As one of those Bush presidents famously said, we must stand up and demand that no Ghoulie is left behind. Ergo, Ghoulies Go to College. Sometimes this sequel is referred to as Ghoulies III, but to do so only minimizes the great strides they have made in higher education.

At Glazier College, school is in session … and everyone is majoring in wacky pratfalls! (Their minor? Three Stooges sound effects.) It’s Prank Week on campus, which means Beta Zeta Theta fraternity man Skip Carter (Evan MacKenzie, Scanner Cop II) has been busy setting the water fountains to spurt at crotch level and altering the benches to eject those who dare sit a spell! Don’t even get me started talking about the inflatable crocodile he’s hidden in the lectern of dean of students and humanities professor Ragnar (Kevin McCarthy, UHF), because I just might die of laughter!*

Not a prank, but certainly well-timed to the institution’s informal culture of zaniness, is the arrival of three Ghoulies — resembling a rat, cat and fish — through the pipes of the BZT toilet. Predictably, they like to party. They also exclaim, “Beer run!” and then burp and fart accordingly. One of them tricks another into chugging Drano: “Tastes great!” “Less filling.” Most uproarious.**

The creatures are denied further high jinks and sent back to the magic shitter from whence they came, once Skip and his girlfriend (Eva LaRue, Mirror Images II) utter the ancient spells found in an old comic book. Meanwhile, former Academy Award nominee McCarthy has to say, “Ghoulies have no dicks!” aloud and on camera, for all the world to (hypothetically) see, which may have been an ad lib requested by director John Carl Buechler (Cellar Dweller). Former Playboy centerfold/Andy Sidaris heroine Hope Marie Carlton (Hard Ticket to Hawaii) appears in a supporting role, but her ass might garner more screen time than her face, which — even with the franchise’s pivot from horror to comedy — definitely qualifies as Exploitation 101.*** —Rod Lott

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*Consider this a lesson in sarcasm.
**This, too.
***But this, students — this is true.

I’m picturing Thanksgiving dinner at the house of actor Martin Sheen in 1995. His wife, Janet, has cleared the table and is busy scrubbing plates in the kitchen, leaving the guys to loosen their belts and chat.

“We have a lot to be thankful for,” says the patriarch. “Our family has been blessed in so many ways. It was quite a year. I enjoyed working with Rob Reiner and Michael Douglas in The American President. And Emilio, I’m very honored and humbled to take part opposite Kathy Bates in your next directorial effort, The War at Home.”

“You said it, Pop,” says Emilio Estevez, Martin’s eldest. “Work isn’t work when I work alongside you. I’m celebrating two other things tonight: First, I’m going to be in Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible movie adaptation coming out next summer with my old buddy Tom Cruise. And second, I’m celebrating a full year of no longer having to have sex with Paula Abdul.”

“Thank Christ! I was afraid you would contract the herp or something,” says Charlie Sheen, Martin’s youngest son. “Speaking of TV shows being made into movies, you know The Fugitive with Harrison Ford? Well, I just shot a sci-fi flick called The Arrival with the guy who wrote that, David Twohy. I have the lead role. But enough about me! What’ve you been up to, Uncle Joe?”

“Who, me?” says Joe Estevez, Martin’s little brother. “I just wrapped a shot-on-video feature in which me and the 18th-billed performer from Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space are chased around an office building by a baby ghost. It’s made by the guy me and Frank Stallone did all those roller-skating ninja pictures with.”

A hush falls over the room. Martin finally breaks the uncomfortable silence. “Janet!” he bellows. “Dig out the turkey scraps from the dog bowl and Ziploc ’em up for Joe, will ya, dear?”

Okay, so maybe it didn’t go that way; perhaps the Sheens are more of a Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil fam. But sure as shit, Joe Estevez did indeed reteam with Donald G. Jackson (Hell Comes to Frogtown) for the kiddietainment containment unit known as Baby Ghost, from a “screamplay” by Aliens effects artist Mark Williams.

The least Estevez dons bow tie as portrait photographer Winslow Cobblepott, working from an upper floor of an Los Angeles high-rise. One of his young subjects goes in search of a vending machine for a peanuts-packed Snickers bar and packs the peanuts of a nosy security guard (James D. Whitworth, Dragon Fury) with her wee fist. Instead of finding candy, she locates a chained and padlocked box in the basement. Out pops Baby Ghost, an anti-Casper creature with an annoying laugh, a fish face and hair made from a cheerleader’s poms. Giggling like a baby, the dog turd-shaped specter appears as an all-green chromakey transparency added in post … or whatever accounted for post in Jackson’s world.

Baby Ghost is pretty harmless, unless you happen to be a box of Entenmann’s baked goods. Attempting to get Baby Ghost back in the box, Cobblepott uses a trail of donuts as bait, followed by a handheld video game (Donkey Kong, judging from the sound effects). Amid these shenanigans, Cobblepott engages with the infantile building staffer (the aforementioned Plan 9’s Conrad Brooks) and full-time fortune teller Madame Zora (Erin O’Bryan, Playboy’s Erotic Fantasies IV: Forbidden Liaisons). Complicating matters are two bumbling robbers created in the “why I oughta” mold in hopes of conjuring good-time memories of Home Alone.

While it’s unkind to speak ill of the dead, thank your lucky stars Jackson passed away before he could make good on Baby Ghost’s end-credit threat of “Watch for Baby Ghost 2.” He was too busy honing his craft via Lingerie Kickboxer and Rollergator. —Rod Lott

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An open challenge to Seth Rogen: Try to write a feature-length comedy that contains none of your three crutches. To reiterate the obvious, those are:
• the word “fuck” and all its variations/conjugations;
• references to the male member, especially being sucked and/or jerked;
• and pot-smoking.

He cannot do it. That trusty troika of fallbacks comprises his entire arsenal. Movie to movie, each and every one is trotted out incessantly for jokes — not to set up jokes, not to pay off jokes, but to be the jokes. More on that in one hot minute.

Sausage Party represents the worst offender of Rogen and co-scribe Evan Goldberg’s stoned bag of tricks. And because the film is animated, they’ve doubled down on their juvenile instincts in order to appear more subversive than the cartoon would be in sheer concept alone. That concept, in a nutshell (or a jar of Butt Nutter peanut butter, to borrow a Party-going character) is that, unbeknownst to us (unless you’re trippin’ on bath salts), all the food items in your local grocery store are sentient sexual beings.

The hot dog Frank (Rogen, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising) is particularly eager to wrangle free of his vacuum-packed packaging so he can slip inside a bun named Brenda (Kristen Wiig, this year’s Ghostbusters remake). Certainly you’re able to see through the subtlety (because it’s completely transparent) and know that means intercourse. Keeping them from doing that are two primary obstacles:
• the revelatory admission that being purchased by a customer leads to being eaten
• and a douchebag — literally, a douchebag (Nick Kroll, TV’s The League) seeking revenge for his bent nozzle, which he’s itching to jam into a vagina … but he’ll settle for a dude’s asshole.

Co-directed by Conrad Vernon (Monsters vs. Aliens) and Greg Tiernan (approximately 100 episodes and videos in the Thomas & Friends kiddie franchise!), the movie truly has a lot going for it technically, from ace character design to seamless computer animation. Spirited voice work gets delivered from the likes of Michael Cera, Craig Robinson, Salma Hayek and Edward Norton as, respectively, a malformed wiener, a gangsta box of grits, a lesbian taco and a bagel that may as well be named Woody Allen.

Too bad they’re ill-served by an elementary premise and a junior-high script that assumes the acts of copulation and bong-hitting are hee-larious, in and of themselves and entirely lacking context. It’s like that kid in the back of the class who would say things like “cunt” and “flappy fuck” in a bid for attention. The difference is that his remarks cost nothing; Rogen and company’s, about $30 million. Sausage Party is not clever enough to merit the markup. In fact, it’s rotten. —Rod Lott

For being Natural Born Pranksters, “professional idiots” Rowan Atwood, Dennis Roady and Vitaly Zdorovetskiy could stand for more training. Strictly from the basis of this, their first feature, the collective exploits of the popular YouTube rogues are not quite in line with their videos’ phenomenal viewing numbers.

The bits that make up this movie exhibit a gangliness in pacing, editing and sometimes even execution. Most segments either go on too long or call it quits before a true punch line can stick the landing; a few aren’t funny in the least. By contrast, your appreciation for the Jackass crew’s big-screen shenanigans will undergo an exponential increase.

In a guest appearance, Jackass alum Dave Englund is tapped to do what he does best: Defecate on camera for the sake of a joke. In this case, his fecal matter serves as the “paint” for an abstract work of art on canvas to be raffled at a hoity-toity gallery opening. While making viewers grateful that the Smell-O-Vision gimmick failed to catch fire, this piece emerges as one of Pranksters’ better and more memorable ones, given that the target of snobbery deserves a good-natured poke. (That does not always hold true, especially when an earlier prank takes aim at a someone who doesn’t deserve the cruelty: a brand-new dad, whose mind appears to vacillate — before Atwood et al. reveal it’s just a joke, brah — between processing the life-shattering news foisted upon him and contemplating immediate suicide.)

Falling into the pro-Pranksters category are harmless hidden-camera premises of a campsite alien abduction and a gore-soaked human cannonball stunt gone awry. Respectively, citizens scared to the point of pants-wetting and witnessing sick humor on a grand scale are two elements of which the movie could use more. Less-effective antics include a faked mid-massage boner, a faked liquor store robbery and a faked death by truck-through-porta-potty. As far as franchise prospects go, this is a deeply flawed fair start. —Rod Lott

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Although I laughed a lot while watching Winners Tape All: The Henderson Brothers Story, I cannot recommend it outright.

No, first you have to instinctively know the meaning of the acronym “SOV” — without Googling, without pausing to think. For those whose gifted with a synapse that instantly retrieves “shot on video,” then yes, unequivocally I recommend this inspired mockumentary. Viewers familiar with those negative-budget, positive-enthusiasm DIY horror shows of the VHS era will recognize certain patent components — the awkward pacing, the amateurish performances, the kitchen-conjured gore effects — and smile in respect. Grins give way to guffaws.

And if you don’t know your “SOV” from “SUV”? Go experience David A. Prior’s Sledgehammer and Christopher Lewis’ Blood Cult — because “watch” is not a strong enough word for it — and get back to me.

The subtitular stepsiblings of Winners Tape All: The Henderson Brothers Story are the slobby Michael and uptight Richard (respectively played by co-writers and Faces of Schlock co-stars Zane Crosby and Josh Lively), being profiled on a public-access cable station in West Virginia. With Chris LaMartina (director of the equally faux and fabulous WNUF Halloween Special) acting as Henry, their No. 1 fan, the newsmagazine reunites the boys, who reminisce about their pioneering ways in the 1980s. In a nutshell, it was inevitable they take a stab at shooting their own slasher movies after renting so many of them in their formative years. Particularly influential was I Piss on Your Guts: “Wanna know what the best part of that movie was? When he pisses on his guts.”

Their big-box career may have been brief, but their efforts live immortal, as we witness via prodigious clips of both Michael’s directorial debut, The Curse of Stabberman, and its sophomore slump of a follow-up, Cannibal Swim Club. Unsurprisingly, these bits combine for much of Winners’ 67 minutes of running time and nearly as many earned laughs. It is more difficult to make authentic “bad” footage than it looks, but director/co-writer Justin Channell (Die and Let Live) possesses just the right touch to have his characters convey earnestness and delusion. In love with its own losers, Winners Tape All starts and finishes as a winner itself. —Rod Lott

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