Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College (1991)

 

Directors: John Carl Buechler

Screenplay: Brent Olson

Casts: Evan MacKenzie as Skip Carter, Kevin McCarthy as Professor Ragnar, Eva LaRue as Erin Riddle, John R. Johnston as Jeremy Heilman, Patrick Labyorteaux as Mookey, Billy Morrissette as Wes, Hope Marie Carlton as Veronica

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Ragnar has no dick.

After a high for this franchise for me, the second sequel comes four years later and from Vestron Video, a home video company who became part of Lionsgate and were rechristened as their home distribution arm. Vestron also included Vestron Pictures, their production and distribution arm, and their spin-off Lightning Pictures, which Ghoulies III comes from. When Lionsgate Home Entertainment announced its revival of the Vestron Video brand as a Blu-ray and DVD reissue label in 2016, you naturally got to see the films they produced and distributed, such as Earth Girls Are Easy (1988) to Ken Russell's Gothic (1986) alongside many horror films.

The tone has also drastically changed on from the previous films, as when not biting a face off, not only have these Ghoulies are going to get degrees, they have now learnt to talk. It is set up in a period twenty one years prior to this episode in the franchise, so there is going to have to be a continuity loophole that, as established in Part II with a giant Ghoul being summoned, various species of demons per film exist that are related. More noticeable is that there is more overt slapstick than even before in its broader tone, more goofier gags and even actual nudity for titillation, a horror comedy that is more comedy in terms of its college setting. Set during a prank week between male fraternities for a Prank Crown, lead Skip Carter (Evan MacKenzie) is gunning for it whilst twenty one years earlier, these Ghoulies were captured using a comic book, an underground publication using real demon summoning spells, which is found by one of Skip's frat brothers sat on the John when he knocks a wall tile off and reveals it. The comic is with the incantations to summon them from their sacred jar, i.e. sacred toilet bowl, as they are not even hiding the franchise's obsession with them, with someone being flushed to death in one. That links with the sense of childish humour that would pass were it not for the female nudity, the more overt horror later on or the main villain, a hateable blond jock, being continually called a Hitler Youth.

That comic is confiscated by a hated teacher, Professor Ragnar (Kevin McCarthy), who becomes power hungry and summons the Ghoulies to do his bidding. One major aspect of Ghoulies III which may put viewers off is that this is less a plot from here on but more a setting for a goofy slapstick film, less homicidal Ghoulies but vandalising Ghoulies, who are late to the Freddy Krueger 'one liners' which became popular in the late eighties into the early nineties for horror cinema, which alongside the more broad tone may find extremely annoying. The most prominent film in director John Carl Buechler's career, outside of his special effects work, is being the director of Friday the 13th: The New Blood (1988), the film which had Jason Voorhees fight a telekinetic girl, which would be remiss to not bring up, and here he came to this with a film that was clearly more a humorous and a pastiche of horror than meant to be scary, with a script by Brent Olson, who is listed as having never done anything else.

Another is the more explicit sense of horniness, with actual nudity and one character, Veronica (Hope Marie Carlton), who when she is not trying to seduce multiple male characters including Skip is the kind of person who dances in her underwear less in her own world in her bedroom, but wanting to give ghosts an eyeful. Considering she is an Andy Sidaris alumnus, through multiple films including Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987), that is not an insult to her existence either in the film, but this does cross a line at times. There is horniness which can be acceptable including explicit titillation, but this includes the film ogling the women without giving them characters, where even the comedy security guard is a pervert trying to score panties, and has creepy Ghoulies ogling women in the shower, there only for the sight of women in showers for a sex comedy. The only consolation in that later scene is that, as anyone who has seen Phantom of the Paradise (1974), strangely this was not the first time a Psycho parody with a plunger involved transpired.

There is still horror here, the Ghoulies still killing people, even if here it involves the aforementioned death by toilet, and the finale does even get more over the top in a cool way, with someone melting and a giant prosthetic body suit costume with a stomach face. However we are fully falling into parody of the franchise itself here, with a literal cartoon bomb at one point and slapstick with the security guard and his beloved (and named) golf cart. You can feel this as our lead Skip is a pure archetype, and that his love interest Erin (Eva LaRue) is precariously generic, expecting Skip to give up his pranking and become respectable, but is a stereotypical plot that will change her mind on this, and that it encourages (in both male and female versions) this idea of stripping away one's personality, or a contrived self reflection to stay as you are. Ghoulies III is still fun, but I feel this has jumped the proverbial toilet itself, even if in a distinct way, and would have lost people who liked the balance of before between the two other films.  Certainly as time passes there is a sense the film has already felt out of time in the moment it was realised, feeling like a late eighties movie washed up on the shore of the nineties, and as much as there was cultural blurring into the later decade, this is one of those cases where, for its fun moments, it feels aged and lacked multiple virtues of the previous sequel.