Horror Movie Review: Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College (1991)

Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College drops any pretence of horror and instead goes for slapstick comedy. It would be a disaster of a movie if it wasn’t for some great acting and decent practical effects.

At a college, prank week is in full effect. It sees two competing frat houses play tricks on each other to try and win a crown that will determine which house is the king of pranks. A sourpuss professor named Ragnar (Kevin McCarthy) is sick of prank week and wants to put an end to it so releases three of the Ghoulies from a Ghoulie comic book he finds.

With that power he is able to control the Ghoulies to do his evil bidding provided he can stop them getting involved with the pranks themselves. It’s up to prank master Skip (Evan MacKenzie) to stop the professor all while dealing with his own personal issues too.

Other then the Ghoulies (who spout of some serious one-liners now), it’s Kevin McCarthy who is the star of the show here. His constant anger with the frats and the pranks is initially a bit annoying but he quickly progresses to full on evil which is a lot more fun. His eventual transformation at the finale makes this a film worth sitting through too.

The rets of the cast play their roles perfectly fine. Be it MacKenzie’s goofy charm, John Johnston as the villainous competing frat leader, Stephen Lee as the campus security guard and Eva La Rue as the leading lady both frat leaders are trying to get with. Keep an eye out too for a young Matthew Lillard in his film debut too!

Ghoulies Go to College is certainly a different Ghoulies movie. The original has reached cult status even if we found it to be a tad boring (read our review here) while the sequel was marginally better (read our review here). While the second film leaned more towards comedy, this one is almost entirely based in it. You can’t take it seriously at all.

It’s all kinds of campy silliness and while it was released in the early 90s it is dripping in 80s visuals and style. It’s fun enough but certainly isn’t going to go down as a classic.

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