Ghoulies
Blu-ray
Director: Luca Bercovici
Screenwriters: Luca Bercovici, Jefery Levy
Cast: Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelikan, Michael Des Barres, Jack Nance, Mariska Hargitay, Scott Thomson, Ralph Seymour
Scream Factory
Rated PG-13 | 81 Minutes
Release Date: April 21, 2015

Directed by Luca Bercovici, 1985’s Ghoulies is a creature feature in the vein of Gremlins, Critters, and Troll. Jonathan Graves (Peter Liapis) uncovers his late father’s occult paraphernalia in his family’s mansion. Graves attempts to summon the demonic forces his father dabbled with in hopes of gaining supernatural powers. As a result, the Ghoulies arrive to terrorize everyone who participated in the ritual.

Ghoulies is one of those films notorious for its absorbing and irresistible box art. I remember seeing Bercovici’s movie on the shelves of my local mom-and-pop video store — Movieland Video — and wondering why this little green monster was wearing a blue belly shirt and red suspenders while climbing out of a toilet. Needless to say, I had to rent it.

Rewind This!
Directed by Josh Johnson
Starring Frank Henenlotter, Drew McWeeny, and Charles Band
FilmBuff
Release Date: August 27, 2013
Available on iTunes
Official Site

Videotapes once played a huge role in my life. I grew up in a family that never had much money to splurge on weekend excursions to the local cinema, except on rare occasions. Therefore, we were reliant on home video to keep us up to date on the most popular movie releases of the day. In the beginning we had to not only rent the videos, but also the VCR to play them, and a neighborhood store called Video Circus carried the early model “top loaders” that were big enough to build the pyramids of Egypt with. For years my younger siblings and I were fixated on certain movies and every time my mother offered to rent us a movie for the weekend, we were always crowing for Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol or The Princess Bride. As I got older, I started to build my own collection of films on tape; my library officially kicked off on Christmas Day 1993 when my late grandmother Betty gifted me Batman Returns, Beetlejuice, and The Rocketeer.

Once I got my first job and suddenly felt the rush of having real money in my pocket for once, I purchased more tapes and even my first VCR, which I picked up dirt cheap at a thrift store. When I was 20, I started working for a Tower Records and Video in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia and took great advantage of an amazing employee discount to build my movie collection into a literal library of cinema. Having a VCR and access to digital cable movie channels precipitated the purchase of blank video tapes that could three to four movies depending on their length and how much storage space was on each tape. Within a few years, I had more movies than I had time to watch them.