Storyline
The film starts out at a fraternity on a dark and stormy night, 21 years ago. A fraternity individual summons demons from a Ghoulish Tales #1 comic. Three Ghoulies appear, acting comical until the summoner is consumed by a Gothic-style porcelain toilet. The film then cuts to Glazier College in the present day. People are going through their daily activities on campus early in the morning during the beginning of Prank Week, and a large number of pranks are being pulled, including hanging a taxidermy goat from the flagpole and disassembling the custodian's mop. A man writing on a bathroom stall accidentally cracks the stall tile with his foot and discovers the Ghoulish Tales book, causing the Gothic toilet, now in the bathroom as well, to open up for use. The foolish student reads aloud the words to summon the Ghoulies and they soon begin to emerge from the toilet; however he is interrupted by a fellow frat brother's impatience and the summoning spell fails, slamming the lid back down. Skip "Skippy" Carter of this same fraternity house, revealed to be called Beta Zeta Theta goes through campus, showing off his various elaborate pranks only to have another group belonging to the Gamma house try to tag them with a water balloon. However, Professor Quentin Ragnar, teacher of Humanities and overall dean of students, walks by at just the wrong moment and is hit instead. Wheeling around, he immediately blames Carter for hitting him with the prank, and threatens to have the students be expelled. Gamma House comes down to taunt them, and Carter informs their leader, Jeremy, that the prank crown will soon return to BZT. Skip soon runs into a girl named Erin that he had tried to take out on a date the night before but inadvertently stood her up instead, having forgotten about their date due to "the pressures" of prank week. She chastises him and soon walks off with Jeremy, leaving Skip behind. Ragnar, begins to try and teach his rambunctious class, finding one of his students in possession of Ghoulish Tales #1. He confiscates it and begins to read from it, inadvertently beginning the Ghoulie summoning once more. He finds the 'poetry' poor quality and closes it, once more cancelling the ritual prematurely. Ragnar reminds his class that he is also the dean of students and that all of the pranks will no longer be tolerated. Ragnar returns to his office to grade papers while numerous students party. After grading the last paper, he picks the comic back up. This time however he recognizes the being on the cover as a pagan deity in another book he owns. Becoming suspicious and far too curious, he once again begins to read from it, this time with straight face and no interruptions, and this time finishing the ritual. Leaping from the Gothic toilet, the lead Ghoulie expresses displeasure in both the environment as well as his two furry allies as they begin to bicker. Knocking some sense into them, the Ghoulies leave the bathroom to go explore, coming across a couple - Wesley and Veronica - being intimate. Unfortunate for them, Ragnar summons them to his office at this time, much to the Ghoulies' chagrin. Spooked that the ritual worked and to have demons in his office, he sends them away but is surprised that it works. Now back at in the frat's bathroom, they make too much noise and cause Wesley to go check on the commotion, as he has been tasked with guarding the frat from their rivals. He is surprised in the bathroom and is soon stunned by a toilet brush and subsequently killed by being flushed down the Gothic toilet. The Ghoulies don tiny clothing they find in a closet and begin to smash up the house, which Veronica cannot hear as she has headphones on, exercising. Meanwhile, Skip and his friend Mook prank Gamma House. The Ghoulies also show up here and destroy Jeremy's motorized scooter. The morning after the fraternity members return home to a horrendously trashed house. However, they cannot locate Wesley, much to their surprise. After declaring that Wes is dead to them, they wander off. Skip asks Veronica, also known by Ronnie, what happened but she is more preoccupied with flirting with him instead. Unfortunately Erin walks in with Jeremy at the worst possible moment. Erin expresses distaste in his current actions while Jeremy threatens him for destroying his scooter. Soon after, Skip and Mook are caught by the campus security guard but the Ghoulies sabotage his cart and is immediately electrocuted though he survives the encounter, yet is obviously in pain. Ragnar summons the Ghoulies again but they do not seem to appear until he recites the right words. Again the Ghoulies are interrupted and are annoyed. He informs them that he has learned that the Ghoulies and the comic book are one and he threatens to light it on fire unless they serve him. He orders them to start a war to end all frat wars, though the Ghoulies are obviously uninterested. They still must serve their master however, and immediately start on their mission be stealing the prank crown from the Gamma House and the security's cart, leaving the taxidermy goat on the Gamma's front walkway. Jeremy happens to be the one to find the crown missing and immediately seeks revenge on Skippy Carter enlisting a frat brother who has access to a chemistry lab. Meanwhile, Skip tries to apologize to Erin in the library and asks her out again and she accepts. The librarian, Ms. Boggs, finds information on the Ghoulish Tales #1. Ragnar is given the pranking crown by the Ghoulies and requests that they kill him, but then shows he controls the book and that they cannot do anything even if he asks them to. So he then locks the comic up and offers them to attack again but they are interrupted by the librarian. She begins to sneeze from the pet dander that she believes is from a cat, but the Ghoulies get to her and remove her tongue to stop her from screaming, comically extending it so far that it wraps around her several times over, killing her. As the local maternity, Pi Nu, gets ready to guard against the annual Panty Raid, Veronica ignores them to start getting ready for a date, blasting music in her room with the window open, presumably to purposefully allow peeping toms to peek at her, which the security guard tries to do but the Ghoulies saw the branch he is own and send him careening to the ground. They watch instead. While the frat boys' raid fails, the Ghoulies' succeed, and they knock out and somehow kill Veronica in the shower by sticking a plunger on her face. The raid however causes Erin to revoke their date as he should have warned her of the incoming raid. She leaves in disgust. Later, Ragnar teaches a class about Evil & Power, obviously acting very differently than usual. Skip informs Ragnar that he is done with pranks but Jeremy pulls one right when he says this via remote control to frame Carter. Carter is expelled from class and the college for good at that moment and is thrown out of class. Although he tries to defend himself, and expressing belief that there is a third group responsible; he fails to convince anyone. When they return to the frat house, his fellow brothers cheer him on but when he informs them that he has stopped pranking they figure out that he is trying to impress a girl now under Gamma's roof and leave in disappointment. Ragnar orders the Ghoulies to kill Skip. Erin discovers that Jeremy is two-faced when he brags about having rigged Ragnar's desk to frame Skip and she dumps his coffee on his crotch, embarrassing him in front of all of his frat brothers. In vengeance, he swears that Carter will go down the that night. Erin returns to Skip Carter to apologize. The two consummate their relationship again and she tells him that nothing happened between her and Jeremy. She tells him that Jeremy admitted to framing Carter but he is unsure that Ragnar would ever believe him; Erin says she would put a good word in for him. A frat boy lights an old fashioned grenade (the type seen most commonly as a cartoon bomb in modern media) but is knocked out by the Ghoulies with a frying pan they are currently using to fry an egg. He dies from his injuries. The bomb bounces out
Also See
Sound Effects Used
- Sound Ideas, POP, CARTOON - CORK SQUEAK AND POP
- Sound Ideas, ZIP, CARTOON - QUICK WHISTLE ZIP OUT
- Sound Ideas, ZIP, CARTOON - QUICK WHISTLE ZIP OUT, HIGH