Low budget creature feature Ghoulies is many things to many people: a crass and brazen rip-off of Gremlins, a second-tier franchise from prolific schlock producer/director Charles Band, and a mid-80s guilty pleasure that brings to mind popular children’s toy Boglins.
Revisiting the film for its 35th anniversary, Ghoulies is all of this and so much more. As Meagan discussed in her It Came From The 80s column, this is a franchise that lured prospective horror audiences in with its ridiculous cover art of a little green monster, dripping ooze, as it pops out of a toilet (the image was not even originally in the film and was added following reshoots). What audiences may not remember is that the goopy puppets barely even appear in the film, and they’re not even the main antagonists!
Ghoulies is actually about a cult headed by Malcolm Graves (Michael Des Barres), who opens the film attempting to sacrifice his son during a satanic ritual. When its mother protects it with a magical amulet, the child is saved and both parents die. 21 years later, the boy – Jonathan (Peter Liapis, aged 35 at the time of filming) – inherits the family’s palatial estate and slowly succumbs to his late father’s demonic influence. Much of the film focuses on Jonathan’s disintegrating relationship with girlfriend Rebecca (Lisa Pelikan), whom he ultimately resorts to controlling using his newfound powers. The entire last act is dedicated to an out of control dinner party wherein Jonathan and Rebecca’s friends are slaughtered by the Ghoulies in order to resurrect Malcolm, who is revealed to be the mastermind behind Jonathan’s obsession.
In many ways, Ghoulies is an unsuccessful film. The script from Jefery Levy, co-written by director Luca Bercovici, is filled with unusual narrative choices: voice over from Jonathan’s secret guardian Wolfgang (Jack Nance) that only appears at the beginning and end of the film, random appearances from bickering dwarves in medieval armour, and the early introduction of a half dozen of Jonathan and Rebecca’s friends before they are sidelined for 2/3 of the runtime.
Despite all of these issues, the film is eminently watchable. The creature design of the ghoulies – most of which have their own distinct visual aesthetic – is equal parts cute and gross. Accusations of stealing from Gremlins are unwarranted since the two films were in production at the same time (Ghoulies’ exhibition was delayed due to Band’s financial issues, which allowed the Joe Dante film to be released first). The reality is that Ghoulies is much more liberally stealing from 1982’s Poltergeist with its killer clown sequence.
What makes the film fascinating is its prescient underlying elements. Yes, the film is a lowbrow riff on escalating fears of satanism in the 80s, but it also features a significant amount of relationship abuse and, surprisingly enough, a healthy dose of not-so-subtle queerness.
The whole film is secretly predicated upon Malcolm gaslighting his son, Jonathan. Initially the College student is presented as a decent guy with an affection for his girlfriend and friends, but over the course of the film he becomes increasingly worse as he is corrupted by his father’s spell book. Rebecca gets the worst of it: initially Jonathan forgets her, then he begins to ignore her. The couple breaks up when he initiates sex in order to impregnate her with his own demon heir and, although he attempts to protect her with his mother’s amulet, he and the dwarves eventually hypnotize her to be his servant.
Alas Ghoulies doesn’t satisfactorily address these issues and the resolution is too simplistic and pat. Jonathan and Rebecca naturally wind up back together and Jonathan’s complicity is waved away because he was under the influence and not himself. Still, until the film’s overly cheerful ending, Ghoulies clearly empathizes with Rebecca and paints Jonathan as a toxic, entitled asshole whose desire for power literally kills every healthy relationship in his life.
One of the film’s relationships is between Jonathan’s friends Mike (Scott Thomson), whose defining trait is that he always wears sunglasses, and pretty boy Eddie (David Dayan). The pair are constantly at each other’s side, such that they rarely appear in a scene alone (except to die). Eddie, in particular, is very hands-on with Mike, touching and jumping on his “friend” regularly. The most telling sign that this is, in fact, a queer relationship occurs in the last act: all of the partygoers naturally brand off into couples, including Mark (Ralph Seymour) and Donna (Mariska Hargitay!), Dick (Keith Joe Dick) and Robin (Charlene Cathleen)…and Eddie and Mike.
This pairing, as the boys laugh and smoke a joint while intimately leaning against each other, is visually and narratively coded as a relationship on par with the heterosexual coupling of the other friends. Throw in the iconic scene where meathead Dick is lured into a deep kiss by Malcolm (in disguise as a seductive topless woman) and Ghoulies winds up being surprisingly queer.
Naturally the film doesn’t dig into any of the emotional fall-out of these events and even suggesting that Levy and Bercovici considered these issues when writing the screenplay is probably giving Ghoulies too much credit. Still, it is intriguing that all of these components found their way into a charming little B movie about demon puppets. Back in 1985, Ghoulies may have seemed like little more than a cheap rip-off of Gremlins, but 35 years later, this bizarre creature feature has a little more substance than viewers might expect.
Plus, you know, a demon in a toilet.
