Ghoulies (1985)

... aka: Beasties
... aka: Duhovi (Ghosts)
... aka: Les goules (The Ghouls)

Directed by:
Luca Bercovici

The heavily-publicized Gremlins (which began production in the spring of 1983) became the fourth largest domestic box office draw of 1984, behind only Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was also a huge hit globally and merchandising of various Gremlins products (dolls, toys, video games...) sent profits even further through the roof. The Joe Dante directed film had finished principle photography an entire year before its '84 summer release. In the meantime, the Charles Band-produced Ghoulies went into production at the end of January 1984. Filming had to be closed down for several months when they ran out of money but was eventually picked back up again. The finished product was dumped into around 350 theaters about a year after production first began... and just a few months after Gremlins finished its theatrical run. The result? While exact figures aren't known it clearly was profitable; likely highly profitable. According to the (I think self-penned) bio for director Bercovici on IMDb, Ghoulies "was the top grossing independent film in 1985." I'm not sure if that's true or not but I could see it being at least one of the biggest independent films of the year.

At a Satanic mass, manic, green-eyed cult leader Malcolm Graves (Michael Des Barres) plans on sacrificing his own son until mother Anastasia (Victoria Catlin) steps in. She puts a protective necklace around the babies neck to where he cannot be harmed. Malcolm orders it taken away by cult member Wolfgang (Jack Nance) and decides to use the mother as his sacrifice instead, unleashing his slimy puppet monsters on her. Several decades later, the father has died and the now-grown baby, college student Jonathan (Peter Liapis), has shown up to take possession of the family mansion. His girlfriend Rebecca (Lisa Pelikan, from JENNIFER) comes along to help whip the dilapidated place into shape. Serving as the caretaker there is Wolfgang; the only family Jonathan's ever known and thus someone he has no plans of dismissing despite his odd behavior. While looking through the basement, Jonathan finds a box containing his father's ceremonial robe and a book of spells.

Before they really start cleaning up, Rebecca decides to host a party there. After all, the place is already a mess so what harm could anyone really do? Once it clears out some and only a few guests; Rebecca's best friend Donna (Mariska Hargitay in her film debut), oddball Mark aka "Toad Boy" (Ralph Seymour), obnoxious druggies Mike (Scott Thomson) and Eddie (David Dayan), slutty Robin (Charene Cathleen) and tacky horn dog Dick (Keith Joe Dick), remain, they're at a loss as to what to do. Hide-and-seek? That's for kids! Trivial Pursuit? That's for nerds! Strip poker? That's for people in an R-rated movie! Strip monopoly? Wrong movie! How about conducting a Satanic ritual in the basement using the dead father's ancient spell book? Sure! While they go through with part of the ceremony, which doesn't seem to work, they all leave the circle before Jonathan has a chance to "dismiss the spirit."

Against his girlfriend's objections, Jonathan decides to temporarily drop out of school to tend to his inheritance. Now spending more time in the home alone, he starts following in his warlock father's footsteps and gradually taking on his evil persona. He makes weapons and talismans, causes it to rain, conjures up a bunch of little rubbery puppet demons that he can control plus two helmeted dwarf servants, Grizzel (Peter Risch) and Greedigut (Tamara De Treaux), and continues to try his hand at spell casting. He gets so into it that his eyes permanently glow green, just like his father's. Rebecca isn't too fond of the new Jonathan nor his sudden obsession with black magic. When she threatens to leave him, he casts a spell on her to keep her around and obedient.

In his quest for unlimited knowledge and power, Jonathan needs seven people to take part in some kind of ceremony. He manages to lure his friends over and entrances them long enough to recite the incantation. And then, well, everything backfires because he's been tricked by the dwarfs to help resurrect his father from the grave. The zombie father then sends all of the ghoulies on a mission to kill off all the friends while plotting to complete the sacrifice of Jonathan from twenty years earlier for his own power gain.

This Empire release is another of those unfortunate horror comedies that's neither scary nor funny. It's not good camp, nor is it enjoyably over-the-top, nor is it good exploitation with its mild PG-13 rated "thrills." While I doubt anyone, even children, could possibly be scared by any of this, the film fails even harder in the comedy department. The antics of some of the obnoxious friend characters aren't amusing in the least and that's about the only intentional "comedic" content in this one aside from reaction shots of the cheap-looking monsters to various goings-on. Most of the film focuses on the unlikable Jonathan and those scenes are played completely seriously. The acting is highly variable and there's needless narration (by Nance) added in spots, which serves no purpose other than telling us exactly what's already been put up on screen.

This would have also benefited from more focus placed on the titular creatures and less on the generic Satanism stuff. Sure, the ghoulies eventually get to kill a few people but they mostly just sit around watching what everyone else is doing. The oft-criticized John Carl Buechler-designed rubbery / toothy / slimy / ugly monsters are undeniably hokey, and could have used some more mobility, but they're really the least of the film's problems.

Faint praise, I know, but this also could have been worse. Partially redeeming it are some enjoyable fantasy elements being bandied about and the fact it's well-produced and not horribly made from a technical standpoint. Photography (by Mac Ahlberg), art direction / sets and lighting are all pretty good and some imaginative moments occasionally come through, like a ghoulie controlling a killer clown doll and a temptress (Bobbie Bresee) strangling someone with her elongated mutant tongue. We also get a five second shot of a ghoulie emerging from a toilet, which became the fitting central image of the marketing campaign.

Ted Nicolaou was the editor and the score (available on a soundtrack CD) is from Richard Band and Shirley Walker. This was followed by three sequels: GHOULIES II (1987), GHOULIES III: GHOULIES GO TO COLLEGE (filmed in 1989 but not released until 2 years later) and the curiously ghoulie-free Ghoulies IV (1994). Band was later sued by Hemdale Film Corporation for misrepresentation over the home video distribution rights. Director Bercovici, who went on to make Rockula (1990), The Granny (1995) and some action movies, co-wrote with Jefery Levy (who also produced and contributed several songs as "Fela Johnson").

★1/2

Savage Island (1985)

... aka: Banished Women
... aka: Paluu helvetistä (Return from Hell)
... aka: Prisioneiras da Ilha Selvagem (Prisoners of Wild Island)
... aka: Prison Island

Directed by:
"Nicholas Beardsley" (Ted Nicolaou)
Edoardo Mulargia (uncredited)

Charles Bands' Empire Pictures acquired the U.S. release rights to the sleazy Italian / Spanish women-in-prison films Femmine infernali (aka ESCAPE FROM HELL) and Orinoco: Prigioniere del sesso (aka Orinoco: Prison of Sex or HOTEL PARADISE), which were filmed back-to-back and released in 1980. Wizard Video issued the former on home video under the title Escape in 1984, but didn't release the second of the two as is. Instead, they cobbled together some footage from it, some footage from Escape and added about 15 minutes of bookmarking footage plus narration in an attempt to tie it all together, thus creating this third “new” movie. Some new credits were attached that managed to incorrectly match nearly all of the original films' stars to the wrong roles. Someone then whipped up a poster featuring Linda Blair (“star” of the new footage) in a skimpy bathing suit holding an Uzi and called it Savage Island. Island was released to theaters in 1985 and made its way onto home video later that same year on the Empire sub label Force Video. Needless to say, the entire thing is such a huge mess that both the director and Band ("Robert Amante") opted for aliases.

We open with the buried-girl-killed-by-python death from Escape, before meeting the well-dressed Ms. Daly (Blair). She steps out of a car, scowls, walks into a high rise office building, encounters a security guard and puts a bullet in the head after he insists she sign the register. This broad means business! The guard, by the way, is played by comedian / magician Penn Jillette in his film debut and he gets to spit out about three lines before he's shot dead. Daly goes upstairs, insists on seeing Mr. Luker (Leon Askin) and is soon holding him at gunpoint recounting her story. Daly was one of a hundred female prisoners promised shorter sentences if they went to work for Luker's island camp. “What they didn't tell me was that one week on your Emerald Island is like a thousand years in the shittiest South American hole!,” Blair angrily informs him. Turns out Daly along with the rest of the women were treated little better than slaves, plus were regularly tortured and killed. Since her escape two years earlier, Daly put together a plan to overthrow Emerald Island and she's managed to finally pull it off. We then jump back “four days ago” to see how it all went down as Blair occasionally chirps in to narrate.

We meet prisoner Maria (Cristina Lay), who's on a transport boat headed to the work camp being captained by Orinoco (Stelio Candelli). Though Maria claims she's there for “stealing from a fat old bitch and her sex starved husband,” she's actually Daly's partner going undercover. Cutting across the jungle in hopes of intercepting the boat is Daly's other partner Laredo (Anthony Steffen). He, along with a bunch of hired jewel thieves, end up clashing with Orinoco's group. They kill the guards and Laredo convinces Orinoco and his men to come over to their side by promising he'll be paid handsomely for his efforts. Pretty much exactly how it went down in Hotel Paradise only with some slight changes. The gang finally arrive at the prison, the ladies are thrown in with the wolves while the guys do their conspiring without so much as breaking a fingernail until the very end.

After Maria meets her new cellmates Muriel (Ajita Wilson), Mary (Maite Nicote) and Kate (Cintia Lodetti), the girls go to work mining for emeralds while lash happy guards walk around barking out things like “Quit fuckin' around fat ass!” and “You good for nothing bitches!” This very much keeps in tune with the original films' near-constant parade of nudity, including the nude cat fights, nude torture, nude stream bathing, lounging around the cell in the nude and, rather ingeniously, combining the outdoor shower scene from Escape and the outdoor shower scene from Hotel to make an even longer shower scene. However, while this does keep in much of the full female nudity, it gets rid of the more explicit shots present in the originals plus removes all of the soft-core sex and rape scenes. The nastier torture and whipping scenes didn't make the cut either, likely so this could secure a U.S. R rating.

What this film cannot do is combine two different films with similar yet slightly different plots and still keep everything coherent. Just as the credits themselves are jacked up, this hatchet-job (which was mostly re-dubbed for this release) switches around characters and character names like it's nothing. One actor who played a sadistic guard in Escape but one of the heroic revolutionaries in Hotel starts out as a heroic revolutionary with one name but then becomes a sadistic guard with another name that was already given to one of the other guards. At least three different characters are called Paco at various points and this keeps both the sadistic warden from Escape (played by Luciano Pigozzi) AND the sadistic warden from Hotel (played by Luciano Rossi), so depending on the scene it's impossible to tell who's even running this place. For the record, the majority of the recycled footage seen here comes from Hotel, though this finishes out by putting both of the films' big finales back to back!

We then return to Daly, who demands the jewels in Luker's safe as compensation for the hell she and her friends went through. She snarls out a few one-liners (“All that horror for two little bags of green SHIT!”), shoots both Luker and his bodyguard (Dirk Kancilia) dead and then gets what she came for. The end.

Watching this misbegotten project made me wonder why in the hell they didn't just release the superior Hotel Paradise as is with a few needed cuts since they'd already done that with Escape. It likely boiled down to it not having any kind of name recognition here in the states. Perhaps it was a smart business decision and being able to promote the film using Blair's name made it more profitable than it otherwise would have been. Either way, her screen time amounts to less than 10 minutes and she reportedly filmed all of her scenes in a single day. The editing, continuity and new dialogue are all terrible, the transfer of the original footage is way too dark (the night scenes are almost impossible to make out) and, despite the enticing poster, Linda's never on a beach in a bathing suit brandishing a gun. Afterward, you may feel compelled to cleanse your palate with a viewing of Chained Heat. Hell, Red Heat even.

★1/2