Movie Review #57: Ghoulies IV (1994)

 

Well you all knew it had to happen. I had to review a movie from the Ghoulies franchise or series or whatever. I think I'll just call this a series because it was only movies. Friday the 13th had a tv series, several video games and all kinds of other stuff. Ghoulies has just languished as a film series. I didn't have a Ghoulies NES game or a trading card set or something. Just 4 movies. And I really don't like saying 4 movies because I don't think Ghoulies IV deserves to be in this series. So you already know how much I enjoyed this film. It was very, very little if you couldn't guess.  

So Ghoulies is considered a Gremlins ripoff just because they have little monsters in each movies. I don't really know if I like the term ripoff all that much because well Ghoulies and Gremlins and Critters and Hobgoblins and Munchies and stuff like that. Each one of those movies is way different than each other. I wish we would use the term cash-in more because it at least makes more sense that way. Ghoulies even went into production before Gremlins. Now that I mentioned how I don't think it's far to refer to them as rip-offs watch the comments just call these movies rip-offs. Because the comments on my blog are made by jerks.

Ghoulies was made by Charles Band for Empire Pictures in the 1980s. 1985 to be correct. It involved all kinds of insane shit. Little monsters, little dwarves, Satanism, big fancy robes, black magic, it's a prefect mix of all kindsa great horror stuff. I think It's a very entertaining movie but It's been a while since I've seen it. It's very 1985 and I am a fan of that. Ghoulies II took place in a damn carnival and if you want me to like your horror movie you set it in a carnival. You'll have to make a really damn awful movie for me not to like it. Childs Play 3 has the best ending in that franchise because it takes place at a carnival, one that seems to have some insanely dangerously awful rides that people seemed to love to ride. Ghoulies III is a weird horror comedy that takes place in a college. It's pretty amazing and I love it. 

I think Ghoulies or Ghoulies II was the first movie I saw in the series. I believe it was one of the movies that I saw on ASN in the middle of the night in the 1990s when I would try to stay up in the middle of the night as a kid. Can I just say that late night movies are no fun anymore. Like stuff like The Matrix gets shown at 1:30 at night. That's not a late night movie damnit! I don't believe I got to see the entire movie that night because one of my parents came in and made me go to bed. Damn parents! Anyway it wasn't hard to find a copy because Ghoulies was at every video store ever made. You didn't have a video store if you didn't have Ghoulies in your horror section, and seeing as I was renting every movie I was able to finally see the end of the movie. Ghoulies III however was literally the hardest movie for me to find. Not a single video store ever had it. I found it at a video game store called Nintendo World which sold VHS tapes. I was so happy to finally see it. It is a gloriously silly movie.

As for the movie I decided to watch, I'm sure I watched it as a kid. I remember that VHS tape so well. It's literally the only thing I remembered about the movie. Ghoulies IV is really really bad so I'm pretty sure I forced all of those thoughts out of my mind because I don't see how I didn't see Ghoulies IV before this. So let's talk a little about this movie starting with the plot. Some sexy S&M Lady who's name I've already forgotten because my brain is trying to push all thoughts of this movie out of there for the second time. She wants this jewel because it will bring back a guy named Faust into the real world. The jewel gets destroyed but she is told of a second jewel owned by Johnathan Graves from the first Ghoulies movie. Despite this I really don't feel this was originally ever supposed to be a Ghoulies movie.

So The Jewel also somehow brought out the Ghoulies, which are totally different than regular Ghoulies (who are wet puppets) this movie has little people in costumes. One of them was Tony Cox who was the black little dude in every comedy movie in the early to mid 2000s. That dude was in them all I'm pretty damn sure. This is not his worst role. That's probably one of those terrible fucking Movie Movies, like Date Movie or Meet the Spartans. Holy hell I'd watch Ghoulies IV  a thousand times over this one.  These Ghoulies don't feel like Ghoulies tho. They are helpful to people and don't even eat a single persons face. You could literally cut them out of this movie and you wouldn't even miss them. That's not very good for a movie called Ghoulies IV.

Another reason why this feels like something other than Ghoulies IV is how they change the plot of the original movie. It was just how he and the S&M lady were very close and loved Devil worship. Somehow their Devil Worship helped make an evil version of Johnathan Graves and now that's who the S&M lady wants to bring back to the real world. It's all really stupid and confusing and not a lot of fun to watch. 

I will give the movie some credit as the lady who played the S&M lady is clearly having the time of her life and is very fun to watch (and she's very attractive too!). I also enjoyed the relationship between Jonathan Graves and his ex-girlfriend who is now the police commissioner or something. That's about it when it comes to the acting because everyone else is terrible and I hate them. Going back to shit on this movie some more is the really bad comedy that just randomly jarringly pops up from time to time. It's the kind of movie comedy that isn't very well written and it's also not well acted. It's a complete failure in that way.

The worst thing about this entire movie is that It's very very boring. The director Jim Wynorski is very good at making fun, fast paced, action packed low budget movies. The problem is I'm pretty sure CineTelFilms (that actually made several movies you've probably heard of like The Phildelphia Experiment and I Spit on Your Grave remake) took the money they had in the petty cash drawer and used it to make this movie. They couldn't even afford the damn puppets from the other movies! What the jesus hell is that shit?

FINAL VERDICT: This movie is a boring sack of crap that REALLY did not feel like a part of the Ghoulies movies. It didn't even feel like the original story even had any monsters in the damn thing. I'm sure they were put into this movie just because CineTelFilms found out that they somehow had the rights to the Ghoulies. It's a complete failure. Watch any of the other 3 movies or any Jim Wynorski film. They are all streets ahead of this garbage.