I have a half-assed theory that no truly bad movie has ever been set in a carnival.
Yeah, even Ghoulies II.
The Ghoulies are on the loose again, don’t you know? They’re little, they’re slimy, they’re evil and they’re great vintage practical effects puppets that are partly the work of John Buechler. He’s one of those 80s special effects geniuses whose entire resume, both as an effects guy and a director, is nothing but movies that EVERYBODY rented on VHS back in the day. All of the major horror franchises hired him for splatter effects, but he did most of his work back then in association with Charles Band.
Like in this one.
This is the film in which the Ghoulies stow away with a pack of traveling carnys held together by a bland young guy with a good head of tousled Rick Springfield hair and great grizzled Band stock company player Phil Fondacaro. This also features the always memorable Royal Dano, who capped off his long career as a character-actor with a small stack of noteworthy roles in 80s and 90s genre films. Here, he gets second-billing as the carnival’s notoriously unreliable alcoholic magician. He’s also the first guy who sees the Ghoulies, but OF COURSE no one believes him—until the corpses begin to pile up.
As for the carnival, this film gets into it. It looks like director Albert Band and producer Charles Band (Al’s son) set up a passable carnival facade and then used it for all it was worth. It’s all rides and midway games and sideshow attractions, all of which look great on camera.
To fill up time they throw in a subplot about how the carnival is owned by a corporation and the evil young businessman hot shot who’s in charge of it (he’s been handed the job by his CEO daddy, of course) is out to give it the axe if they don’t start improving their profit margins, like, immediately.
That’s where the Ghoulies come in to make this carnival a lot more interesting to the locals.
Bottom line: What you want from a sequel is that it gives you more of what you liked from the first movie. It helps if it’s a little more crazy. The first Ghoulies is sometimes erroneously called a Gremlins rip-off, but it really isn’t because both movies were made at the same time.
THIS one is the Gremlins rip-off. It just exchanges that film’s Christmas snow and tinsel for carnival lights.
Joe Dante made the Bands step up their game here. These Ghoulies have gone even more wild. It ain’t half bad.