Ghoulies II (1988)

... aka: Duhovi II (Ghosts II)
... aka: Ghoulies 2
... aka: Ghoulies II: Il principe degli scherzi (Ghoulies II: The Prince of Jokes)

Directed by:
Albert Band

Ned Prentice (Royal Dano), formerly a stage magician called "The Great Fausto" but now a washed-up, grumpy old drunk, runs a traveling carnival spook show called Satan's Den. His teenage nephew Larry (Damon Martin) has decided to tag along with him for the summer in hopes of learning the magic / carnival trade and ends up having to both pull all of the weight and keep the showing going. He's helped by dwarf Sir Nigel Penneyweight (Phil Fondacaro), a Shakespearean actor who used to perform at the Old Vic but is now slumming dressing up in monster costumes. Little do they know, but they're about to get some unwanted additional help when they pull their overheating truck into a closed gas station late one night. Prior to their arrival, a priest (Anthony Dawson) being chased by some red-cloaked gnomes ducked into the station and threw a bag full of ghoulie demon puppets into a smoking drum labeled "extremely toxic." However, the corrosive waste didn't even phase the critters and one managed to knock him into the barrel, quickly reducing him to a skeleton. Attracted by the horror art on the side of the Satan's Den truck, the ghoulies decide they've found a new home and quietly sneak on board.

Ned, Larry and Nigel arrive in the small town of Greenville and start setting up with the rest of the acts. Head of accounting Phillip Hardin (J. Downing), whose father owns Hardin Enterprises, shows up to audit all of the company's holdings, which include the carnival. And he's planning on shutting down any act that doesn't show a profit by the time he leaves. That puts added pressure on the old fashioned Satan's Den, which hasn't been performing well for the past 16 months since contemporary kids can get all of the monsters and gory thrills they want at the local cinema. If they're not able to pull it around in a couple of days, Phillip's going to replace them with a ladies mud wrestling tent. However, never underestimate to power of mischievous, murderous little demons to help boost your sales!

After a couple of little boys encounter one of the ghoulies, which spits sticky green goop and chews through a ninja star, word gets around and soon everyone's flocking to Satan's Den to see them. Some customers don't make it to the exit. There's death by razor, pendulum and electrocution, but most of the mild carnage takes place during the big finale when the ghoulies decide to leave the spook show and wreak havoc on the entire carnival. There are some fun bits involving the rides and carnival booths, including bumper cars, the shooting gallery, the dunk tank and ring the bell. One even removes a screw holding a ride together, sending the car two people are riding in flying off. During the finale, a spell book is used to conjure up a "demonic intercessor," which is basically a big man-in-a-suit ghoulie that runs around eating the smaller ones.

Even though they're basically stuck with a bunch of sub-Gremlins gags, the creatures are given more screen time and more to do here, which is an improvement over the original. They also made the smart decision to only feature five of them, each patterned after a regular animal, which helps give each a bit more personality. There's a bat one that flies, a rat one that spits green slime, a cat one that can imitate a cat's meow to lure victims, one that looks like a baby doll crossed with a fish and a squatty one that (I think) is supposed to look like an alligator. They head bang to W.A.S.P. (who even released a tie-in Ghoulies music video for "Scream Until You Like It"), give each other high five's, laugh, belch and do other silly things in between killings. Of course this is all incredibly silly and juvenile, but creating something that would appeal to young teens was, I think, obviously the whole point here.

Filmed at Empire Studios in Rome, this utilized a mostly Italian crew and mostly Italian actors serving as extras and filling some of the smaller parts, including former spaghetti western regular Romano Puppo as the strongman. The DOP was Sergio Salvati, veteran of many Lucio Fulci films. John Carl Buechler was again in charge of the creature design and, though he sticks closely to the designs of the first film, they're given a bit more mobility this time out, which is helped even further by a few stop motion animations courtesy of David Allen. Charles Band was the executive producer and Dennis Paoli (Re-Animator) wrote the script.

The cast is littered with familiar faces from 80s horror, including a wasted Starr Andreeff (Dance of the Damned), William Butler (Friday the 13th Part VII) and Sasha Jenson (Halloween 4) as some of the obnoxious teens, Kerry Remsen (Pumpkinhead) as the harem dancer love interest, Donnie Jeffcoat as a cynical, foul-mouthed little kid (so basically the same role he had in NIGHT OF THE DEMONS), fx man Michael Deak as a clown who gets his arm torn off, Dale Wyatt as a dancer, Donald Hodson and Mickey Knox.

While this was given a limited theatrical release, it did most of its business on home video and cable. A tiny bit of gore was removed to secure a PG-13 rating, which not only helped get this regular play on cable, but also made it perfect filler for premium movie channels that were always desperate for PG and PG-13 films they could run before 8pm. This one fit the bill so it was on TV all the time back in the day. There have been multiple DVD releases, plus a 2015 Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory, which comes with the 17 minute documentary short Ghoulies II: More Toilets, More Terror.

★★

Streets (1990)

Directed by:
Katt Shea

Director Shea was born in Detroit and, after graduating from the University of Michigan and working a spell as a teacher, migrated to Los Angeles. While attending UCLA and doing some modeling work on the side, she began landing bit roles in A films like My Tutor (1982) and Scarface (1983), eventually moving her way up to supporting parts in several T&A comedies from the likes of Chuck Vincent and Lem Amero. That led to co-starring roles in several Roger Corman productions, including the shot-in-Argentina fantasy Barbarian Queen (1985) and the shot-in-the-Philippines action flick The Devastator (1986). But Shea wasn't content just having roles like “Mud Wrestler” and films like Hollywood Hot Tubs (1984) on her resume and all the while she was also writing (usually in collaboration with her then-husband Andy Ruben) and working behind-the-scenes on these movies. After “stalking” (her words, not mine!) Corman outside his office one day, Shea ran the idea by him for a movie that would eventually become STRIPPED TO KILL (1987). Because she'd previously shot second unit on another Corman production, had an idea with some potential and was persistent (apparently it took a year to finally get the green light), Corman eventually gave her her very first chance to direct. In the interim, she landed a supporting role as one of Norman Bates' victims in Psycho III (1986) and used that opportunity to learn what she could on set from observing star / first-time director Anthony Perkins and cinematographer Bruce Surtees while she was there.

The much-better-than-need-be Stripped debuted to surprisingly decent reviews and ended up making tons of money on cable and video for Corman's company. It also received additional press when star Kay Lenz complained about the film's exploitative ad campaign and new title (apparently it was called simply Deception when she'd signed on to appear). Nevertheless, because of its huge success, Corman would back four more films for Shea, including the stripper-meets-vampire gem DANCE OF THE DAMNED (1989), which garnered surprisingly good reviews itself, a 1989 Stripped sequel starring Maria Ford, which the director was ultimately somewhat displeased with due of producer / editing interference, and this one. Shea has stated in interviews that Corman never dissuaded her from her ambitions, but had stipulations all the while on certain aspects the finished product needed to contain. In short, they all needed to have violence and nudity for the direct-to-video market for which they'd be doing the majority of their business. Shea and Ruben (who often also produced these films) rose to the challenge of not only giving Corman what he wanted but also making movies that were thoughtful, intelligent, stylish and uncommonly well-crafted for their budgets. Streets combines both Corman's demands and Shea / Ruben's ambitions to transcend the material into an entertaining and affecting, albeit imperfect, film.

Christina Applegate stars as an illiterate, heroin-addicted teenage hooker named Dawn, who's living a sad, aimless, dangerous and drug-fueled life in Venice Beach. Late one night, she's picked up by a john on a motorcycle and taken under a pier, where the action starts getting rough. After her trick attempts to rape and murder her, Dawn's saved by teen Sy (David Mendenhall), a middle class suburban kid from Santa Barbara. Sy's not really a runaway. At least not yet. He simply used an opportunity (his parents going away on vacation) to sneak out of the house and ride off on his bike, with hopes of peddling all the way to Hollywood to start a band. In contrast to Sy's naive, sheltered upbringing, Dawn has lived her entire life on the streets. Her mother was also a hooker who abandoned her with “50 dollars for groceries and a pretty good idea how to fuck.” Over the course of the next few days, Sy gets to experience what Dawn's daily life is like and get a good taste of what living out on the mean streets really entails.

The man who attacked Dawn turns out to be a sadistic motorcycle cop named Lumley (Eb Lottimer); an unhinged officer already far past the breaking point who's able to use his position of power to rape, abuse and murder. His chosen victims are mostly those that nobody is going to miss or care that much about; namely street kids, runaways and hookers, and Lumley doesn't like the fact that Dawn escaped, scratched up his face in the process and could possibly ID him if need be. He sets out on an obsessive quest to find and eliminate her, using a special sawed-off gun which makes only a muffled sound when fired.

I've seen one common criticism of the film, which comes from people who don't think a serious homeless drama and a psycho killer thriller go well together. I'll offer a counterpoint to that. Not only do the two work in tandem quite nicely, but the presence of the psycho not only adds another layer of urgency to the hopeless plight of street kids but also lends power and believability to the bond that quickly develops between the two protagonists out of sheer desperation. After all, this movie isn't really about the killer, it's about Dawn and Sy. And honestly, if a similar film had been made by a more famous, established filmmaker, viewers would likely be responding more positively to the ambiguous psycho by talking about how brilliantly “symbolic” the cop is of this or that. As far as I'm concerned, there was really no reason for the cop character to be further established than what he is here. Knowing what caused him to snap or what makes him tick wouldn't really change anything. The director's intentions very well could have been to make the psycho officer representative of an establishment that really could care less about any of these forgotten kids. Actually, I strongly suspect that's the case considering the inclusion of a scene in a police locker room where cops nonchalantly discuss and joke around about one of the underage victims.

Though the action and horror scenes are tautly-directed, smoothly-edited and effective, where the film really shines is in its portrayal of day-to-day street life. Though Dawn lives in drain pipe and can't quite conquer her drug habit, she clings to what little dignity she can with a quick, self-deprecating sense of humor and by making money “whoring” (no intercourse sex) instead of hooking. Despite the fact she can't read and self-identifies as “stupid,” she's actually very clever in regards to how she manages to get by and coerce as much money as possible out of each of her customers. One of Dawn's drain-mates is a tiny young girl named Elf (Mel Castelo) who frequently has sex with a known pedophile for drug money and another guy named Bob (Patrick Richwood), who fancies himself a street philosopher, gets by hawking stuff and also isn't above crashing a murder scene to scrounge up whatever clothing and goods he can to sell. The name of the game in Streets is survival.

While there are certainly elements that date this (sometimes painfully so), much of the dialogue remains sharp and it's obvious that Shea and Ruben, just like with their other collaborations, actually care about the characters they have created and are presenting here to us. This film was also novel in the filmography of its star. Applegate, then-known for playing Kelly Bundy, the big-haired, spandex-clad, sexpot / bimbo daughter on the hit TV show Married with Children, gets to explore new territory here and does a terrific job in her role. While her sitcom character was blissfully hyper-aware of her sex appeal and used it to her advantage but was otherwise a complete moron, here she plays another highly-sexualized teen who also uses sex to get what she wants but has also been irreparably damaged by it. Her self-destructive, self-sabotaging character here is also far from dumb, even though she claims to be. Despite proving her versatility here, audiences never forgot "Kelly Bundy," few directors hired her for serious projects and she's been stuck mostly in sitcoms and lame comedies ever since.

Shot in just 19 days for a budget “far less than 1 million” (according to the director herself in a 1992 interview with Donald Porter), this was given a limited theatrical run in 1990, where it grossed a pretty respectable 1.5 million in around just 70 theaters. The VHS was from MGM/UA and, in 2010, it made its DVD debut through Shout! Factory, who paired it up with another Corman production involving prostitution called Angel in Red (1991). The theme song is from E.G. Daily. Paul Ben-Victor, Aron Eisenberg (TV's Deep Space Nine) and Alan Stock (Frightmare) are also in cast and Lenz and Starr Andreeff, the leads in two of Shea's previous films, both have small cameo roles.

★★★