Tilbury (1987)

Director: Viðar Víkingsson

Screenplay: Þórarinn Eldjárn and Viðar Víkingsson

Cast: Kristján Franklin Magnúss as Auðun; Helga Bernhard as Gudrún; Karl Ágúst Úlfsson as Tilbury; Erla Skúladóttir as Sigrún; Róbert Arnfinnsson as Rev. Thorfinnur; Aðalsteinn Bergdal as Barði Kemp; Bryndís Pétursdóttir as Lilja; Magnús Bjarnfreðsson as Gen. Tilberry

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Explained in the opening voiceover, an Icelandic production with a British voiceover for this opening to befit the importance of the British characters in this story, the “tilberi” is a witchcraft creation, born from a human rib taken from a grave and kept by a female creator’s breast. Fed on communion wine, it stole milk from other peoples’ cows unless caught and uses it to create “tilberi butter”. This TV movie takes this mythology, and creates a complicated horror period story, in less than an hour, dealing with a changing Iceland during the early 1940s when World War II is in full swing. On the 10th May 1940, the British and Canadian militaries invaded Iceland in 'Operation Fork' due to the concern German forces would take over the country. By 1941, as the film ends its own narrative on, the defense of the country was given to the United States in agreement by Iceland itself. The country was officially neutral during the world, but cooperated with British, Canadian and American military¹, but through this supernatural story we see how this would drastically alter Iceland when forced to open up to the new influences.

Auðun (Kristján Franklin Magnúss) is a young man training to become a swimmer and is asked by a priest to talk to his daughter Gundrun (Helga Bernhard), who was caught taking an excessive amount of wine during communion, and fears she has fallen from her religious upbringing. Because they grew up together, in the same church, the priest naturally thinks Auðun is a more appropriate person to win her own from what are her perceived sins of drunkenness, when it is obviously set up that her story is connected to the tilberi. Set in the capital of Reykjavík, with members of the public working with the British soldiers, the tone is grounded and keeping with the period, but also emphasizes the circumstances is their strangeness. In evoking the period with this grounded nature, we see the banality of the scenario without the glamour of the war, with the male soldiers cavorting with the local women. There is a possible flaw with the film that, at less than an hour, it fudges the complexity, such as having Gundrun come off as a stereotypical femme fatale in the midst of this, or demonizing the Allied forces whilst having one of the characters Auðun encounters being a literal Nazis they have captured. Particularly with that one scene character that yet has a major scene, that tries to throw in anti-Jewish beliefs in his explanation of what a tilberi, you can easily see flaws in nuisance here lost in the storytelling. There is however the sense that Tilbury the film is about the chaos of all this period, which influences the storytelling.

Isolated until this war, this is an Iceland being abruptly thrown into the cultural exchange without a knowledge, from how director/co-writer Viðar Víkingsson depicts it, of how bad the Nazis were, instead that a war is apparently happening but feeling like a place of banality. There is no combat, just sights like seeing a British soldier having sex with a woman at one point, possible a sex worker but at least with an older male driver as their cab waiting with them in the driver’s seat during the act, which completely undercuts the sense of historical importance of all this as the days pass. With soldiers occupying the place, everyone is however just floating along. Trucks drive around and mortar firing practice is done completely isolated from the real war, as despite all the sandbagged protective walls built. The soldiers are mostly comparing condoms (and laughing at the local guy who thinks its chewing gum), cavorting with the local women or at the parties at night, whilst the local women like Gundrun link up with said soldiers. Even if there is a sense of corruption from the Allied forced, it is not as if Iceland, as represented by Auðun, is a noble figure, instead a little naïve itself when the world around them has grown and become more complicated.

Within this sense of stagnation is the mysterious British colonel Tilbury who gives the TV movie its title, a young actor clearly in old man white makeup and a fake nose who is clearly unnatural. Among the British soldiers coming off more as nuisances, or arresting random locals who may be Nazi sympathizers, Tilbury is just hiding among them without anyone questioning his involvement as a general, who is connected to Gundrun. This does lead to Tilbury being a revealed as a goblin-like entity puking green goo, but Gundrun’s relationship to his is interesting as it is clearly weighing in on Iceland’s relationship with the British and how complicated it clearly became, such as the fact that this is shown as a very religious country. Thrown into a relationship to foreigners of the island who will undercut this in their relationships, when not on military drills, the world cannot go back to the perceived morals of the past as now the 20^th century has fully arrived, and it seems neither that the old Christian ideals are celebrated because they were merely what the likes of Auðun were raised with. Spirituality did not really form him for the better as his involvement is less for saving Gundrun, but as a fawning crush from her past that cannot get past her. Central to this is Tilberi butter chocolate disguised as Cadburys chocolate; as symbolic of Britain’s status to the Icelandic as with the Americans, when they appear in the last moments appear with their Hershey’s chocolate bars, there is definitely a negative or at least concerned view of what had possibly been lost due to this occupation over time.

At the same time, however, even Gundrun’s plan for this chocolate, which is not recommended to eat due to it causing seizures, whilst a negative on the types of influences on Iceland from the bigger countries is undercut (even if the script being vague) by her being on her own unknown mission. Tilbury the goblin-creature intends to influence Iceland with these chocolate bars, and it is important to remind one selves that, whilst World War II had clear-cut villains that had to be defeated in Nazis, it was still a morally complicated war where the Allies were not clear-cut themselves at times. It was not a good idea, in the moments where the film undercuts itself, to have Tilbury depicted with the fake nose, which unfortunately throws up anti-Semitic stereotypes. There can be arguments to be made that the film needed a lot more time to really explain some of its content to avoid these unfortunate aspects, like presuming that since he is helping Auðun, the openly fascist person who the soldiers arrested would be viewed as virtuous when he is forced into a hole in the soldiers’ camp like he deserves. I will give the film and its creators’ the benefit of the doubt as, in this war depicted onscreen, the severity of its fight is lost to this world, Iceland shown oblivious and just going off these soldiers, on the outskirts, who don’t present themselves as a positive but something even frightening. They treat the locals like crap despite being there to protect them, and the locals just get on with life. Tilbury comes off less like a problematic dog whistle stereotype but a strange creature of misfit whose chocolate, even if contaminated, is never shown in its full effect, likely more a comment that, even if they were fighting this major war, the British and American soldiers to the locals were less than graciousness in spite of the Icelandic people contributing to them helping the war. Even if the heroes, this presents that, as in the morally complex reality, that didn’t mean ever British soldier and general was exactly a bastion of virtue, cavorting and partying at night, even with a joke later on that one or two are doing inappropriate things to local farm animals.

Auðun himself is also a complicated lead. His love for Gudrún, including intonations that he had relations with her when they were young teenagers, the barn where this transpired to haunt him as he literally sinks into the hay in the last moments, is less a virtuous hero than a putz being dragged along. He comes along not really as a person who deserves pity, but a version of Iceland which will be obsolete and left out, mad, at the end whilst the influence of the other Western states come to Iceland. He is naïve to what is going on and that, whilst horrified by Gudrún’s openly promiscuous ways even before he learns the truth of Tilbury, he comes off less a bastion of virtue himself, but a naïve figure who can’t really talk as he has unfulfilled urges for her that were suppressed. His views of her open sexuality in the cold light of the modern day, decades after the film was made, come off as a prude or just clueless with hindsight. The most overtly elaborate scene, a sudden dance sequence with Gudrún and Tilbury, is clearly his jealous imagination, literally filtered in a green light, with them separated from the world and presuming he is an emotional vampire on her when she is clearly the one in control.

He is an appropriate figure in a world where the less likable people can still help him, but can’t be trusted. There is a joke that even the minor Nazi sympathizer is revealed to have been kicked out of the Olympics, as a swimmer in the Nazi held one, due to accidentally splashing Hitler’s personal viewing box, so there is even in the cynical humour the sense he too is just among a bunch of drifters, losers, also-rans and very confused Icelandic people just living through a major war. Iceland did lose casualties as a result, including 200 Icelandic seamen who died from war related deaths¹, so the country was integral to the war, but as we see in various works of various tones and realities on World War II. Its lasting shockwave on the world includes all the banal moments where things awkwardly transpired, like being stuck with numerous British and Canadian soldiers initially on your soil without warning, and the complicated relationship this would have caused.

Viðar Víkingsson’s film does had a greater sense of complication to this all. You can make the argument, for Tilbury’s biggest flaw, that it could dangerously flub some of its themes, in terms of the fact that less than an hour may be enough to examine some very significant historical themes. However how much it managed to depict, with the matter-of-fact naturalism undercutting any glamour to the proceedings, is still to be acclaimed. [Huge Spoiler] In the end, due to the lore of the tilberi, Auðun gets Gudrún killed by her own creation, so he is not a noble white knight rescuing the local maiden from the invading British, just a man lost in this goal to find her, lost in his madness at the end with the only lingering thoughts left rekindled when he realizing Tilbury is now just posing as an American soldier with Hershey’s chocolate with his own special ingredient added. Nothing he had done was helping at all, and he is a confused Icelandic man just seeing the world turn. [Spoilers End] For its possible flaws in not getting a clear message carefully out, this strange and fascinating folk horror work still comes off as very cynical about this major part of Icelandic culture on both sides. I’m not Icelandic, ironically British like those invading soldiers, so the irony is not lost if I stupidly presume to know what it would have been like for that generation when Operation Fork happened, but in spite of the fact that the UK military were on Icelandic soil to fight the Nazis, there is a greater sense of weight in how this depicts it almost as a farce, a stop gap where bars of chocolate are likely to have a more lasting influence than the biggest conflict on the 20^th century.

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1) The Occupation of Iceland During World War II, written by Sunna Olafson Furstenau and published for Icelandic Roots on May 25th 2023.

Vampire Princess Miyu (1988-89)

 

Director: Toshiki Hirano

Screenplay: Shō Aikawa

Based on the manga by Toshiki Hirano and Narumi Kakinouchi

(Voice) Cast: Naoko Watanabe/Anne Marie Zola (Manga UK dub)/Pamela Weidner as Miyu; Mami Koyama/Stephanie Griffin as Himiko Se; Kaneto Shiozawa/Zach Hanner as Larva

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Series)/A 1000 Anime Crossover

The personal project of its director Toshiki Hirano, as he is one of the co-creators of the source manga alongside his wife Narumi Kakinouchi, this definitely wins you over with its style and in terms of its melancholic tone. For the OVA anime period, it stands out for this, if with the issue like a lot of them that this feels slight for a premise which could have been taken further. This is emphasised when you know the original manga, not including the spin-offs, lasted from the year this anime was created to 2002.

Tellingly he would return to this in the late nineties for a full animated television series, but for what we got here, including the episode following the students being turned into marionettes which turned into the most successful story for its tone and emotional turns, I was glad to finally get around to this.

For the full review, follow the link HERE.

The Nostril Picker (1993/1988)

 

Director: Mark Nowicki

Screenplay: Steven Hodge

Cast: Carl Zschering as Joe Bukowski; Edward Tanner as Vince Armstrong; Laura Cummings as Armstrong; Gail Didia as Crisi Stroud; Heidi M. Gregg as Tracy Harper; Aimee Molinaro as Brenda Kearn; Ann Flood as Jo Bukowski; Clyde Surrell as Ed Simpson

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

I think the best way to introduce a film with that title, though this will be a more balanced and fair review, is an old review I made when I once viewed this as one of the worst films I had ever seen:

Once upon a time when I was just an adolescent, I was with my parents in a DVD rental shop when we saw this on the shelf, with a picture of a man with a finger up his nose and a knife in his other hand on the front cover. It fascinated all of us what it was about. Years later, at sixteen or seventeen, I rented this from an online DVD rental site, and turned it off in the first quarter of the running time. Forcing myself through the whole film later that night, I realized the only good thing about this was the title. There is not even gratuitous nostril picking in the film when all is said and done. Mike will tell you all there needs to be known about how terrible this is.

Barring the weird third person switch as if I have sudden turned into Gollum from the Lord of the Rings, the story is funny to reflect on. In Britain, we had Blockbuster Video, which was less the American store with a questionable nostalgia, with censored releases and exclusive Nintendo 64 rental games that now cost thousands second hand, but just a rental store that eventually disappeared from existence, argubly lasting longer than the American original did. It was the place, with a discount section of new DVDs, and second hand copies of them and videogames, where I was introduced to Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) (though on a DVD where the disc did not properly work) and Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989), as extreme as you can get in juxtaposition. Blockbuster was not the local video rental store however to my family, as this was in the city and at the time of the DVD boom in the early 2000s, as our family used Global Video for new releases. Among their new blockbusters there was, if you looked at certain shelves, the trend of then-modern softcore films where the likes of Misty Mundae (a.k.a. Erin Brown) became a name for a generation of young men, alongside the lurid titles of VIPCO. Originating in the late seventies, and a distributor of titles which would get on the Video Nasties list like The Driller Killer (1979), VIPCO (Video Instant Picture Company) returned in the early 1990s¹, releasing Video Nasties even butchered in the VHS days alongside a slew of titles usually in the horror genre. Their black covers with just the titles in gold letters from the DVD era, part of the "Vipco's Vault of Horror", are still iconic even if the releases were cut or sometimes VHS rips. They will be missed, even if I am glad nowadays pristine releases of the likes of The Mutilator (1984) are available from the likes of Arrow Video. Least for my family, The Nostril Picker is the most notorious just from the cover, and that it was one of the exceptions you found in the rental store with more than the gold text, with that image of the lead Joe Bukowski (Carl Zschering) staring down the potential renter with a knife drawn and with the other hand a finger proudly up his nostril.

The Nostril Picker, without anyone of us watching the film until I decided to track it down, was a legitimate in-joke for the family from seeing it on the Global Video shelves. Back then, when watching it, I can attest to hating the film and even turning it off when I first tried to watch it, mustering up the early days of being a completionist to finish it. So much has changed over the years in my taste that, yes, this is a strange curiosity in terms of an independently made film shot in Michigan, one I see as gleefully ridiculous if a mess. The opening is how I remembered it, a creepy guy stalking a young woman but with the issue for Joe Bukowski, he sticks out like a sore thumb as a creepy guy on the street and thus will be pulled over by cops for being suspicious to the young women of Milford, Michigan. A bearded homeless man in a hat soon after approaches him and suggests a technique, picked up from his service in the Vietnam War, that allows one to change his body if he says an ancient chant, even into that of a young high school girl. Set to London Bridge is Falling Down, and Joe is now a dangerous man, especially as overdoing the change causes mental instability, worse when he is already sociopathic. Before then however this is set up as if a sex comedy about body swapping without sex in the first half of the film, including a montage set to a "schoolin'" song, revealing this had its tongue in its cheek.

That was something I never picked up when I was younger, and with his only film as a director, Mark Nowichi's movie was originally The Changer (1988), and was never released in the United States². Its infamous name comes from its British release with VIPCO in a perversely funny touch³, and likely helped it develop some notoriety for it alone and the tag line they gave the film ("He Chose His Weapons... He Selected His Victims... He Picked His Nose..."). With a now seventeen year old Jo(e) unable to buy dirty mags for a fictitious father, the sense of humour is clearly here from the get-go even without that inspired name change. Throughout the film tonally is a mess as it implies far more disturbing ideas about Joe the killer, trying to touch into the luridness of serial killers real and fictionalised, but humour is a constant here even when inappropriate to have been.

Before one asks, I highly double gender politics and Trans politics ever came to mind here, especially as one character, given a lot of screen time in a positive way, is still a comedy character only known as "Transvestite" meant to be funny in their person's existence. It neither really gets scuzzy in terms of the body transfer concept either, as even if Jo(e) wanders into the girls' shower, when she is just inducted into the nearest school without question, it is never with any real sexual content. Beyond Joe's later victims, when they are killed, haunting him in his apartment in lingerie covered head to toe in blood like an alt-girl photo spread from the past, it really has not a lot of onscreen shock value barring some gore, and the rest implied sleaze. There is only one scene of nostril picking prominently in the film as well, as we see the school days montage from Joe in his real form doing vulgar things in the perceived body as a young woman, so that will disappoint some too.

The film, after playing like a dated sex comedy with little sex at all, eventually starts to mould into its intended genre when Joe first goes kill crazy, the tone changing with some flying fingers and a little bit of gore, still nowhere near Herschell Gordon Lewis and its own tonal issues as it tries to be a lot more sleazier and even disturbing. It is blatant, if all off screen, how Joe's victims suffer implied rape and cannibalism, so bare this in mind. This is worth cautioning upon both as even referring to it may put people off the film, and because the film tonally despite its attempt at this bleaker tone, including Joe's troubled upbringing being brought in, is too goofy on purpose and accidental to make this work. The film as well shows its weaknesses, like some of the acting wavering in quality at times, which undercuts any attempt at seriousness, especially when a subplot involves a trans sex worker being the person who gets the police on Joe's tracks, all because he tried molesting her with a dildo that squirts fake semen and rightly got his lights knocked out.

Is it un-pc? More than likely, and truthfully, even when these films are a mess they fascinate me now, which is something my younger self could have never appreciated. The times where the film struggles are where some of the compelling eccentric touches come in, and when the film does succeed, it is interesting to, such as setting one murder through snap photos on a baseball field at night in stills, more nastier as a result despite little actual violence in the still images. The film, wavering between its clear designs for a greater depth, such as hallucinations of the victims commenting to Joe, to its humour does make it a weird experience, right down to the downbeat twist ending. Truthfully, I can see why many others and I would hate the film, a peculiar beast that never quite knows what it is meant to be. For its director Mark Nowichi however, he would go on to be a colourist including for directors' cuts like Cop Land (1997), to remasters for the likes of Evil Dead II (1987), so he thankfully would continue in filmmaking in an important way. Screenwriter and co-producer Steven Hodge never returned to cinema after this, and neither did lead Carl Zschering sadly. The story though of The Nostril Picker, thanks to VIPCO, has helped the film gain a cult for those who remember the name, even finally getting a release in the United States in 2014 from Massacre Video⁴. The film is, like a few regional genre films, a very acquired taste, but it is one which I return to with a lot more I can take from it. The story too, that for my family and many in Britain this title in the DVD era likely led to amused comments seeing it on rental and purchase shelves, even if never rented/bought, is one worth remembering as it added to its legacy from the humour in that title alone.

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1) Grindhouse Database's index section on VIPCO (Video Instant Picture Company).

2) The Nostril Picker - DVD Review, written by Dennis Capicik and published for Unpopped Cinema on October 18th 2014.

3) The Nostril Picker review from The Bloody Pit of Horror, published on October 18th 2020.

4) Massacre Video unleashes The Nostril Picker (aka The Changer) on US DVD 14th October 2014, taken from Cave of Cult and including the promo leaflet.

Marquis de Sade's Prosperities of Vice (1988)

 

Director: Akio Jissoji

Screenplay: Rio Kishida

Based on the work of the Marquis de Sade

Cast: Renji Ishibashi, Seiran Li, Kôji Shimizu, Yasumi Hara, Kimiaki Makino, Kumiko Tachibana, Minori Terada and Miwako Yonezawa

Canon Fodder

 

Prosperities of Vice takes us to the Taisho era of Japan in the 1920s. A group of upper class men and one women, Sadean figures of power, are being served at a long dining table by topless, submissive female maids, and they recount their tales of sin and debauchery, be it turning a public officer's wife into a pet, or executing an innocent man as a judge and being aroused by it sexually. One of them, a nobleman calling himself a Marquis (Kôji Shimizu), runs a theatre and sets about adapting the novel Justine by his namesake the Marquis de Sade using real criminals, murderers and sex workers as the cast. It is all with the intention to show the deepest desire of people secretly to commit crime, to "teach the pleasure of vice" to audiences.

His wife, the beautiful Seiran Li, a former sex worker herself bought by him and playing the titular character, is shown mirroring Justine herself, having become a sex worker out of losing her family and being left an orphan, a real life example of the character without needing to live in a world of period appropriate French dress costumes. The Marquis however made an ill-advised decision in doing this, as he decided to cast a thief in the lead male role (Renji Ishibashi), even going as far as have him seduce and take his wife for his voyeuristic pleasures behind a peephole. The thief and wife fall in love, undercutting the ideology of vice with their true love beyond Sadean ideas. Also significant is the historical date as, with the thirties approaching, here as in real life Japan, there would be a military uprising would lead to the end of the Taisho era, and the push to a far right wing military leadership.  They would invade other countries and, leading the Pacific and Second World War's aftermaths, and would cleave through dissidents considered "anti-Japanese" to the new leaders the moment they got power.

An eighties Japanese film with a very glossy look that is unique to Japanese cinema, it is a late era Roman Porno and still as much an erotic film if undercut by its melancholic air. This is in mind to its director Akio Jissoji, whose style completely takes the period erotic drama here into a fascinating direction. He was a fascinating director in general still needing more attention given to him. With his debut This Transient Life (1970), and his other films for the Art Theatre Guild, he created very striking existential dramas, the debut itself with each image and scene playing out with continual movement of the camera or with something important and distinct in each shot. Yet he was also directing tokusatsu films and television series like for the popular Ultraman franchise. He would juggle genres and themes over the years, even adapting Edogawa Ranpo tales by the nineties, and here he presents many distinct, eye catching images and sequences, all centred around this illusion which is broken by a real murder in the theatre midway through.

The film is very subdued and is drawn back in its plotting, its sensuality and even the sense of depravity marked against its mood, which slowly re-tales Justine against the inevitable tragic end to the tale. Even in mind that the Sadean lot are not good people, the irony of their depravity to the militarisation that comes, and how its defeat radically scarred Japan literally and culturally, is not lost. There is a lot to take in that would need multiple viewings, which makes the rarity of the film more disappointing, its elusive tone pulling the plot further from being fully conveyed conventionally on purpose.

The film is more fantastical than This Transient Life, of clocks and a small cramp hideaway full of life sized mannequins. The concept of de Sade's virtues of vice are forced to be re-evaluated when a real death takes place, the real world encroaches on your desires, and someone you control goes against your wishes by falling in love. The film splits itself in the real and the abstract. The machinations of real life, seeing actors getting into costumes and rehearsing, are contrasted against the actual theatre stage. The film cuts from one time period to another, the play reflecting what is happening off the stage, and when the otherworld is brought up by the end, the theatre becomes an internal construct of the characters' minds as well.

In terms of sexuality and debauchery, it is as subdued. Baring a scene of said maids being forced to eat sea cucumbers, which turns out to be the most grotesque scene even next to all the perversions depicted, it is as subtle as its tone. It is not Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) either. It is still a very erotic film, but it conveys it through image and mood rather than actual sex even when that is shown. For a film which even has an explicit scene of necrophilia, it is depicted with a matter-of-fact eeriness which is less shock value, but portrayed through a baroque tone as a heighted dramatic denouement for some characters.  Unlike other depictions of Sade as well, it is about the ideas being conveyed through words and thought rather than the whips and chains of, say, Jess Franco's adaptations. Like This Transient Life, it matches this with a visual texture to make everything, the actors' naked bodies to the environments around them, sensual. Even when he adapted more fantastical genre work, like Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis (1988) with its time hopping tale, including the Taisho era, of the war between Tokyo and a magician wishing to reduce it to rubble, the director was just as fascinated with the visual textures and mood of his work. Its depictions of the occult and the monstrous felt from the same director of This Transient Life, making his career directing the likes of Ultraman even more compelling to contrast to these films.

The result is very unconventional. The concepts of de Sade are placed against reality itself, of political strife and emotional strife, the Marquis and his friends as isolated in their perversions as the four leaders in Salo... while the world changes completely for them outside the buildings they are housed in. The virtues and vices cannot be easily separated as his wife proclaims at one point she is neither Justine nor the good Juliette, of the other Marquis de Sade tale that was written as a mirror, instead her own person with her own thoughts, ideas, and her own forms of virtue and perversion. The plan of the Marquis to bring the joys of vice to people through the play does not bear in mind that the people he is around already act out their own delights, and like most people, he becomes hostile to it. Despite the heavy subtext this and This Transient Life have, they are all about where people place themselves when they are separated from perceived texts and concepts, and have to think about their own existence. Mandala (1971), which could be a deeply troubling film nowadays to some to watch as it followed a religious cult who practiced rape to bring in subservient members, was a pretext for themes this film had with hindsight for me. Like the Japanese cinema and culture I have been able to view so far, it is very much an existentialism that goes as far as the soul, and does not shy away from the perverted and vulgar in answering the questions, or mixing it into "vulgar" genres like pinku films. Nikkatsu, who produced the film, abandoned the roman porno movies that kept them afloat by the time this was made. Those films are still there for me to view, but it is befitting I became aware of the one which breaks the ideas of sexuality and perverse delights down and scrutinises them.

One day, I hope this particular film gets rediscovered and brought in full restoration due to these reasons talked of in the review, a film which does scenes that are deliberately erotic even if playing with taboos, in green dream haze flashbacks having politicians' wives crawl naked with their sleek figures and black bob haircuts on chains like a pet, but contrasting it with the deconstructions of these philosophies. It contrasts them with the absurd naivety of the Marquis' last meal, starting with a mere olive stuffed into an animal carcass than insert that into more animal carcasses so that the olive itself, with the rest disposed of, takes all the succulent flavours of the earth to the sky in one single bite. Decadence is shown but with a moral knife point, where the philosophy meant to free people of organised religion, government and guilt in the West is shown here as being as complacent and as capable of being a tool for the elite to hold power against the public, eventually to be swallowed by another elite iron fist which was not complacent in real life. 

What becomes true liberation is how, in the romance in the centre of the plot even to be lost, eroticism is found even within the actresses' makeup, sensual even without the sex or nudity. The eroticism that is pure and sensual is in how much coloured gel and decor there is as well as the intimacy show, fully liberated as much as in how characters talk to each other intimately bonding as much as the sex. Dolls populate the environment and they move, opening their eyes or turning their heads. A pubescent girl doll spills from her stomach vibrant, sexually red strawberries. The artificiality of the Western European clothes in this Japanese film give as much a sense of the unnatural especially as, until we see the chaos in the real world once or twice, it is entirely closed within its own existence. It is a film which ends with unexpected half-clown makeup and dress, and feels appropriate to the tone of the work, a sense of art and pulp that sent a shiver down my spine.

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam aka. Turkish Star Wars (1982)

 

Director: Çetin Inanç

Screenplay: Cüneyt Arkın

Cast: Cüneyt Arkın as Murat; Aytekin Akkaya as Ali; Necla Fide as the Queen; Hüseyin Peyda as Bilgin; Hikmet Taşdemir as Sihirbaz

 

I considered films through a black and white viewpoint when I was younger. They had to have clear narratives and be well made, something which made “Turkish Star Wars”, as I first learnt of it as, one of the worst films I had ever saw when I viewed it at sixteen or so in a bender of Google Video viewings. Now my views have changed, where films of immense quality become greater but I can appreciate something like this, which comes in the context where Turkey’s film board was not allowing Western films like Star Wars (1977) into the country¹, leading to one of the most infamous “Turkploitation” films to be produced by a director known as a “jet director” for getting films made within ten days¹. Let us not kid ourselves, even next to other Turksploitation films, this is one of the more erratic I have ever seen, its infamy deserved for its shamelessness and how, honestly, it is an utter mess even if its unpredictability is something to also admire.

After centuries of change where atomic wars have decimated most of it and pieces of the continents have drifted off into space, Earth (which suspiciously looks like squashed Death Star) is under attack by an immortal wizard. With the planet protected by a force field created from human brainwaves, the wizard needs human brains, or at least one, to destroy it and attack Earth, forcing two Turkish space pilots onto his own planet where they must face his bizarre hordes of monsters and stop his plans of galactic destruction. Turkish Star Wars is infamous, as a low budget Turksploitation film, for taking footage from Star Wars and using music from everything from that film to Flash Gordon (1980). The montage of attractions theory created by Sergei E. Eisenstein is decimated by the slapdash editing of this, where even the use of music and sound clips is as hastily put together as the visuals, and yet has a drastic effect on the viewer when viewed together in this narrative. The difference is that, while Eisenstein wanted to elicit certain emotions from the viewer, this film causes stupefied amazement instead.

Turkish Star Wars, revisiting it, is a glorious mess, the plot synopsis my attempt to comprehend a film which can suddenly lunge forward, even into the middle of a fight without warning, to the next plot point, where monsters suddenly appear out of nowhere and the theme from Indiana Jones, used behind the main hero, suddenly battles with the villain’s Flash Gordon synth within the same scene. Random zombies or the fact there are nunchaku in space are the less strange aspects to this film, which is frankly a disaster in terms of the material being put together if you were to judge it severely for its technical qualities.  Even with the English subtitles over the years not being perfect, this as well in terms of the script feels an over-elaborate take, where its lead actor Cüneyt Arkın, a well regarded and prolific figure in his homeland, got to write the script too but it feels like everything he wanted to go with too ambitious for its production craft. For what is a simple tale of heroes versus a human blood drinking space wizard who just wants a human brain, not plural, to destroy the Earth he was once a person on, this lost a lot of the point with everything else Arkın wanted to include for profoundness. The result in watching it, and trying to understand it, is like becoming a paper bag in the wind which drops you off by the end confused and alarmed.

The decision to use so much pre-existing work is as much part of the confusion, as using the Star Wars footage for production value makes less sense as the film goes, a detriment to sanity as none of the re-appropriated Star Wars footage makes sense, especially if suggested (by the Death Star in another role) the Earth is destroyed at one point only to not. It is as much a collage of pre-existing science fiction and fantasy works beyond that film, in its premise and pieces, including things that were not directly included in the film but evoked for me accidentally, as the creators of the film could cram into a single movie and made into a cabinet of baffling curiosities. With our main hero (played by Cüneyt Arkın), who bounces around like Taylor Kitsch in John Carter (of Mars) (2012), and his womanising friend whose famous whistle to attract women accidentally conjures up skeletal horsemen to his annoyance, we see them fight everything from TV headed robots and cybermen from a fifties b-movie, toilet paper mummies out of genre, and to paraphrase a description my younger self used when he viewed this the first time, the bastard feral children of Elmo from Sesame Street. There are even henchmen clearly wearing budget Fu Manchu and Devil masks among the goons. My struggles with the film still are softened because of this, where the film does drag but, if you can tolerate its tone, is starling and hilarious in a positive way. Between the lengthy narrative exposition, it is effective a series of long, continuous fight scenes where anti-war philosophy and appropriated Western iconography is matched with a beast having its head karate chopped off or a severed head thrown at another so hard they explode.

The philosophy and mythology in the film adds the cherry to the top of its cake, where knowing its lead actor is writing this provides a sympathy for the film even if, from the first few minutes in with the narration trying to explain the world it is setting up, his script did not translate onscreen in a way that would be coherent for everyone. The film is a stream of consciousness of unconventional ideas, quaint ideas of hope, and erratic science fiction ideas that adds to the incomprehensible but delightfully creative mass you see (and hear and read) onscreen. That it includes religion, with an Islamic subtext, adds to the sincerity of the film that is an unexpected turn as well, even if it goes towards putting context to a sacred sword and a brain. There is also the bromance between the leads which also is admirable, one so strong your brains are psychically linked and, regardless of the running gag of one of them believing himself to be a womanizer, becomes the real romance of the production.

The flaws even in terms of this type of cinema is that it does rush through so much of itself with far more concern, for all things, for its lore about the “13^th Tribe” of Earth’s ancestors blown off the planet, literally, rather than making sure the work is a little bit more cohesive to appreciate its simple premise. When it can stay for a minute and take a breath, even some of its goofier moments also become better for this, like the training montage of punching rocks, tying them to ones legs to run and jump, or just kicking then as projectile weapons. It is a film on a purely silly level something you are glad exists, because it has someone karate chop a monster’s arms off and then impale them claw first into their torsos, and it would be improved simply if this had been a little bit more cohesive then what we got. What you get nonetheless, as an artefact from filmmaking history is nonetheless compelling if you have the patience for this.

For those people, over eighty minutes, this is the kind of janky spluttering that would be a breath of fresh air for those willing to experience it. There is more pain to be experienced with something which is technically more cohesive but has no effect, whilst here the vividness of Turkish Star Wars and its own unpredictability is worth cherishing even if we all admit that would never win any technical awards for quality. It is a film you need to see once, even if you hate it, and now that my tastes have changed and I can see its virtues, I look back at my younger self who found it unbearable and ponder how much of a naive sourpuss he was.

 

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1) The strange case of Turkish Star Wars, written for Esquire Middle East.

First Name: Carmen (1983)

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Screenplay: Anne-Marie Miéville

Loosely based on Georges Bizet's opera Carmen.

Cast: Maruschka Detmers as Carmen X; Jacques Bonnaffé as Joseph; Myriem Roussel as Claire; Christophe Odent as Le chef; Jean-Luc Godard as Jeannot

Canon Fodder

 

No one needs an atomic bomb. Nor a plastic cup.

Jean-Luc Godard is Mr. Jeannot, a patient stuck in a health clinic, a has-been director pretending to be sick to stay in his room on threat that he will be kicked out by the staff. "Uncle Jean" as he is explicitly called by his niece Carmen (Maruschka Detmers), who visits, is a filmmaker who refuses to make films again, lost to his boom box matching classical piano pieces to combat sounds. Said niece Carmen, part of Godard's loose adaptation of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, comes to her uncle, during his stint in getting stick every week to find somewhere else to live, to ask to use his paid up place at the coast for a film production she is currently in the middle of with friends. This is however a cover, as she is part of a gang, posing as a film crew, who intend to rob a bank. The equivalent of Don José, the soldier who falls in love with Carmen from the source, is Joseph (Jacques Bonnaffé), one of the bank guards there who falls in love with her mid robbery, joining her.

Godard was always unconventional. His eighties output is stranger knowing he clearly wanted to transition to experimentation post 1968, his Dziga-Vertov Group work, due to his concerns of trying to be a political filmmaker, but returned back to narrative cinema from his second "debut" Slow Motion (1980). This second "mainstream" run before he went to, arguably, the post Film Socialisme (2010) era as the elder statesman still has experiments within them, and the more I see these films, the more it becomes obvious he was still interested in narrative dramas even if he would gracefully move away from them. The thing about his films however, in the same way as with the original run of his first successes in the sixties, is how he would structurally undercut them in presentation.

First Name: Carmen is narrative drive, among films where he found narratives which he could tell, with his other concerns, which were still interested in the experimentation around the plot. This is also at the point when Anne-Marie Miéville, an important Swiss filmmaker by herself, is important to consider, meeting Godard by accounts in 1970, at the Cinémathèque Suisse, and their relationship growing further after his near-fatal motorbike accident in 1971¹. Their collaborations in the seventies into the eighties mean a lot for me in context - the Historie(s) du Cinema and post-Film Socialisme work feel indebted to their collaborations, experiments in video for television and short films sadly not readily available to see, and for the eighties films, she worked in this "mainstream" period as a screenwriter, a co-writer or here for First Name: Carmen the sole screenwriter. She would also work as an editor, and as a general collaborator, which gives her significant weight to this era of films alongside how Godard was changing in his own right too in this later period.

Here, Godard with Melville makes a narrative film but, like even his sixties output, this among the other eighties and early nineties films I have seen move like sketches and character dramas than actual plots, even when a group armed with gun abruptly storm a bank out of nowhere. That Godard has an older man sitting nonchalantly during a gun fight, reading his newspaper until he is shot, or a female cleaner left to sort out the mess with her mop, really emphasises as well how he had a tangential attitude to plot, include farcical moments like this, even if the character drama still drives this film far more than others from his output. With this central pair of Carmen and Joseph hiding out in Uncle Jean's apartment, the later falling for Carmen fully, there is still the set up of a poetic story, contrasted by scenes of a string quartet that score this narrative almost entirely outside the main narrative. This drama is sincere even if with the scenario undercut by grim and absurdist moments of humour. The central romance a tense one, effectively a more sexually frank take on his sixties films where Carman's romance with Joseph has left her precarious among her own group, he a latch-on to theirs. It is frank in how sexually explicit it is in nudity, but it is equal opportunity, Bonnaffé as much as Detmers to bravely bear all onscreen. Bonnaffé also has the most explicit moment of self touching; in fact, whilst an entirely different film in attitude, that moment does feel like it would appear in French New Extreme films decades later, a prototype more appropriately to the type of naturalism, including sexual explicitness, a director like Bruno Dumont would casually depict.

Godard is also making a film in eighties urban France, not the classic sixties France which he himself idealise with his pop art films. Neither is this the France of later productions from the nineties on with middle class characters in the narratives, but the world of gas station France with some extravagant locations just in-between a locations. Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette among others like Godard wandered into this world, and whilst elegance is here, it feels fascinating to see a film this grounded and closer to the modern day in look, despite some technology and fashion, with its idiosyncrasies like VHS tapes and shell suits just touches of the time. Godard would even explicitly touch on these subjects, in dialogue and in terms of playing with the medium, like playing with a Triple XXX sign in neon and videotape in Détective (1985), so he was more naturally suited to play with the changing France onscreen. There is a sense, honestly as I will get into later, this era feels neglected from Godard's career, because of the iconography of his sixties films was what codified what his style was for many, even parodied in the mainstream, alongside when he fully embraced colour in magnificent visual choices in films like Pierrot le Fou (1965). By the later renaissance in the 2010s, that final era before Godard's passing in 2022 was experienced in real time when he was already canonised as a filmic giant.

In contrast, something this grounded, even if of the past, feels less comparable and closer to the modern day than images from the likes of Breathless (1960), its own rich art style of naturalism constantly punctured by the experimentation. Godard's films, from the eighties within these environments, fascinate between how he stretches and kicks even against plots, wanting to clearly wanting to bend the form, and also a sense of melancholia found in certain films. This does admittedly provide his humorous side including the delight of how he would parody himself, here lovably goofy as an older befuddled man in one scene who just wanting some baked productions and a wardrobe woman to mend his coat. He is riffing on a man who exists out of time and even bumbling in-between a second fake film shoot, to kidnap a man and daughter at a casino, channelling his love of Jerry Lewis in awkward form. Even this character though has his moments of clarity and show Godard's mood from this era, the quotation opening this review his, of a man who has seen time continue, and neither likes the threat of nuclear war nor the consumerism of the time.

First Name: Carmen is almost the least experimental of a lot I have seen from the eighties period barring its use of sound. Intercutting continually to a strings quartet practicing in a room, the soundtrack is very idiosyncratic and one you would never get for a film like this in another context. The soundtrack can switch to gulls, to abrupt silence, to using Godard's beloved Beethoven but also suddenly having Tom Waits at one point, even within that scene having both Waits and strings at the same time. Here, as he would also lean on very recognisable names in his work onwards, from Bob Dylan to Scott Walker, Godard would be playing with soundtracks onwards, heavily as well showing he was good at choosing choice music cuts for whatever purpose.

In terms of the melancholia the film has, in contract to a King Lear (1987), the most infamous of his films from this run, a Shakespeare adaptation by Cannon Group not made by someone who read Shakespeare, or to actually follow the source, First Name: Carmen is a languidly paced and tragic tale of love between two people which will not come to be. He has his humour within this still as mentioned - the man spooning a jar of food, in a Mobil garage mini-market bathroom of all places, springs to mind whilst two people handcuffed together attempt to negotiate around one of them needing to pee whilst he is in the same bathroom - but this still a sombre and ultimately rewarding drama as a result. It feels a forgotten film for me, which is odd to say, felt only in how, with titles from the eighties in general, even King Lear, his output from this era is frankly maligned, Carmen not a film talked of greatly. Again, his sixties work, to be honest, casts a shadow on who he is as a film maker until Film Socialisme onwards, where his more experimental work from the 2010s has the benefit, for incredibly radical work that would be difficult to sell, of a legendary name to sell them on. This is a shame as, with the eighties films incredibly rewarding, this among them as a drama is a highlight.

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1) Love and work differently: Anne-Marie Miéville’s cinema of companionship, written by Albertine Fox and published for Sight and Sound magazine, in an updated version, on June 20th 2018.

Ghoulies & Ghoulies II (1984 & 1987)

Director(s): Luca Bercovici (Ghoulies)

Screenplays: Luca Bercovici and Jefery Levy (Ghoulies) / Charlie Dolan and Dennis Paoli (Ghoulies II)

Cast:

Ghoulies: Peter Liapis as Jonathan Graves, Lisa Pelikan as Rebecca, Scott Thomson as Mike, Ralph Seymour as Mark "Toad Boy", Mariska Hargitay as Donna, Keith Joe Dick as Dick, David Dayan as Eddie, Victoria Catlin as Anastasia, Charene Cathleen as Robin, Tamara De Treaux as Greedigut, Peter Risch as Grizzel, Michael Des Barres as Malcolm Graves, Jack Nance as Wolfgang

Ghoulies II: Damon Martin as Larry, Royal Dano as Uncle Ned, Phil Fondacaro as Sir Nigel Penneyweight, J. Downing as P. Hardin, Kerry Remsen as Nicole, Dale Wyatt as Dixie, Jon Pennell as Bobby, Sasha Jenson as Teddy, Starr Andreeff as Alice, William Butler as Merle, Donnie Jeffcoat as Eddie, Christopher Burton as Leo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

I'm a magician you sons of bitches. You can't kill me!

I did not expect the Ghoulies franchise begins with a Satanic cult about to sacrifice a baby in the scene, but like so many horror franchises, they either deviate from their original premises in the later sequels, or in this case develop their selling point after time, What would become the titular centre point for these films took their jumping point from a script by co-writer/director Luca Bercovici, who would work on the first film, and afterwards leave with his work continued on with the other three films. It is not a surprise though that this is a Charles Band production, distributed by his Empire Pictures, from a man who has set forth many a franchise about tiny homicidal puppets.

The baby is thankfully saved, even if his mother takes his place, growing up to be Jonathan Graves (Peter Liapis), inheriting the family home where this tale originates from with Wolfgang, a cult member who helped rescue him, as his sole family and an excuse to get David Lynch alumni Jack Nance in a nicely appreciated cameo with some plot importance. Cue a party with slasher film archetypes, goofballs obsessed with strip poker in a home full of occult literature, making the bad decision to perform an occult ritual whilst drunk. Even sober, this is a dumb idea, as Jonathan becomes obsessed, possessed even, to develop him magic skills and becomes overcome with them. That and summoning the titular Ghoulies, starting with a hairy weasel goblin that stands up to one's knees, which are going to be there to terrorise people.

It is strange that I come into this series always presumed to have a more comedic edge, and I only admit only seeing Ghoulies IV (1994) growing up with a less than stellar reaction, so that was not a good perspective for all this time to ever have had. The first film undeniably is trying to be more serious, which just happened to involved involve homicidal critters played with puppets, who feel like an afterthought here and whose comedic aspects would be ran with further in later films. If you accept they are razor toothed and have a thing for eating faces, they are cuter than menacing, even if it's my sick view of cuteness inspired by having Monsters in My Pocket toys as a kid, and sadly maligned. They are, for a film made when Joe Dante's Gremlins (1984) exists, an arbitrary aspect to a plot more focused about a man being possessed by his satanic father from the grave, making this as a work that is indebted to the era's tropes in the Ghoulies' inclusion, to the point Gremlins' producers Warner Brothers sued this film for the similarities to Gremlins but lost¹. Despite this luck, the Ghoulies are never taken advantage of this selling point, and there was a sense for me, going through these films for the review, this was the least interesting of the ones so far. I will concede that this film had issues I have sympathy for, such as the fact the production ran out of budget midway through and required the filmmakers to find funding², and there are many aspects to how this film could have turned out which were rejected. One I admit might have made the film more my thing, that being Jeffrey Combs being in the cast, but this was also once meant to be a children's film, and was meant to be in 3D, so Ghoulies had a chaotic coarse to even get made I have to take into consideration¹.

There is certainly a whimsical charm to this, Charles Band produced films having a sense of love within themselves for their playfulness, film pulp for its own sake like lifting the clown puppet from Poltergeist (1982), or two dwarf actors playing mystic servants summoned by Jonathan, looking like cast members from a high fantasy film or from Knightmare, the 1980s British TV series which experimented with early green screen to send its contestants into said worlds. I will also say that Richard Band, Charles Band's brother, and Shirley Walker, a pioneer for being one of the first female film composers in Hollywood, also compose between them a score which feels like it is from a larger budget production and is great. Richard Band is an unsung hero for these genre films for his work, whilst Walker, with her work for DC Comic animated adaptations, like Batman: The Animated Series, to her work on the Final Destination series, would sadly pass in 2006.  Thankfully, in 2014 The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) created the Shirley Walker Award in 2014 to honour the diversity of film and television music, to emphasis her importance in the industry.

Brutally however, this is just not a film for me. I will not say it is bad, which defeats the purpose of a review by saying films are just not for me, but it is true here. I like the attitude behind this film, but it does drift off into a plot I had no interest in. One legitimate criticism I have, regardless of my awareness of the production issues, is those titular ghouls who do immediately stand out - the green demon baby ones to the weasel goblin, when not eating its way out the chicken on the dining table, being a pervert hiding under your bed during an attempted occult sex ritual - are not really a part of the material. This film clearly realised this mistake as these creatures eventually became the central focus in later films, whilst this particular film is an acquired taste for me personally. An early film in his career, his first directorial production, Luca Bercovici would continue on to the likes of Rockula (1990), which seems more appealing for me for being about a vampire wanting to have a career in rock music with Susan Tyrrell and musician Bo Diddley among the cast.

Ghoulies II is a considerably more focused and interesting film for me, opening with Anthony Dawson, of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954), in a cameo as a priest running away from Satanists with Ghoulies in a cloth sack. His attempt to dispose of them for the sake of humanity in a barrel of waste, conveniently marked as "Extremely Toxic" and left open to mist in a garage, ends up with him in said barrel and melting into a skeleton. The Ghoulies escape, five of them, and hitch a ride with travellers for a carnival who stopped at the garage, one of which is Royal Dano, already having been Abraham Lincoln's voice at the Hall of Presidents attraction at Disney's Magic Kingdom beforehand in his career alongside cinema, playing an alcoholic ex-magician who runs a haunted house named Satan's Den.

There are many improvements for what is a silly tale, the first being that needed focus on the Ghoulies themselves, legitimately evil critters who enjoy causing pain and mischief, one even knowing how to use a switchblade, which becomes more threatening. They are stuck in Satan's Den, and from here, this is significantly more interesting as a sequel for me, with the added caveat that I have a bias for carnival set films anyway, making this more tantalising. Dano is running the attraction, with the help of his nephew Larry (Damon Martin), which is one of the rides in danger of being closed by an evil eighties yuppie, an accountant who has plants to axe the attractions going in the red, Satan's Den likely to be replaced by ladies' mud wrestling by the end of the week only for the Ghoulies to accidentally bring more customers into the attraction that night. A worthy mention too, as he is a great inclusion, is Phil Fondacaro; whilst some of the lines in regards to him being an actor with dwarfism have not aged well, his character is awesome, a former Shakespearian actor and friend to Larry named Sir Nigel, a carnival employee who gets into the thick of the plot too.

It is perverse to think Satan's Den is not doing well but is far more elaborate than most real haunted houses I have been to, one I wish to go to, as this is a heightened movie version of the carnival with the production team (and real ride operators) deserving praise for this exaggerated setting. The film was fun to just watch for its production design in context of a goofy late eighties horror movie, in terms that everything is like the place of one's dreams, Satan's Den itself a vast building with elaborate practical attractions, like pop-up mummies, that emphasis the joy of the real ones you walk past in ordinary life if they had the production values of a small genre film, to the art design through the carnival like for the entrance of the "Arabian" exotic dancers. The score by Fuzzbee Morse, the awesomely named composer whose credits for musicians he has worked on is actually too long to pick from but least includes Frank Zappa to actor Harry Dean Stanton, is awesome to and adds to this with pure horror synth, and as much of the enjoyment comes from showing so many clichés of the era but in an enjoyable way. The ladies' mud wrestling reference is one of these, and it is to the point a child randomly has a shuriken throwing star on him, in the era of the ninja craze, to throw at rat creatures who puke green goo on them, because naturally kids have shuriken stars on them. They even went as far, for the metal head character who has to take his "tunes" with a boom box into the haunted house, the production got then notorious band W.A.S.P. to record a song exclusively for the production; before lead singer Blackie Lawless moved to more serious lyrics in the late eighties to early nineties albums, and then returned to his Christian faith, they were controversial for Tipper Gore angering songs like Animal (Fuck like a Beast) and him having a buzz saw codpiece, a perfect band for this era of heavy metal interlinking with heavy metal before the more serious and critically acclaimed albums took over for W.A.S.P. onwards.

Eventually bringing in a bigger-than-human size costume for the final, it has no pretence, already playing to humour further than the prequel even if with a sick streak, as the chaos in the carnival that ends this film evoking the influence of Gremlins, varying between overt slapstick pratfalls to a critter causing a ride cart to fly off and kill at least two people glibly. Also there is a fixation on toilets, the series trope from the prequel that followed from this, as the Ghoulie in a toilet moment from before is escalated in a painful way. Its director Albert Band, father of Charles Band, was clearly a safe pair of hands for this production, late into a career mostly as a producer but making films like I Bury the Living (1958) in the fifties, so the sense the film was able to be as entertaining and fun as it was comes with the sense of someone, as a producer for most of his career at this point, who thankfully knew what to shot to win the punters over. The next film, which took four years to appear, took this series further into comedy to the point it may put people off, whilst here, the balance between the humour and playful horror tone is perfect. After the sense that the first Ghoulies did not stand out for me at all, this was a nice change of pace. If you are a fan of the first film, I will not take away from your enjoyment of it, merely that I thankfully got the film I enjoyed within the second.

 

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1) 10 Crazy Things You Didn't Know About Ghoulies, written by Jake Dee and published for Screen Rant on October 31st 2019.

2) Interview with Luca Bercovici (Ghoulies), written and published for Love-it-Loud on June 28th 2018. Retrieved August 24th 2018 on the Web Archive.