culture / movies

Monday Morning Movie Review: Ghostbusters (1984)

The Portly Politico22 Comments

Yours portly hasn’t had much time to watch movies the past two weeks, and I can feel the glory of the Halloween season slipping away with each busy day.  October has always seemed to fly by like a witch fleeing Walpurgisnacht, and all those months of gleeful anticipation seem to culminate in a celebration that passes in an instance.  The older I get, the fast all time seems to pass, but especially October.

So in casting about for a good movie to review, I was coming up empty.  Whenever I run into this rare bit of writer’s block, I walk over to my bookshelf and inspect the DVD section.  That usually helps to jog my memory, and this time was no different.  My eyes swiftly went to my box set of Ghostbusters (1984).

I remember purchasing this box set, which also includes the unfairly maligned sequel, Ghostbusters II (1989).  My very first girlfriend had dumped me, and I undertook a quest to purchase a DVD of at least the original Ghostbusters film as some misguided way to ease my pain through the magic of retail therapy—and laughter.

This quest took place in March 2010.  The world was quite different at the time.  While I could have ordered it from Amazon (I think), I wanted to buy it in a store.  Living in rural South Carolina, the task was more difficult fourteen years ago, but not impossible.  It required, however, going to a brick-and-mortar retailer—remember those?—and hunting down a copy.

I was living—unhappily, and not just because of the breakup—in Sumter, South Carolina, which had a few more amenities than Lamar, but was not exactly a thriving metropolitan center.  There was a failing mall and a slightly-more-successful Walmart.  I think I tried the Walmart first, but with no success, so I hopped over to the mall and its little chain music store (I can’t remember what franchise it was—Suncoast, maybe?)—and there it was:  an overpriced two-DVD set of the classic films.  Even used—yes, it was a used copy!—I paid $13.  That’s the equivalent of $18.80 today.

It was a complete ripoff, but I was looking to be taken advantage of by a faceless corporate entity.  Anyway, I had a quest to complete—and laughs to enjoy.

Needless to say, I really like Ghostbusters.  I grew up with it and its sequel on television constantly.  There was also a popular cartoon, and we had tons of Ghostbuster action figures.  It was just a part of being a kid in the early 1990s.

It was only as I got older that I learned that it was pretty much due to the comedic bankability of Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis (God Rest his soul), and Bill Murray that such a film could or would ever be made.

Here’s what I mean:  imagine a scenario in which you go to a studio and pitch the idea of four guys running a paranormal extermination business in which wacky hijinks and pithy one-liners ensue.  Such a film would never get made today, and there was no guarantee it would have been made back in the early 1980s.  But it was.

The film is essentially the brainchild of Aykroyd, who grew up in the Spiritualist movement that was popular in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Aykroyd basically wrote a script that was filled with even more gadgets and, apparently, touched on Spiritualist themes.  Thankfully, Harold Ramis tempered the script, and we got the instant classic that manages to be a little scary and a lot funny all at the same time.

Ghostbusters is a lightning-in-a-bottle film.  It works because of the chemistry between Aykroyd, Ramis, and Murray (heck, even Ernie Hudson is great in the flick).  They turned a movie about sloppy exterminators into one of the most beloved franchises in film history.

Consider the first clip in this video compilation:

There’s so much going on in this seemingly simple snippet.  The reaction as Peter Venkman (Murray) and Egon Spengler (Ramis) back away from Ray Stantz (Aykroyd) is hilarious—as though inching away in a tight elevator would save them from whatever atomic terror might emanate from the untested proton pack.  I also crack up at the ornate “No Smoking” sign.  These guys are going to be smoking up the joint soon!

The film also captures perfectly the kind of optimistic, bootstrapping business environment of the time, complete with cheesy, cheap commercials:

The film’s message is very indicative of the Reagan era.  Essentially, a busybody from the Environment Protection Agency—conservatives’ least favorite federal agency, due in large part to its ridiculous and contradictory regulations—shuts down the ghost containment unit, unleashing hundreds of spooks and specters into Manhattan.  Well, who solves problems the government creates?  Private enterprise!

There’s so much more I could say about this film, but how do you rate comedic genius and perfection?  That Ghostbusters exists at all is amazing; that it works so well is a miracle.

But, boy, does it work.  Perhaps Hollywood should take note and take some risks on more outrageously funny writers with oddball ideas.

Hey, Hollywood—who ya gonna call?

22 thoughts on “Monday Morning Movie Review: Ghostbusters (1984)”

  1. Though we have Ghostbusters 1 & 2, they really are nostalgia movies, kooky to the point of parody. I can watch them every so often but these films are kids movies, harder to view as an adult than they were as a 6 year old in the 80s.

    I remember the Ghostbusters craze with most of the movie paraphernalia on the shelves, from the outfits to the proton packs, the figurines and the potted slime. It seems like a lifetime ago.

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  2. My first viewing of this was in a theater in Natick Massachusetts. The gentleman who was my best man had come up to Worcester to get fitted for his tux and we needed something to do before heading back to my apartment in Waltham for the evening. I had heard of it (it was JUST out this was likely the Saturday} and seeing it had Murray and Akroyd (both recently of SNL as was Ramis as a writer I believe), I figured it was worth the $4.50 each (plus concessions) to waste a couple hours before dinner and it was kind of on the way home. Having had NO CLUE what was coming (I think I had seen one ad and maybe heard a little on the radio stations) we spent the next 105 minutes pretty much doubled up in laughter. And as cheesy as the practical effects were in some cases (I’m looking at you dog things) they really added to the effect of a B grade monster movie. It was so good I had to take my Fiancee (soon to be wife) to go see it the the next week, by then there were lines. It really had very little hype as the first Indiana Jones sequel (Temple of Doom) had come out the week before and was sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

    That summer didn’t have too many other big movies. There was Last Starfighter but I liked that mostly because I worked in computer graphics and that you could even do the special effects in 1984 was astounding (and Robert Preston’s Music man/con man schtick didn’t hurt). If you’ve never seen (or reviewed) Last Starfighter you might want to give it a shot. Computer graphics are horribly dated but Preston’s performance is worth the price of admission.

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    • Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll take a look. 👍

      I reckon most films pre millennium will come with a story. I’m glad yours turned out well. I don’t think I’ve ever stumbled into a movie theatre for something to do but I have used them for nap time. Titanic was the first film I fell asleep to and despite spending money on ticket, food and drink, I don’t regret the hours I missed!

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        • The better picture is a younger Ponty drinking away that movie in Manchester afterwards! That city had some good watering holes and I availed myself of a good many of them! 🍾😂

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            • So you did drink in the past? I wondered if you were a lifelong teetotaller.

              I guess there’s a story but if you don’t want to share, I’m not asking! 😉

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                • 😂😂😂

                  And there I was, hoping to hear some murky tale of debauchery..😂

                  My old boss said he gave up drinking because he got a little too tiddly once and did something embarrassing. I responded that if I’d stopped for the same reason, I’d have given up at the start! 😂

                  It’s trial and error with booze. You hopefully learn how to drink within your means…or you keep making a fool of yourself. I’m, thankfully, in the former now but I wasn’t always.

                  I couldn’t quit even if I wanted to. Ale, wine, spirits – I love the taste.

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    • Thanks for sharing this story, dude! I love hos little people knew about this film and the first Indy film. I’ve heard quite a few stories about people going to see Raiders of the Lost Ark without any idea of what to expect, and coming out completely blown away.

      Thank you for sharing your story.

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      • To be honest I don’t think Hollywood quite understood summer blockbusters by 1984. Jaws in 1975 and Star Wars in 1977 were kind of the starts of this trend. There weren’t a lot of TV ads that was expensive in prime time on the major networks. Most of the radio was FM and very regional no major networks to dump ads into. Your main demographic (teen or 20 young men and women) didn’t really read the newspapers so ads there were minimal and reviewers liked more meaty fare. You MIGHT see something on reviews on Today Show with Gene Shalit or a quick clip in the evening News (Star Wars got that treatment as it totally wasn’t expected to do well and all of a sudden it was nuts in the big markets). So it was often word of mouth or nothing and mid/low budget movies got nada for promotion. Very different world.

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        • I think Summer blockbusters are easier to sell now advertisers can get online but the paradox is that most are happy with streaming rather than paying to sit in a movie theatre. To be honest, I haven’t been keeping track of new films – as with music, I find myself going to the past instead of the present – so I don’t know if Summer blockbusters are seeing the sort of sales we saw a couple of decades ago but seeing as the majority of youth are online, I can’t see the same traction with cinema goers past and present, ads or not.

          Personally, I couldn’t care less. Movie theatres have given up tradition, they stripped away what made them special. I remember red velvet curtains, no mobile phones and suited vendors in the aisles. Now, they all look the same. It’s lost its magic.

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  3. I just checked. The Last Starfighter (1984) was directed by Nick Castle, who played The Shape in Halloween, and stars Lance Guest, who played the impressionable EMT in Halloween 2.

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  4. I looked on IMDB almost NOBODY big in the cast. Wil Wheaton has a walkon as one of Lance Guest’s friends. Catherine Mary Stewart plays Lance’s girlfriend. I suspect most of the money went to Special Effects to pay for time on Cray XMP(s) which were the fastest machines on the planet in 1983. Sadly the company that did the computer graphics tanked shortly after Last Starfighter as digital rendering was still really crude. The medium resolution Gunstar model (about 30k Triangles/polygons) got out into the wild and for a while in the mid ’80s was used as a common performance measure (Gunstars/second or GPS).

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