A man running with a bagful of ghoulies with a bunch of cloaked figures hot on his trail starts this story off. The man is less than successful at destroying the little monsters than he’d hoped. Now the ghoulies have hitched a ride on a carnival caravan and take up residence in the spookhouse. This particular carnival is now in danger of both being overrun by ghoulies AND being revamped (and thus ruined) by the money hungry son of its original owner. This joker wants to replace the spookhouse with a mud wrestling pit! Now it’s up to a ragtag group of carnies to defeat the ghoulies and save the carnival from capitalism.
From Albert Band, the director of Dracula’s Dog (1977) and the producer of Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, comes Ghoulies II (1987). Since the original film was a hit, Empire Pictures decided to go all out on this marvelous sequel. Screenwriter Dennis Paoli lent his talents to this one after his double whammies of Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986). Cinematography duties on Ghoulies II were handled by none other than maestro Sergio Salvati, who shot some of Lucio Fulci’s greatest work including Zombie (1979) and The Beyond (1981). The music score by Fuzzbee Morse is as kooky as it is dynamic. Great stuff!
The cast of Ghoulies is excellent with legendary character actor Royal Dano as Uncle Ned, the washed-up magician, and Phil Fondacaro as Sir Nigel Penneyweight, a former Shakespearean actor slumming it as a monster in the spookhouse. I like the leads, Damon Martin of Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (1992) as Larry the hothead roustabout, and Kerry Remsen of Pumpkinhead (1988) as the daring young lady (formerly) on the flying trapeze. Keep an eye out for Mickey Knox of Cemetery Man (1994). I wish he had a bigger part in this movie because he’s so great at comedy. Romano Puppo is also here as Zampano the strongman. Puppo’s amazing career in Italian genre cinema spanned three decades!
It is heresy only in my own heart when I say that Ghoulies II is a better film than Ghoulies (1985). It has so much heart and imagination packed into it. One of this sequel’s best assets is that it is as different from the first film in setting and tone as it can get. Plus, it’s a sneaky Italian horror film with the entire film being shot in Italy and with half of the crew hailing from Italy as well. I love how Ghoulies II becomes more and more unhinged as the story goes along and gets even more wild when the heroes figure out that the only way to fight ghoulies is with… well, you’ll just have to see for yourself!
The MVD Rewind Collection release of Ghoulies II looks and sounds very nice but appears to be taken from the same source material as the now out-of-print Ghoulies/Ghoulies II release from Shout! Factory back in 2015. This release has some repeat extras from that version including a 17-minute featurette with the cast and crew speaking very fondly of working on this film and some alternate/deleted scenes. New this release is a short introduction to the film and half hour interview with screenwriter Dennis Paoli. I wish the interview with Paoli had been moderated by someone, though it is full of excellent information about his career and work with Empire Pictures.