31 days of Horror 2012 day 03

Ghoulies III Ghoulies go to College
1991
Horror Collection 8 movie pack Lionsgate DVD

I can remember being about 12 years old and going to Showboat Video in Pascagoula MS,I would always head straight to the horror section and pick out a few movies. Most of the time my choices would be based on the box cover artwork. Well I saw this one cover that had some little demon looking thing popping out of a toilet. And knew I had to see this movie. That movie was the original Ghoulies. And even at that young age I was majorly disappointed in the film. So I never bothered watching any of the later films in the series. Then back in 2009 I started listening to a the Deadpit Radio horror podcast. And one of the their segments was them calling random video stores and asking if they had various horror movies. One of the films they always asked for was "Ghoulies III Ghoulies go to College". The title of the film always made me chuckle,and I decided if I ever got a chance to rent it I would. Well earlier this year 2 horror multipack dvd sets from Lionsgate came out and started a minor sensation online. It seems that no one knew they were coming out,and for a long period of time you could only find them in the Walmart $5 dump bin. One of them had 8 movies and out of the 8 there was 5 I didn't already own and I wanted to see. So for about a month I was going to all the Walmarts in my area looking for these DVDs. Finally late one night I found 2 copies of each set. Bought all of them. Thinking I would keep one copy of each and sell the others for a small profit. A few months later I had went down to Biloxi to visit my family. And as usual I stayed with my cousin. I had brought along the 8 film set with Ghoulies III and was looking for a horror film I could watch with my cousin's two sons. Figuring that Ghoulies III wouldn't be too scary I sat down and watched it for the first time with my two lil cousins.

Directed by John Carl Buechler,who had done the FX work on the first Ghoulies film, Ghoulies III came out in 1991 and went straight to VHS. By this third entry in the series the film is more of a comedy with some gore than a horror film. A Ghoulies comic book is found on a college campus and is used to unleash 3 Ghoulies. Also whoever has the comic has control over the Ghoulies. This is the first time,and I think only time,that any of the Ghoulies talks. And they are always making pretty corny jokes. What stood out to me was how many people in the cast I knew from other films. You get appearances from people like,former Playboy Playmate Hope Marie Carlton,a very young Eva La Rue,Jason Scott Lee as a nerdy college kid,Matthew Lillard as another nerdy college kid,and finally Kevin McCarthy as a college Prof who has the comic book and therefore control over the Ghoulies. Now the story isn't something that will win awards. But it is so much better than the first film. And is pretty funny in a few parts. Since the DVD set this is on has 8 films and only cost me $5,that means I paid about 63 cents for the movie. It is worth way more than that. Ghoulies III Ghoulies go to college gets a C+.