Ghoulies

"Ghoulies" (1984, Luca Bercovici, Empire Pictures, Ghoulies Productions).

Jonathan Graves (Peter Liapis) moves into his family's mansion with his girlfriend, Rebecca (Lisa Pelikan). Jonathan finds his father, Malcolm (Michael Des Barres)'s dark magic equipment in the house and decides to play with the paraphernalia during one of his parties as a joke, but unwittingly raises some demonic creatures known as 'ghoulies'. The power then begins to go to his head and he begins to follow the path of his black-magically-charged father...

I love a good B-movie, but this one is not one of the so-bad-it's-good gems of the era. And yet, it's not quite bad enough for me to hate it.

The demon puppets are fun, but cheap. And the film is neither scary nor funny and a little too long winded. While the film's not quite the calibre of other B-movies of the period, it went on to have some good sequels which made more use of the ghoulie monsters and focused less on demon-raising, cloak wearing party animals.

One of the odder things about this film was that the characters constantly put on sunglasses inside and at night. Confused, I did some trivia searching to discover that the film was meant to go into 3D when the characters put on their sunglasses, but that the difficulty of doing this was too much and so the creators decided not to bother. Alas, the scenes had already been filmed so we're left with this oddness.

All in all, I've sat through worse and don't get all the hate online about this film, but even I can see it's genuinely not that great.

[Image: Empire Pictures, et al]

Hani

The Monster Club

"The Monster Club" (1980, Roy Ward Baker, Amicus Productions) is a British horror anthology based on short stories written by R. Chetwynd-Hayes.

The author, Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine) bumps into a strange fellow, Eramus the starving vampire (Vincent Price) who asks him if he could feed off of him in return for some monster stories.

Eramus takes Chetwynd-Hayes to a local club known as 'The Monster Club' which is pretty much a cabaret bar for the supernatural.

The film jumps from the vampire and the author enjoying the evening in the club, the acts going on in the club and also the stories acted out as Eramus tells them. The stories focus on three different supernatural creatures.

The Shadmock

This story is a story with a lesson. Very similar in style to some of Stephen King's 'Creepshow' shorts.

A young woman, Angela (Barbara Kellerman), decides to take a job with a rich, reclusive man (who's not a man, but infact a Shadmock - a supernatural hybrid creature with a terrible whistle which can kill!) called Raven (James Laurenson). She is to work with him in his secluded mansion, categorising his antiques.

Raven is odd, awkward and odd-looking. Angela is at first repulsed by him, but eventually becomes friends with him. She finds, however, that some of his stuff is really very valuable, and she and her boyfriend decide to take advantage of Raven's kind personality and rob him.

Unfortunately, Raven takes Angela's 'kindnesses' the wrong way and proposes to her. Shocked, she declines and rushes her attempt to rob him. Catching her in the act, Raven uses his terrible superpower on her! Seeing the results of the creature's whistle, Angela's boyfriend runs for it, but loses his mind.

And the moral of the story? Don't be a dick.

The Vampires

Eramus decides to tell Chetwynd-Hayes of his own kind, but not his own story. This isn't an Anne Rice novel, after all!

A young bullied boy (Warren Saire) and his parents live quiet lives. The boy's father (Richard Johnson) works nights and his mother (Britt Ekland) constantly reassures her son that he is destined for greatness and that he is to be aware of men in suits carrying cases.

The boy discovers that his father is in fact a vampire! Unfortunately, a bunch of vampire hunters also become aware of this...

A nice little tale with a good ending.

The Ghouls / The Humegoo

A movie director looking for a spot to film his next works discovers an uncharted little town. Unfortunately, the town is home to only Luna (a seemingly innocent girl who is in fact a Humegoo, or human-ghoul hybrid) and a bunch of man-eating ghouls.

Can he fend off the hordes of man-eaters and save Luna? Well, he can try.

Eramus then goes on to detail how many different ways humans have concocted to kill one another, formally announcing the horror writer to be an honourary member of the 'Monster Club'.

Some very late 70s and early 80s music acts, some terrible monster masks and an entertaining strip tease (right down to her bare bones!) make this movie a small cult hit. But it's mainly notable for the presence of both Price and Carradine; horror legends!

Cheesey, British, horror anthology fun.

Carradine and Price discuss monster geneology and breeding

[Picture: Amicus Productions]

Plan 9 from Outer Space

"Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1959, Edward D. "Ed" Wood (Jr), Valiant Pictures) is an infamous cult classic from an infamous director.

According to the box, the film is about aliens raising the dead as part of their mindless army against Earth as Earth's weaponry progression is looking likely to end the Universe.

This confusing, woodenly acted and B-er of all B-movies film is hilarious! Not that it was ever intended to be a comedy!

It bills Bela Lugosi in the credits, but alas Bela died in 1956, before this film was even begun! Instead, Wood used old unused footage of Lugosi in places and tried to incorporate them into the script. Bela was replaced, in parts which he had not filmed in advance, by a taller not-quite-a-look-a-like, holding his cape over his face and walking very slowly.

 So one scene, where Bela Lugosi attends a funeral and weeps is really not for 'Plan 9...' but they tried to write it in, making Vampira (real name Maila "Vampira" Nurmi) Bela's young wife. Got to hand it to Mr Lugosi,  however, that quivvering lip at his young wife's graveside was very touching!

The movie suffered from several issues; no cash, bad plot, bad acting, a conflict of baddies and genres, and scenes that didn't make sense.

I wonder why the airplane pilot and his wife consistently sit in their garden at night. Especially since their garden appears to look on to a graveyard! Don't they have a livingroom?

The space ships/flying saucers are more like hub caps on very visible strings. They're also described by the pilot as looking like cigars... Have you ever seen a saucer-shaped cigar? Didn't think so. No idea what that was about, unless they filmed that scene prior to sourcing the 'space craft'...

The 'aliens' are hilarious too. They are simply humans in shiny suits!

Generally, this film is really only watched by cult fans who wish to laugh at this terrible 'photoplay'. A genuinely terrible movie. I think a lot of 'Red Dwarf' fans would appreciate it though, when watching it,  you can't help but hear Kryton, and suspect that Ed Wood must of been taking the proverbial on some level!

By far the best thing about this film is Inspector Dan Clay (Tor Johnson, a Swedish wrestler!) who's 'zombie/ghoul' face is just the funniest thing!

The film is also narrated by "The Amazing" Criswell,  who as well as narrated terrible movies, was also a Psychic... although, not a very good one! He was real character, an eccentric who reportedly slept in a coffin. His narration is odd and his voice, I find, harrowing... however, it really made this movie what it is!

So, if you have 78mins to kill and want to not believe your eyes, have a gander at this film.

[Picture: Valiant Pictures]

Hani