My review was written in June 1984 after watching the movie on THe Nostalgia Merchant video cassette.
"Night of the Ghouls" is a below-average B-picture, of interest since it is the 1959-lensed, theatrically unreleased sequel to the cult favorite "Plan 9 from Outer Space". After 25 years in the vaults, it now is available to home video fans and is reviewed here for the record.
Narrated by Criswell, the late psychic who used to appear annually on Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show" with his "I predict" routine, "Ghouls" has the L. A. County Sheriff's office investigating strange goings-on at the old house on Willows Lake. Years before (a vague reference ro "Plan 9"), a mad doctor had made monsters there, but everything was destroyed by lightning.
Currently, the fake swami Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan, wearing a turban), is swindling gullible folks by pretending to reanimate dead relatives. Unbeknownst to him, Acula's fake powers were strong enough to actually bring back the dead, who, in the lore of this film, have 12 hours of freedom to walk on Earth every 13 years when called forth by a spirit medium. Led by Criswell, the undead attack, and Aculas's assistant Sheila (Valda Hansen) is lured by a black-veiled ghost (Jeannie Stevens) to join them in the grave, as a real ghost rather than a fake one. Despite its title, film is not about ghouls, since there is no grave-robbing per se, nor any of the currently fashionable (in horror films) feeding on corpses.
The late filmmaker Edward D. Wood unior displays his usual minimal approach, utilizing barely dressed sets (typically a blank wal with a lonely looking picture hanging on it, poor eating tending towards swishiness in the supporting cast and an assortment of silly sound effects and cheapo insert shots which lamely try to inject humor into a dull script..
For those who place Wood's work on a pedestal, beyond the usual critical standards, it should be recalled that other earlier directors (e.g., Edgar Ulmer) and contempo ones (John Sayles, Wayne Wang) have crafted effective pictureson similarly minuscule budgets, with no apologies necessary.
