When the film’s main premise hinges on a party where the main alternative to playing Trivial Pursuit and Strip Poker is to hold a Satanic ritual, we can see we are not exactly entering into high-credibility stakes. Sadly Ghoulies does not hold any of the tongue-in-cheek comeuppance that has proved the saving grace of many other Empire productions such as Trancers/Futurecop (1985) and Re-Animator (1985). Indeed, the film’s poster with a ghoulie popping up out of a toilet and the legend “they’ll get you in the end” (a scene sadly unfulfilled anywhere in the film) is the funniest thing there is on show.

There is certainly a nasty maliciousness to Empire’s in-house makeup man (and sometimes director) John Carl Buechler’s creatures despite the evident penny-pinching – the principal appeal Ghoulies and its two sequels has is its gooey slime potential and the malicious glee of the creatures. (Although the filmmakers seem unaware that in England ‘ghoulies’ or ‘goolies’ is a vernacular expression for testicles). At least, Michael Des Barres has found a film where his ghastly overacting is consummate with the quality of the production.

The sequels were Ghoulies II (1987), Ghoulies III: The Ghoulies Go to College (1990) and Ghoulies IV (1993).