DRIVE-IN SATURDAY

DRIVE-IN SATURDAY

TIDY BOWL MASSACRE

Edouard Dauphin

Think you’ve got problems with your toilet? Maybe you’d like to trade places with the lead character of Ghoulies. He’s got a green, two-foot high beast with sharp teeth who likes to pop out of his commode at the most inopportune times. You might have seen the ads for this film, in which the grotesque monster is shown emerging from the bowl beneath the slogan: “Ghoulies—They’ll get you in the end.” It’s enough to make the Tidy Bowl man turn in his Merchant Marine card.

Ghoulies, which bears more than a passing resemblance— read rip-off—to Spielberg’s Gremlins, is set in one of those California castles that looks more like a movie set—maybe for some flick like Hercules Vs. The William Morris Agency—than someone’s actual home. No matter, Ghoulies’ hero, Peter Liapis, moves into this morgue-like chateau over the protests of his girlfriend, Lisa Pelikan, who would have preferred a ranch house in Westwood. Actually, after the deadly toilet brigade goes on the prowl, the couple would have been better off in a cold water flat in Windsor. Sorry, you Canadian tapeworms, The Dauph hasn’t taken a cheap shot at you in years and you’re long overdue for a helping of abuse.

Once Peter and Lisa set up light housekeeping in the gloomy mansion, it isn’t long before black magic has come into their lives. Guess that’s what happens when you live in California. Peter converts the basement of the house into a warlock’s chamber and starts summoning up creatures from the grave. Unfortunately for horror fans, most of these little guys look like Muppets with a bad case of gum disease, but they soon create lots of havoc in the castle. See, in a tedious prologue to the movie, it was already revealed that Peter is the last surviving member of some wacko demonic cult and these miniature beasties (Where is that little squirt from Fantasy Island when you really need him?) are his long lost brothers, or servants, or something. Yep, The Dauph did nod out during those opening minutes, but you will too!

Naturally, as soon as all the ghoulies have begun to exhibit signs of rampage, it’s—what else?—time for a party. In trash horror tradition, this is always the most effective means of supplying likely victims. And this clambake offers us an intriguing crosssection, including the late Jayne Mansfield’s daughter and Jack Nance of Eraserhead fame, who looks extremely comfortable under a half ton of old man’s make-up. Take The Dauphin’s advice, Jack, and call your agent for some real work soon. Talk about a career going down the toilet.

Which, appropriately enough, is where this movie goes to. Like its second cousin, the overproduced and under-frightening Gremlins, its basically a harmless puppet show that seems more designed to spawn a market for accessories— Ghoulies’ plungers and toilet seat covers maybe—than to keep a paying audience awake. One trivia note, by the way: this could be the first feature in which the game Trivial Pursuit is mentioned. In the context of the film, it’s offered as an alternative to devil worship. Some choice.

Skip Ghoulies—or at least wait for the T-shirt. One could argue it’s the best acid movie since 1966’s Hallucination Generation, but didn’t we skip that one too?

Everyone’s got a favorite zombie story, right? Mine takes place in an obscure 1930s movie when the Ritz Brothers walk up to a bar and say: ’’Three Zombies.” The bartender looks at them and says: ”l can see that, but what’ll you have to drink?”

Everyone’s got a favorite Rita Jenrette story, too. Mine concerns a visit to my local tonsorial emporium where I’m waiting to get in the chair so that Otto, my hamfisted Leipzig barber, can give me “short back and sides,” what we call the Early Berlin cut. The Dauph happens to peruse a copy of Playboy in which Rita, excongressional wife and America’s self-proclaimed sex symbol, is shown in a state of semi-undress. Otto asks if I would like to browse through something sexier and hands me a copy of Harper’s.

In the past, zombies and Rita Jenrette haven’t had that much in common, but now we have Zombie Island Massacre in which Rita gets star billing. This is an inept little movie, supposedly filmed in Jamaica (maybe they meant Jamaica, New York), and distinguished by the fact that there’s nothing even resembling a massacre in the film’s almost unendurable 90 minutes. As The Dauph sat in a Times Square movie house, he saw dazed savages wielding sugarcane knives, outbursts of random violence with innocent tourists brutally slashed—but all of that was in the theatre itself, not up on the screen where it belonged.

As for Rita herself, well, what can you say? After the movie, The Dauph was asked if he’d like to see something sexier and opted to go home and watch the MacNeil Lehrer Report.

Skip Zombie Island Massacre. It doesn’t even have any good reggge.