Years later, the boy has grown into manhood, and returns to the SAME evil house with his wife to check out what they inherited. To break in the old place, they have a party with several drunken friends, and they make an alcohol fueled attempt at conjuring demons (probably in the hopes that they'll bring MORE beer...) from John's dad's spell book. Of course, the poor sad boozers fail miserably, conjuring ONE fuzzy, snot nosed cretin, popping up after they leave. After this, John tells his wife he's giving up school for a while so he can "fix up the house", which translates into either "practice my dead father's occult rituals", or "fuck the neighbor while you're gone" in guy talk. I'm not sure, I need to bone up on my translations. Well, it looks like it was the first one, because John proceeds to conjure more GHOULIES, create an indoor lightning storm (the aforementioned "BOOM MIKE" tragedy), and summon MIDGETS IN HELMETS! WAHOO! MIDGETS!! So, with his newly acquired arcane-ness, John (and his dayglow eyes) calls back his drunken friends for another party/ceremony. After brainwashing them, the group resurrects Johnny's daddy, and when the thing's over, everyone snaps out of it and goes back to getting drunk and fucking! Alright! But, daddy takes control of John's little critters and has them pick the group off one-by-one. Yeah, it seems that John was just a (badly animated) puppet from the start. But John, with the help of his helmet headed midgets and the house's caretaker stop dad's reign of terror and all their dead friends are brought back like NOTHING happened... GODS DO I HATE ENDINGS LIKE THAT! It's not bad for a movie whose cast is so dull it's outshined by barely animated puppets. Once again, Chuck Band's affliction for little things with teeth saves a movie from total obscurity. Thank Gods Combs was passed over for this part, he was able to go on to play Herbert West in... what else... RE-ANIMATOR! Wahoo!

Sequels: GHOULIES II, GHOULIES III: GHOULIES GO TO COLLEGE, and GHOULIES IV

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: GREMLINS or test your mettle with HOBGOBLINS