Monday, October 14, 2013

Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College

Mixing comedy and horror is not an easy task, it’s a delicate balancing act that requires a fundamental understanding of what makes each one work on their own and how to shift from one to the other. There are countless movies that have attempted to combine horror and comedy only to wind up failing on both fronts, Ghoulies III is one of those movies. The humor is, at best, at the Troma level with only the most obvious jokes being delivered at the most obvious times. Most of the jokes come from the Ghoulies themselves, since they’ve been given the gift of speech in this installment of the franchise. When they first started to speak I thought, “Oh, they’re kind of referencing the Three Stooges here.” Then the slapstick came into play and I realized, “Oh, they’re just ripping off the Three Stooges here.” If you’ve ever seen Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds or UHF, you’ve pretty much already seen all of the best parts of this movie.

Rating: 42%

(Image from imdb.com)

2 comments:

DCP said...

Wait, do the Ghoulies enroll in college themselves or just terrorize college students?

Quammy said...

The Ghoulies are summoned to the campus by Kevin McCarthy (in full on R.J. Fletcher mode) to terrorize some fraternities engaged in a prank war. They travel from Hell via an ornately carved toilet that is in one of the frat houses. At no point do the Ghoulies wear gowns and mortar boards which, as per my critique of the other installments in the franchise, is another knock against the movie.