Albert Simmons and I walked out of the hospital. Much to my surprise, Edwige, my kangaroo companion from my misadventures in North America, was having a tussle with a man dressed as a banana. Banana-Man was a frozen banana vendor and he was chucking chocolate covered bananas at Edwige rapid fire. Edwige hopped her way toward him unabated. She twirled in the air, tail outstretched and slapped him hard in the face. Banana-Man fell over as his cart overturned. Frozen bananas spilled onto the asphalt and it wasn’t long before a bunch of neighborhood kids were scooping them up.

— To be continued. 

Tonight’s movie is 1994’s Ghoulies IV from director Jim Wynorski. We’ve now reached the point of diminishing returns in the Ghoulies series of films. I wasn’t even going to cover this one, but it’s streaming on Prime so here we go. If you’re expecting some fancy puppet action in this motion picture, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. That being said, I suppose this is the first true sequel to the original Ghoulies as it features the return of Peter Liapis as Jonathan Graves, our hero from the first movie who started dabbling in black magic with unfortunate results.

Jonathan Graves has given up on summoning demons instead trying to live a normal life as a police detective. He spends his time shooting at convenience store robbers while his partner, Scotty (Bobby Di Cicco), pukes his guts out as a result of his cowardice. His former partner, Kate (Barbara Alyn Woods), is now his superior and wants him to take some time off due to every case he takes on ending in violence. Speaking of violence, there are Satanic activities going on in the City of Angels.

A pleather-clad vixen named Alexandra (Stacy Randall) is up to no good. She breaks into a museum warehouse and makes short work of the security guards, using them to summon a demonic entity named Faust who just happens to look like Jonathan Graves. Seems that her goal is let Faust crossover from hell and send poor Jonathan there in his place. In order to accomplish this, she needs a special jewel and the only one known to exist is around Jonathan’s neck. During her demonic summonings, two ghoulies slip out from the glowing pentagram, Ghoulie Dark (Tony Cox) and Ghoulie Light (Arturo Gil). 

Let me tell you, Ghoulie Dark and Ghoulie Light are the highlights of this movie. These mischievous little scamps light up the screen with their antics whether it’s ogling over the latest issue of “PlayPen” or raiding the fridge for some fried chicken leftovers. I’m kidding of course. Let’s address the elephant in the room. The producers were too cheap to give us puppets this time around so we’re stuck with a couple of small actors in ghoulies costumes instead. And they don’t seem to have any real impact on the plot, popping in only to pad out the film.

On a more curious note, two sewer technicians appear early on in the movie and they are the spitting image of Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton from The Honeymooners. What? Why? It’s another reminder of why the 1990s arenn’t known for horror.

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.