I wandered the halls of the hospital, lost in my thoughts. The kid with the beanie and his musclebound father crossed my path. I knew Albert Simmons, accountant to the Goose Lord and his gang, must be close by. I found him in a waiting room, knocked out with a bloody nose with two Snickers Almond bars shoved in mouth. I shook him awake and the sticky candy mess schlurped from his lips. 

“Get it together, man.” I said in disgust. “We have to find Manta and Edwige. We need to finish what we started.”

— To be continued. 

Tonight’s movie is 1990’s Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College from director John Carl Buechler. I imagine many of the young collegates in my audience have finished their finals and have earned a well-deserved rest. Or were you too busy messing around with Snapchat all semester, neglecting your studies, forgetting to even show up to your World Literature class after the second week. You failed in your duty as a student and you should be ashamed!

Our movie begins with a nerd reading out loud from a comic book titled Ghoulish Tales while the ghoulies chase him. The nerd escapes to a bathroom with a demonic looking toilet. He recites a spell from the comic book right as the ghoulies are about to kill him. He and the ghoulies are sucked into the toilet leaving the comic behind to be discovered decades later.  Fast forward to the 90s and it’s Prank Week between two competing fraternities, the Betas and the Gammas. The Gamma’s hold the Prank Crown and the Betas are desperate to get it back. We get a montage of egg throwing and stuffed goats getting hoisted up flagpoles. It’s all just some good natured tomfoolery between frat houses, but not everyone is in on the joke.

We’re introduced to crusty old Professor Ragnar (Kevin McCarthy) who hates prank week and anything fun. Professor Ragnar is not only a professor of humanities, but also the Dean of Students. He threatens the Betas and the Gammas with expulsion if they disrupt the school with their pranks. One of the Betas is reading that Ghoulish Tales comic book we saw at the beginning of the movie and Professor Ragnar ridicules the student for reading tripe over the classics. And then an inflatable alligator inflates on his podium. The students laugh and Professor Ragnar gives them a pop quiz.

Later that night, Professor Ragnar reads from the Ghoulish Tales comic book out loud as, naturally, one does when reading comic books. He reads the ancient incantation and the ghoulies rise from the toilet to wreak havoc on the world once again. This time, the ghoulies can talk. I don’t know how I feel about this. I think having the ghoulies spew out one liners kind of ruins the mystery. I mean these are essentially demons from hell and they yell at one of the frat guys to knock before entering a bathroom stall.

Still, if you want to see a bunch of gross puppets getting plastered on cans of Coors and ogling sorority sisters taking a shower, then this is the movie for you! I’m not sure what the plotline for Ghoulies IV is, but wouldn’t it be something if instead of the ghoulies being summoned from the toilet bowl, it was Phil Collins and the other members of the band Genesis in puppet form like in that Land of Confusion video?

I can hope.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, episode 645, and episode 670) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.