Ghostbusters became a generational touchstone partly because it’s gross as hell
The film actively works to push away easy affections—and that’s why kids loved it
Film Features Ghostbusters
For three decades and counting, the original Ghostbusters has seen its reputation as a sci-fi comedy classic steadily burnished. As the unceasing parade of collectibles, cartoons, video games, reboots, and more has demonstrated, the film connected powerfully with a generation of kids and young adults who found in it a wiseass comedic sensibility—and a personification of that attitude in Bill Murray.
Much has been made—and will doubtless continue to be made, rightly so—of the film’s gleefully inspired brio; its loose, anarchic humor; and its antiestablishment tone. The film revels in an acerbic thumbing of the nose at conventions; as many who have discussed the somber decision to turn the new sequel into a nostalgia-focused warm blanket of kid-friendly IP note, the original film would likely puke at such cuddly comfort-food cinema. Its fans certainly have: Click on any random Reddit thread discussing the new film, and you’ll find dozens, if not hundreds, of comments excoriating the idea of treating the irreverent original as some sacred text.
But what the new film (and the 2016 reboot) both seem to misunderstand about the 1984 blockbuster isn’t just its oddball counter-cultural vibe that seemingly stands in opposition to such drippy, safe fun. It’s that the original movie didn’t just try to repel such hokey sentiment—it was repellant, full stop. It was a generational touchstone that intentionally tried to push away older viewers or those expecting mature, adult-oriented comedy from those sharp-minded SNL icons. This was adult humor for kids—or kid humor for adults.
Ghostbusters wasn’t afraid to get revolting
The first Ghostbusters is a gross movie. As in, whatever conversations modern studios and filmmakers have about not wanting to put anything too disturbing into a four-quadrant film for fear of alienating that lucrative kid demographic, the movie makes it feel like the Ghostbusters team did the opposite. The film’s many defenders often neglect to mention how actively it works to push away any easy affections. From the genuinely disgusting sight of ghost feedings to the actively yucky body-horror stuff, the film is the ’80s equivalent of “no squares allowed,” trying to freak out parents and those who would turn up their nose at a film that stops inches from straight-up potty humor.
Take Slimer, a spectral apparition originally described by Dan Ackroyd’s Ray Stantz as a “disgusting blob.” Even by the time of the 1989 sequel, the ghost had been softened into a cuddlier figure, mostly there for a throwaway gag. (By the time of the cartoons, he was practically a puppy dog.) But in the original, Ray’s description is apt: We’re introduced to him wolfing down hotel entrees, tongue dripping saliva, as much food falling off his sides as into his gaping maw. It’s not a pretty sight, and as the team pursues him, his snorts and guttural shrieks maintain a “yuck” vibe.
This is a character meant to be intentionally puerile, the sentient equivalent of a fart joke. And it’s a symbolic representation of the stupid-smart tone walked by the film. You can practically hear the sound of kids developing an almost Pavlovian response: Here was proudly crass juvenilia that seemed tailor-made for them, not for the adults in the room. Yet it was layered into a film whose dialogue still seemed pitched to grown-ups. (“Let’s show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown.”) That’s a potent cocktail for the too-young-to-drive contingent.
Even ectoplasm, the sticky substance that serves as an after-effect of supernatural activity, is more viscous and disgusting in the original. By the time of Ghostbusters II, it was pinkish goo that makes toasters dance in a fun way; but here, it just serves to ramp up the “ick” factor. When Egon (Harold Ramis) asks Venkman (Murray) to grab a sample, he observes, “Somebody blows their nose and you wanna keep it?” It’s not a cute bit of energy to power the Statue Of Liberty; it’s a nasty bit of gunk that Venkman freaks out about when the slightest bit gets on his hand, frantically wiping it off onto every available surface.
Ghostbusters got serious about the gruesome, too
But the repellant elements weren’t just of the silly-gross variety. The film’s body-horror moments are equally nasty, and in a more grim manner. The transformations of Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) and Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) into hellhounds isn’t played for laughs; it looks torturous. And when they’re transformed back at the end, borne out of the crumbling bodies of the beasts, the demonic flesh is literally broken open to reveal the fragile human bodies inside. It’s not quite The Fly, but it’s not just Stay-Puft Marshmallow remains, either.
The movie also not only doesn’t shy away from, but rather leans into some of its more unsettling elements. Chief among these are the film’s sequences of straight-up horror. When Dana is sitting peaceably at home, only for a pair of monstrous arms to rip free from her chair and pin her down, it’s a jump scare as effective as any moment from The Conjuring.
The same goes for the very first ghost the guys meet, near the beginning of the film. Having convinced a skeptical Venkman to accompany them on a ghost hunt at the New York Public Library, the trio stumble into what initially appears to be a mild-mannered old lady of a ghost, reading a book and politely shushing them when Venkman attempts to strike up a conversation. But when Ray pushes it, she transforms into a monstrosity—like Large Marge without the cartoonish Claymation aspect. It’s honestly the stuff of nightmares, so when it pivots hard into a goofball shot of the guys fleeing the building, it’s like the film nudging you in the ribs: See? Awful and awfully silly can go together, and it’s cool.
The moments of overt grossness and horror-movie nastiness are rarely noted, if at all, when people pen encomiums to its loose comic brilliance. Yet those button-pushing elements of the film—the very ones that might’ve seemed childish or unpleasant to an older audience—are essential to understanding why young people connected with it so powerfully. We love it not despite those elements, but because of them; the fusion of adolescent yuks and gross-out gratuitousness operates as a sort of skeleton key to Ghostbusters’ anarchic charms.
Every person on the film’s creative team had fused juvenile mindsets with grown-up laughs before—most notably in Animal House, Stripes, and more—but those were pitched directly at a college-age crowd, comedies that involved sex and drugs and hard-R ratings. This was something both more puerile and more provocative, and that combination was catnip for a young generation who hadn’t seen its like before (or much after, truth be told).
It’s a rich bit of irony that the same generation who fiercely loved the movie’s antiauthoritarian silliness—who made it part of their cultural identity—eventually let it curdle into nostalgia in occasionally awful ways. But you don’t blame a quartet of ghost-hunting goofballs for their fanbase’s sins, any more than you blame an animated scientist and his grandson for the dipshit theatrics of their worst viewers. No, Ghostbusters endures, and maintains its steadfast armada of true believers, because it argued that juvenile nonsense can be just as adult-seeming as any serious drama—and that kids can be in on the joke, in a way that pushes the actual adults to the sidelines. Here are grown men playing to the kids; that’s fucking cool. And sometimes, gross.
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He’s an ugly little spud, isn’t he?
The words “weaponized nostalgia” keep going through my head.
Yeah and what’s all this hipster nostalgia shit? I want to re-remember the Thorn Birds miniseries. Is that too much to ask?
How about the “The Winds of War” (1983) miniseries based on Herman Wouk’s (the Caine Mutiny author) book about life just before WWII? Or “Amerika” (1987) a mini-series sort of like “The Man in the High Castle” only about the Soviets ruling America. Starring Kris Kristofferson as a dissident and Sam Neill as a Soviet administrator.
Man, I loved those books. Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Very, very good historical fiction with fantastic writing on a whole lot of what was going on with everything about WWII.
The one on the Holocaust was a pretty fun little romp through Auschwitz
Hey, Tovah Feldshuh as a partisan was hot
The Winds of War was amazing. Mitchum playing 45 year old. Ali McGraw and Jan Michael Vincent playing people in their early 20s, and I didn’t care because it was so good.Amerika was awful, but fun.Shogun, that’s where it’s at.
It’s so weird thinking about miniseries in the 1980s. When our family decided to watch one we were obsessed. We structured our entire lives on being able to see all the parts. We didn’t care that much about TV shows we watched (in part because most TV in the 1980s were episodic and didn’t have story arcs so if you missed an episode you didn’t really miss any needed information. I suppose soap operas were different but nobody in my family watched those).
I dunno, I felt like if you missed one TJ Hooker then the series was ruined for you. Why was he on that hood again??
Starring Robert Mitchum as Pep Streebeck.
Winds of War and War and Remembrance introduced me to the awesomeness of Robert fucking Mitchum. Great reads, too. The network mini-series used to be a big deal.
You can find every episode of Winds of War on Youtube. It’s harder, next to impossible, to find War and Remembrance. It’s floating around out there though.
If TV networks then had the same business model as streaming services do today, then every time there was a successful miniseries, they’d announce a second season of it before they’d even finished showing every episode. Kristofferson would have to have basically the same struggle against the Russians over and over again for four years before its abrupt cancellation.
I don’t care if this is snark, I don’t care if it’s tongue in cheek, if anyone ever brings up “The Thornbirds,” again, I’ll fire up every Bronx cheer in my arsenal again.
Underrated comment.
Or Shogun, or the Winds of War/War and Remembrance….
If you need to watch a priest crush on a child, I can take you down to my old parish.
The ending of the book was such a copout
That latest trailer was nothing but “Hey, remember that thing from Ghostbusters?”
2016’s Ghostbusters had queef jokes and a suicide. Doesn’t that count?
I think it’s more of an example of nostalgia curdling in awful ways.
smells bad man
I think that it’s telling that in the original Ghostbusters nostalgia and sentimentality generally ended up being a bad thing, and that Ray was the cause of it. Like buying the rusty caddy ambulance for a company vehicle that required a shitload of repairs even before adapting it to their needs.Paraphrased:“This building should be condemned. It’s overpriced.”
“Hey! This firepole is neat! We should buy this place!”Or:“Don’t think of anything so she can’t create a monster to destroy the world with.”
“It’s the Staypuft Marshmallow man.”
Suicide is SO funny you guys.
It can be
When I was in the Navy, I served with a man who was, by any measure, gross as hell. He smelled so bad that people woke up when he walked into the room. He had to be sent to a special school to learn basic hygiene, and seemed to retain none of what they taught him. His teeth were green. I sure hope that guy isn’t a generational touchstone for me.
I was a forced Scout in my youth and was likewise forced to attend a Jamboree. After a few days we dragged That One Kid in our Six down to the showers and threw him in with all his clothes. He had a ring around his head from where the Scout hat sat. Fucking gross.
There were two boys in my grade school class who smelled -really bad. Looking back, they must have suffered so much abuse at home. We, of course never gave that possibility a thought. We were horrible to them.
Had a similar experience in grad school with a guy from Estonia. We had to pack into an auditorium for a presentation at one point and within 10 minutes he had a perfectly circular ring of empty seats around him. People stood in the back for 90 minutes instead. Someone in administration finally pulled him aside and explained the need for him to both bathe and wash his clothes (he wore the same hideous wool sweater every day, which just compounded things). I’m sure he was embarrassed but ultimately much happier. He also ended up being the class valedictorian.
It was a “scary gross” and damn right it was cool. As often as I’ve seen this movie, for years as a kid I still used to cover my eyes at certain parts like the Library Ghost. The hellhound in Luis’ closet made my palms sweat, too. There’s imagery in this film that is legitimate horror.As popular as it was with kids, Ghostbusters wasn’t exactly made with the intention on selling toys and being a franchise. That came later, and I do think it’s had an effect on the designs. As Hollywood strives to be more slick and cute, I’d be surprised if a new movie had anything close to this.
I found Dana’s refrigerator to be the most disturbing, since it was such a mundane object that you don’t expect to contain a gateway to the astral plane or whatever.I l0ved the librarian ghost, because of the way the “upper” levels of the library were safe but even in the middle of the day, the stacks could be super creepy. I never found it scary, I found it awesome, like another world just a few floors down. Weird.
I can’t say how intentional it was, but “Ghostbusters” seems to be VERY POINTEDLY riffing on aspects of “Poltergeist”, which had been a hit just a couple years earlier (the intrusion of the cosmic into the mundane, visual aspects of a lot of the spiritual stuff).
Beat me to it. It was absolutely intentional. Anyone who had seen Poltergeist in 1982 and Ghostbusters exactly two years later could see the references.
“I can’t say how intentional it was, but “Ghostbusters” seems to be VERY POINTEDLY riffing on aspects of “Poltergeist”
One of the reasons was that they shared some of the same VFX team, which is why there was a lot of the same visual language. A lot of the flashy light stuff that happens when the containment unit blows looks like it came from the same world as ‘Poltergeist’ and from a production standpoint it did!
I didn’t check credits, but wondered if that might have been the case. 🙂
Ohhhh, that’s interesting, I’d never made that connection, but hard to see how it *wouldn’t* have been an influence.
As a kid, I especially loved that because while obviously the building does have a scary history that lends itself to it, it seemed like such a wild departure from creaky old haunted houses. Here’s a completely bland and benign city apartment and the monster involved decides to cook her eggs on the countertop for her. Oh, and also, the apolocalypse is potentially brought on by a giant walking marshmallow man because of course a human being in that situation isn’t going to wizard brain a smart solution, they’re going to be a dope and think about a marshmallow mascot for no apparent reason.
It’s such a delightful movie. Every fuckin’ time this movie comes up I make the same kinja comments about it but it’s really the cornerstone of a lot of my interests and my sense of humor, I guess.
The 2016 version was perfectly fine; my comment of late on the new version is that I will probably get around to seeing it but am in no rush and while it’s fine that they made it, I just… as this article nailed, the idea of treating the original movie with that sort of reference just seems so silly. Maybe the actual movie is different, but the trailers with that slow-building music and reveal made me grouchy. I guess I just don’t like being old enough to have to deal with feeling pandered to with nostalgia bits like that.
Oh, and also, the apolocalypse is potentially brought on by a giant walking marshmallow man because of course a human being in that situation isn’t going to wizard brain a smart solution, they’re going to be a dope and think about a marshmallow mascot for no apparent reason.In a kinda similar vein, MovieBob brought up how the heroes win that final confrontation not because any of them is a “chosen one,” or because they get a magic talisman, or even because they fight Gozer on its own terms. No, they win because they have the tools and the talent.Like the example you brought up, that really helps things kind of ring true (as true as something can ring when you’re talking about battling a pandimensional elder god atop a Manhattan skyscraper) in a way that most movies just don’t.
I’m also with you re: the 2016 film. It started great, it could have been great, but it started to feel like it got waylaid by several committees, all of which eager to reference/mimic the original, or prove a point that didn’t need proving. The bust of Harold Ramis was a nice touch. If it had been left at that, the film could have been fantastic.
An excellent way to start the movie it was.
“… like another world just a few floors down…”Even as an adult, I always find the lower levels of any library to be…creepy. The main branch of the Carnegie in Pittsburgh is the worst. The stacks go on and on, and I remember actually getting lost for all of two minutes back in 2003 and there was literally no one around. My only thought was, “Thank God there’s no such thing as card catalogs anymore”.
The taxi ghoul is an underrated moment. I always assumed the cabbie was just sitting there, minding his business, when the green cloud of PKE snaked its way in through the exhaust pipe, and Evil Dead-style transformed the driver into the horrible deadite you see there. Legit scary.
The ghost was a dead cabbie to occupied a vacant car. The joke was that the look and smell of the the undead cabbie wasn’t that different from a live cabbie so it wasn’t noticeable.
I had to close my eyes as a kid any time that taxi cab ghost came onscreen. I was absolutely TERRIFIED of it!
As an adult and practical effects nerd, I’m absolutely gobsmacked that special effects artist Steve Johnson knocked that thing together when he was only like 20 years old.
I was a “Real Ghostbusters” maniac as a kid who saw GB2 in cinemas first, and then GB on TV. They always used to edit out the taxicab ghost from Saturday afternoon screenings, so when they put him back in, I was freaked out by the added scene and how relatively graphic it was.
At least Ghostbusters 2 didn’t have Ewoks!
Don’t forget Bernie Wrightson’s monster designs. Each ghoul has a personality, even if they’re just molded from rubber. It was just gross and gory, it was gross, gory, and cartoony. Wrightson was a master.
This video actually has a really great take, which is that it is the perfect balance of horror and comedy. Go too far in the horror direction, and it’s no longer young audience friendly. Go too far in the comedy direction, and it’s too light and silly with no weight.
…the fusion of adolescent yuks and gross-out gratuitousness operates as a sort of skeleton key to Ghostbusters’ anarchic charms.
I feel like there has to be some lineage between the gross out stuff in Ghostbusters and the early kid’s shows on Nickelodeon. Or maybe I’m wrong and the obsession with “slime” predates both?
https://dinosaurdracula.com/blog/slime-facts/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_(toy)
He-Man had slime at some point. And I think He-Man was made by Mattel.
It’s giving me the willies now as much as it did then.
I didn’t really like the slime.
Holy shit, this is one of those things I saw a million times when it was on and had completely forgotten it existed until I saw the thumbnail come up.
Yeah that stuff came out when I was a kid in 70s.
You Can’t Do That on Television was already a thing with dumping green slime down on people, which is where Nick got that whole thing. Gross-out toys were already a thing and gaining more mainstream popularity until the explosion in the mid 80’s with things like the Garbage Pail Kids cards. Ghostbusters wasn’t made to take advantage of those things. It just happened to pair up nicely with it.
I can’t believe Alex didn’t mention Murray just paralyzed with disgust after Slimer plowed right through him and left him covered in the stuff. That’s the grossest moment in the movie. Much more so that him trying to fling it off his finger in the library.
It’s a real sobering thought to realise that probably means he has slime inside his body cavities…
Gaah, that’s even WORSE, thanks.
I don’t know.
I like this article and it’s funny to compare it the Koski piece from a few years ago which was the perfect example of the kind of reaction Levy realises the film was aiming for – gross childish hilarious but annoyingly smart.
GET HER!
The way they lampshaded how ridiculous that “plan” was reminds me a little bit of a kinda-sorta similar moment in The Untouchables (the Costner movie version). They’re about to bust the milk plant, and Ness goes “let’s do some good” and while it’s a hokey line it’s played totally earnestly and fits with Ness’ character at that point. Later, when they’re back at the station*, two cops are talking about it and one of them makes fun of Ness by going “and then he said ‘let’s do some good.’” and laughing.* I may be remembering some details incorrectly but I’m reasonably certain that I got the broad strokes right
It took me YEARS to make the connection from that bit to Venkman’s “Go get ‘er, Ray” Brick Joke.
Second best horror film of the 80s/early 90s. Behind Home Alone.
Shit. Now we have to have a duel and I’m all out of pistolas.
Skyfall: The Real Home Alone 3
I actually prefer Ghostbusters II in many ways.
No.
What ways???
I tend to get more drawn into it when it’s on. Perhaps it’s the villain. And I’m a sucker for the Statue of Liberty bit.
I don’t think it’s a better movie, but I don’t think it’s a bad movie either. It’s amusing enough to watch if it happens to be on.
Only thing I will defend about Ghostbusters II is this line: Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every New Yorker’s God-given right.
I think I liked the film because it was funny and entertaining.Also that Ray Parker Jr song.
Huey Lewis’ lawyers really enjoyed that Ray Parker Jr song too.
Yeah, they really weren’t good Sports about it. If only they believed in the Power of Love. But I guess it isn’t a Perfect World.
Bobo Tempo!
Perhaps their past drugs were bad, and they needed new and improved ones?
Ray Parker Jr really enjoyed when Huey Lewis talked about the lawsuit in an interview and was then forced to pay Ray Parker Jr for violating the conditions of their settlement.
As well as it being competent as horror, can I also throw in a shout out for its equally better-than-it-needed-to-be science fictional aspect? The technobabble and production design successfully makes it feel like there’s some sort of coherent set of scientific theories operating in the background – something that even serious SF often gets wrong.
Although I believe that turned out to be because Dan Ackroyd really believed all of it – once again demonstrating that Ghostbusters is literally bottled lightning and recovering it accurately is as impossible as unmaking soup.
It still bothers me that Stantz gets the year of the Tunguska explosion wrong.
Aykroyd should’ve known better.
I’m sure I’ve seen that addressed somewhere by Aykroyd saying something like “ah, you’re thinking of the famous Tunguska event, Ray was talking about the much lesser known one”!
He also gets the Revelation quote wrong. It’s 6:12, not 7:12.
You’re assuming that he’s talking about the event in 1908. With all the crazy shit that happens in the Ghostbusters universe, there easily could have been a PKE blast a year later.
He also gets the Bible quote number wrong. My headcanon is that Ray is bad with trivial numbers.
Right? I love how, even today, it sounds like reasonable scientific, umm, ghost theory 😀 . It also establishes a consistent set of science and rules – that Murray gets to be totally outside of, i.e.Dana Barrett : Well, are you sure you’re using that thing correctly?Dr. Peter Venkman : Well, I… I think so, but I’m sure there are no animals in there.
One of my favorite jokes in the movie
^This, and this is what made the 2016 reboot (or what you want to call it) so bad IMO. The OG Ghostbusters was supposed to be a horror movie, it just also happened to have some comedic element’s in it as well, but it was horror first comedy second. The sequel amped up the comedy and was more campy, and the 2016 version just went 100% all in on the comedy, like the HAD to have a joke or gag in every single scene which ruined what could have been a better movie, although I still dislike Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon both of them are just SO over the top with the way they act. Evil Dead the OG was also similar, in that it was horror first especially the first one, they amped up the campy aspects of it in the later ones, but the first was horror the kind of comedic part about it is that it was just so cheaply made.
The original actually has a lot of sketch comedy gags in it. It was half-way to a National Lampoon movie. People remember it as less goofy than it was because it was heavily toned down in the edit (they filmed an entire scene where Murray and Aykroyd play a pair of “Central Park bums”).
Ghostbusters II didn’t amp up the comedy, it amped up the drama. It features more character stuff, and a lot more sincerity. This is one of the reasons people don’t like it as much, it’s a “softer” movie.
I don’t know to me the second one seemed more campy.
minus points for ‘encomium’, a $50 word when almost anything else would have sufficed.
The scene that really represented every 7 year-old’s secret fantasy? The Ballroom scene. What kid wouldn’t love to trash a fancy establishment like that without facing any consequences? Add in the proton packs, and it just ups the ante even further.
“The flowers are STILL STANDING.”
I looked at the trap, Ray…
We had a pretty good-sized earthquake a few years back, but when the shaking was over I was pleasantly surprised to find that the only damage in my house was a few pictures that had fallen off the wall, some broken knickknacks, and a couple of drinking glasses that leapt out of the cupboard. Even better, I still had electricity and wifi, which meant that I absolutely could not wait to get onto Facebook to post “And the flowers are still standing!” as my status.
I love the bit immediately afterwards as Venkman and Spengler inflate their invoice in real time.
Yeah, the “But we ARE doing a deal this week only” part was such lived in skeezy invoicing, hehehe. Especially the pest control blackmail at the end:
“$5000?! That’s outrageous, I won’t pay it”
“Well that’s ok, we can put it right back in ther-”
Not to mention the hilarity of Eagon, the most rational and sensible of the crew, very subtly moving his fingers to indicate just how many thousands of dollars they should be charging.
Well we can just put this right back …
Spengler feeding Venkman the numbers is such a great piece of subtle physical comedy.
And cut off back in the pan-and-scan days! When I noticed it on a recent rewatch, I laughed and laughed. . .
Trashing things was a big theme in ‘80s movies.
Also with Reagan too
Nice shootin’, Tex!
So encomium was your word of the day I take it?
Personally, as a contemporary viewer on the big screen as a kid. The gross-outs, or the horror elements, or the visuals weren’t any bit of the draw at the time. It was all about the characters and the attitude and the bits and one-liners. The way everyone was ‘yada yada yada-ing’ around the watercooler in the 90s, we were out at recess spouting lines, . . . ‘LISTEN!! You smell something?’ ‘this man has no dick’ ‘anybody wanna play Parcheesi’To this day, I’ve only seen GBII once, and the one thing I remember is Tully in deposition saying ‘One time, I was a dog, and they helped me.’
Ghostbusters was 100% pure EIGHTIES. Seinfeld was FIRMLY in the 90’s.
There were ZERO influences traded between the two. It was Chicago vs NY to start with, and it got even deeper as things went on.
I was referring to the dynamic, nothing to do with the influence. I was analogizing to the ‘watercooler buzz’ of the 90s that came the morning after Seinfeld and Friends episodes, to the ‘recess buzz’ of quoting Ghostbuster lines back when IT came out.Ghostbusters, . . . and ‘Strange Brew,’ are the ones I remember being the biggest deals to quote back then for some reason.
I’ve gotta whiz so bad, I can taste it.
“Tell him about the Twinkie, Ray.”
That line was said to Egon.
To this day, I’ve only seen GBII once, and the one thing I remember is Tully in deposition saying ‘One time, I was a dog, and they helped me.’ Line of the movie.
Every line out of Peter MacNicol is goddamned gold.
“Why am I drippings with goo?”
“Soon, the city will be mine and Vigo’s. Well. . . . . mainly Vigo’s”“Everything you are doing is bad. I want you to know this.”
Whenever anyone says the word ‘baby’ my wife and I say ‘baahaaaby?’ like he did. Nobody else gets it. This makes it more fun…
YESSS!!
It’s right up there with “you’re not gonna get a green card with that attitude, pal” 🙂
And any line from Janosz Poha :)“Soon, the city will be mine and Vigo’s… mainly Vigo’s.”
“Where the hell are you from, anyway?”“De Upper Vest side.”
THE JOYFULLNESS IS OVER!
Thanks, Louis. Short, but pointless.
I always liked “Suck the guts in guys, we’re the Ghostbusters”.
Winston gets “hit” by ghost train on abandoned tracks.Ray: Did you catch the number on the locomotive?Winston: Sorry, I missed it.
Very good, Louis. Short, but pointless.
I got my law degree at night schoolThat’s fine, Luis. We got arrested at night.
Or them casually passing a flask back and forth as they discuss their big idea.
I got in trouble for saying “We came, we saw, we KICKED ITS ASS” in front of my Scoutmaster.
It was a very fun, very whimsical sci-fi comedy that they have consistently attempted to shoehorn into a franchise model. To do so is to strip at least some of the magic away from the first flick.
1. They lost the element of surprise, even bringing back the same cast in the first sequel2. The original characters felt lived-in, like people you could actually imagine encountering in real life, while the 2016 reboot amped the quirk factor to 11. They were Characters, not people3. The original cast was right place, right time. Murray is still making a living off his easy, smartass charisma, Ackroyd was established as a brilliant and adaptable comedic performer, and Ramis had the writing chops to bring it together. Hudson, Weaver and Moranis were all used to perfection. That kind of cast chemistry is going to be impossible to replicate within the same franchise
2016 also shoehorned in a Serious Subplot, which all comedies nowadays seem to be required to have for some reason.
The original Ghostbusters didn’t need to learn a valuable lesson about the power of friendship – they just busted ghosts and saved the world.
Which really reinforces the lived-in element; you dropped into a trio of colleagues and understood the dynamic immediately.
I wish people would take your last sentence and apply it to the Star Wars sequels.
*Aykroyd
It is also impossible to replicate Murray. As good as the rest of the movie is, Murray and his particular comedic sensibility carries the movie. The comedians in the recent remake are all really funny actresses but none of them can do either his ironic detachment and that sense of low key anarchy.
Personally,
I see Ghostbusters as a “coming of
age” movie. At the
start, the trio are incapable of a mature relationship with women, show no
respect for authority, and generally behave in a loud and obnoxious manner. They’re teenagers.It isn’t
until they come face to face with something totally beyond them – and have to literally destroy a symbol of
childhood innocence – that they start acting like adults.
That’s a smart take. Remember that the film begins with them in the comfy realm of academia, before they’re shoved out kicking and screaming into the real world where they’re forced to go into business for themselves. “You don’t know what it’s like in the private sector. They expect results.”
Well, the comfy realm of academia where Venkman is preying on coeds, albeit in an amusing way.
And running experiments that would never pass ethics….
But OMG, that scene was funny as hell.
I love how Venkman’s hypothesis seems to be correct – the guy guesses the card correctly once he’s stressed – but Venkman doesn’t care. My favorite part of the scene, though, is the little strangled noise the guy makes when he realizes he’s going to get shocked again.
It’s clear Venkman does not give one single fuck about his research. He wants to pick up chicks and shock undergrads who get in the way.
There are so many flaws in the experimental design. I’ve actually used it as an example in a methods class.
That’s a good call- the charactersare are kind of sleazy losers at the beginning, typical of a lot of the SNL/Lampoon movies, who somehow fall ass-backwards into being heroes. All the remakes and what not seem to forget that.
I think Ghostbusters was a product of its time, when studios were exploring horror as a more nuanced genre. Even with its gross-out moments, Ghostbusters was still cuddlier than its counterparts, thanks to its SNL infusion. Like other horror movies of the era – Poltergeist comes to mind – some of its scariest moments broke conventional horror methods by dropping jump-scares and sticky skeletons in mundane places in the middle of the day. The Freelings house was scary because it looked like one a lot of ordinary people lived in. When Mr. Pecker released thousands of ghosts on Manhattan, it was scary because it was the middle of the day. Turning its back on tired tropes, it told its audience we couldn’t hide from monsters during daylight and that there was no safe space, not even refrigerators. Ghostbusters isn’t something that can be replicated because the experiment is over and the genre has been perfected. Those that want any remake or sequel to pay homage to the original while retaining its exact, sick spirit got that in 2016 and it only proved you can’t go home again. Afterlife might be full of heart and sentimentality, but it can be perfectly representative of how we revere the original without being anything like it, and still be a great film. We kids who grew up playing Ghostbusters in our backyards are in our 40s and 50s now, many with kids of our own, and those kids aren’t any more interested in Reagan era horror humor than we were interested in our parents old movies back in 1984. I have high hopes for Afterlife. If anyone hates it, just do what I do with Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason, and pretend it doesn’t exist. Now if only someone would take on a Beetlejuice sequel with as much care and creativity.
I thought kids loved it because there was a fun animated series and toyline that drew them in…at which point they went back and saw the actual movie.
I just remember seeing Ghostbusters the year after Return of the Jedi, and realizing THAT was now my favorite movie. Every kid in school had a Ghostbusters logo t-shirt (with parachute pants and Nike hi-tops), and we all quoted the movie endlessly. Still do. For me, it was a line of demarcation between a kid’s movie – RotJ – and a movie that was more adult humor. My uncle hated RotJ but took us all to see GB like 4 times in the week we stayed with my grandma that summer.
How old were you when you realized the “Gatekeeper/ Keymaster” joke? The Ghost beej.
I’ll tell you exactly why Ghostbusters works – because Bill Murray played the snarky outsider to the plot. Same role that Kurt Russell played in Big Trouble in Little China. They provided a bit of meta audience surrogateship that didn’t take what was supposed to be so serious very seriously.Ghostbusters II didn’t work because, by that time, Murray was disengaged and clearly didn’t want to be there.
II worked for me until the climax where feel-good slime turns the Statue of Liberty into a fully-articulated Jaeger.
A fully articulated German elite infantry trooper?
I meant the giant robots from Pacific Rim, but yeah, sure.
Oh yeah. That was one I’d managed to put out of mind.
I get what you’re trying to say, but Kurt Russell in Big Trouble In Little China is a SATIRE of the “savvy outsider” role. In Ghostbusters, Venkman’s scam artistry is almost universally successful, aside from an institutional tut-tut here or there. In Big Trouble, the joke about Jack is that he’s almost entirely incompetent and that his bravado is entirely unearned save literally a single move at the end of the film.
Venkman is an underqualified guy who willfully scams himself into a starring role. Jack Burton is an idiot sidekick who thinks he’s the kind of guy who can do that, but really, REALLY can’t.
Big Trouble even says so pretty directly. “You are not brought upon this world to get it!”
Interesting side note about Big Trouble… I’ve been watching old movies I love with the Espanol audio track on to attempt to enhance my dialect skills. During Wang Chi’s giant fight with Thunder near the end? They overdubbed some crazy chop-socky 70s Bruce Lee screechy noises into it. Like folks wouldn’t figure out they were kung-fu fighting without it! LOL
OMG now I have to go home and watch the Spanish audio track now. That sounds fantastic.
Ghostbusters II didn’t work because, by that time, Murray was disengaged and clearly didn’t want to be there.I will defend Ghostbusters II until my dying breath. Is it inferior to the original? Oh god yes. Is it pretty much a beat-for-beat remake? Absolutely. But the chemistry between the leads is strong, the effects still look great, the jokes pretty much land across the board and it’s still a great deal of fun. It is a perfectly fine movie that just has to live in the very, very long shadow that it’s bigger brother casts.
I also think it captures a lot of the horrific stuff the author is praising the original for. Viggo the Carpathian is a terrifying villain because men like him existed. When the guys run into spectral heads on pikes in the old subway tunnel there is a genuine horror amidst the goofy reaction shots but it’s also an uncomfortable reference to the types of terror-tactics employed by dark age-conquerors. II doesn’t have nearly as much horror as I, but it’s not bloodless. I think the highest praise I can give both films’ horror credibility is that both have villains that would have worked well in traditional scary movies.Plus, Wilhelm von Homburg was such an intimidating presence.
The impaled heads in the subway scene is hands down the scariest thing in the entire franchise. As a kid I remembered that scene lasting FOREVER because it was so terrifying when in reality it’s on screen for what, 45 seconds?
Yes! Viggo was a terrifying villain, extremely well portrayed. The plot is well-paced. Fast in exactly the right spots and leisurely where it needs to be.
Even the hokey theme of having to overcome New York City cynicism to hold hands and sing in order to defeat evil incarnate just really works for me.
The first act of Ghostbusters II is joke-for-joke way funnier than the original. All the stuff from Spengler’s ridiculously unethical experiments (“They think they’re here for marriage counselling, we’ve kept them waiting for three hours and have been gradually increasing the temperature in the room.”) to World of the Psychic, to them trying to con the cops on why they’re digging up the streets is pure gold. Also any single line delivery of Peter MacNicol’s is worth the price of admission on its own.It’s only when it really leans hard into trying to be a Ghostbusters movie that it falters.
Best line reading: “Why am I covered in goo?” Just hilarious for a throw-away line that probably wasn’t even intended as a joke.
“Oh, but I woo-ed!”
My wife and I say that all the damn time whenever we can fit it in. Hilarious bit!
Drippings. “Vhy am I drippings vith goo?” Very important.
“Now let’s see what happens when we take away the puppy.”
“Now my assistant is asking if they mind waiting another half hour.”
Also Spengler giving Dana a purposefully disappointing “No” and using his equipment to measure her emotional reaction behind her back.
Also, the bit about the slinky is one of my favorite things of all time – to this day.
Seconded, GBII has more than enough great moments to make up for its failings, in my opinion. Viggo scared me as a kid, too, so it even had that aspect going for it. And of course Janosz is the shining star of that movie, everything he says is amazing.
DITTO! It’s certainly not the original, but it’s not without its improvements—Viggo the Carpathian is terrifying and ultimately works better as a villain than Gozer. The original has a better collection of other monsters of course, but nothing else in the series touches Viggo in terms of horror.
My only major problem with GBII was that Randy Edelman’s score is no match at all for Elmer Bernstein’s original. Loud snare drums are no substitute for the thereminish Ontes Martenot.
The video for Thriller and Ghostbusters are always linked in my mind (even though I think they’re about a year apart) because everyone was talking about them so I felt like I had to see them and they both scared the crap out of me.
of comments excoriating the idea of treating the irreverent original as some sacred text.Jaws, Ghostbusters and Halloween are three perfect movies. Touching one frame is the same as spray painting the Mona Lisa.
Don’t forget the ghost bj that Ray gets after they move into the firehouse.
Should not have had to scroll this far for this comment.
Perhaps younger viewers (and reviewers) don’t realize that a lot the overt horror scenes in Dana’s apartment were direct references to scenes in Poltergeist, which was released two years earlier. They were released on the equivalent summer weekends, nearly exactly two years apart. This meant that while they might be scary on their own, they were funny in context because of they way they transformed the scenes from the straight-up scary-ass horror movie that everyone in the theatre had likely seen two summers earlier. It was also less scary, because this gave you a better idea of where the scene was going. You could just laugh (and then retrospectively laugh at Poltergeist).It’s actually possible to interpret the entire film as the comedic response to Poltergeist. Who you gonna call? Some weird medium or the Ghostbusters?
“Somebody blows their nose and you wanna keep it?”
is truly one of the best lines in all of cinema, ever, period.
“Cats and dogs living together!”
Slimer’s softening was entirely due to “The Real Ghostbusters” cartoon which premiered in 1986, years before his brief cameo in 1989’s “Ghostbusters 2″. Which if not for the cartoon Ghostbusters 2 wouldn’t have happened. I’m not saying that the first Ghostbuster’s movie wasn’t culturally significant, but I think we let movies overshadow what really drives a franchise to become generational touchstones. ALL the merchandise for Ghostbusters from the 80’s was related to the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. Staypuff was really the only ghost from the movie to translate into a toy because it’s iconic. But what happens is to all of us raised on the cartoon we go back and watch the movie and all the jokes and moments burn into our brains. It overshadows the cartoon which has fewer memorable moments spread out across many episodes (it’s an 80’s cartoon, its a glorified toy commercial). The same applies to Star Trek. the majority of the quotable quotes are from the movies not the show proper. So the bits than get entered into the cultural lexicon are from the big screen but the main actual driver of personal enjoyment was the tv series. Essentially the movie moments is what we can share easily but the tv show was what hooked us and gave it it’s lasting appeal. The reason the magic of the original couldn’t be recaptured in GB2 and GB (2016) is that it’s magic was colored by background nostalgia for the cartoon but framed around the movie. The Transformers movie franchise has a similar problem. Our nostalgia for the cartoon is based around our childhood enjoyment of the cartoon and toys. The memory we have of it doesn’t match up to the actual quality of cartoon. So the first transformers movie from 2007 was successful but fell somewhat flat by fans. Ghostbuster’s differs in that the cartoon has a live action predecessor to provide the framework. So as we got older our nostalgia for the cartoon was absorbed by the movie. Nostalgia is a helluva drug and without that cartoon scaffolding the 2016 movie had nothing to properly tap into despite hitting many of the same beats as the original.
I agree about the first paragraph, but not the second.
Yes, the cartoon gave us the popular perception of Slimer as a cute sidekick (and gave it the name “Slimer” too, iirc) but I doubt it had any effect on the nostalgia buttons of anyone who was older than single digits at the time. I was 9 when the movie came out and it left a lasting impression, but I was 11 when the cartoon came out and it meant nothing to me.
I was 3 when the cartoon came out, and the cartoon versions were my literal heroes. I remember seeing 2 in the cinema, often terrified at how close to horror it got. Even coming to the (ugh) franchise through the kid friendly stuff, it’s the first movie that’s properly great – I liked it on the level of an action-comedy as a kid and its felt like a thematically very different movie as I’ve aged. I could do without the libertarian subtext, but the greatness of the first overrides any desire I have to see the toys from my youth coke to life in Afterlife, or whatever – but I do find nostalgia driven media pretty fucking gross anyway.
“Coke to life” I at first wondered if that was a typo or if you knew something about the behind-the-scenes atmosphere that we didn’t.
The cartoon could be surprisingly creepy at times (especially “Ragnorok and Roll”) but became increasingly kiddified as it went on.
The 90s Extreme Ghostbusters was better than expected – and Kylie was hot! Hey, I was 10, give me a break.
I always thought Ghostbusters generated a lot of questions the narrative had no time or desire to answer, ie why the setting implies that ghosts exist and people seem to see it as a nuisance more than anything.
Let’s not forget “that is true, this man has no dick”. I mean I was 10 at the time and the theater lost it and then in 1986 we watched it at my junior high school and they had to censor that.Ah to be young and in the 80’s and laughing at dick jokes! 😉
Every person on the film’s creative team had fused juvenile mindsets with grown-up laughs before—most notably in Animal House, Stripes, and more
Add to that Caddyshack. I always viewed Ghostbusters as sort of a late entry into the late ‘70s/ early ‘80s “slobs vs. snobs” movement, with the Ghostbusters (obviously) being the slobs who are constantly encountering snobs (the academic who shuts down their program at the university, the snooty hotel manager, the oh-so-aptly named Walter Peck) as antagonists, and ultimately succeeding and (in Venkman’s case) getting the girl.
I buy this take. Like Raiders verses with other Indiana Jones movies, the first Ghostbusters had a tiny bit of an edge that the other movies didn’t, even if it still balanced that edge with plenty of comedy. I’m not sure you take that balance a) out of the 80s, b) out of the lightning in a bottle that was that movie. Temple of Doom clearly tried to find a balance between self-conscious edge and cartoony stuff but just didn’t find it.
This comments section is reminding how much I friggin’ love this movie.
Me watching Ghostbusters as a kid: “Wow, Ray got so scared by that lady ghost, his pants flew off!”Me watching Ghostbusters as an adult: “Whoa! This PG-rated kids movie has oral sex jokes!”
Not to mention a ghost gives a blowjob in the original film (while the themesong plays!)“bustin just makes me feel good” indeed.
You guys are still mad that James Rolfe didn’t want to watch the last Ghostbusters reboot?
I guess the AVClub hipsters have decided that Ghostbusters is good, actually— but only when used to shit on Afterlife. I’m sure when it’s time to defend Ghostbusters 2016 again, the og movie will go back to being toxicmisogynistproblematicfrattyrapeynotfunnyboring.
I’m going to put this here – because who WOULDN’T want to see this version?
Ghostbusters had the perfect blend of humor, horror, action, plus a great cast, excellent production design and visual effects and a score by Elmer Bernstein.Not easily replicated.
Personally I think Mike and Lenny had a thing behind closed doors.
I find it bizarre but apt that I find this article now, and I just re-watched this yesterday. I can’t say for sure if I saw this in the cinema as a kid, but I know I watched it on HBO a million times when they got it. Like the article pretty much said, it plays into the kid side, it plays into the adult side, and everybody wins. This is one of those infinitely re-watchable films, and as far as its’ genre goes, one of the few where you really shouldn’t ever, ever edit anything out, because it’s so cohesive and solid. Not to sound like a grumpy (middle aged) old fart, but they really don’t make movies like this anymore. What I never started noticing until about five years ago was how often the Stay Puft marshmallows are put in screen, even beginning like maybe five minutes in. Never referenced directly, just there in the background like a can of Coke. I’m pretty sure it happens at least 6-7 times before the big guy shows up, but it’s one of those things that just makes me smile every time. It’s the little things in life.
This movie was phenomenally popular, but it was NOT a movie directed at or even made for kids and the lion’s share of it’s affectionate audience was in fact grown ups. Further, as huge as this was and though it fed into cartoons that a sliver of kids enjoyed as 1 of many fun shows, it was merely another thing in its era and not fetishized like it is now. Every 80s kid did not have screen accurate Ghostbusters costumes at Halloween. In fact pretty much no one did.What nostalgia gets wrong is that there were MANY big movies in the 80s that almost everyone loved and had a grand time seeing in the theatre but only the nerdiest of nerds carried torches for this stuff and in the moment were actually made fun of for it if they flaunted it.
As a kid I watched Ghostbuster and Ghostbusters II and found them quite inferior to the cartoon which I loved! I had a bunch of the toys, but one of my friends in particular had just about EVERY Ghostbuster toy including the firehouse playset. What a time to be alive
… Ghostbusters wasn’t made to be a kids movie. This whole article seems to be based around treating it like a deliberately gross kids movie, whick is just… Wrong. It was a film for adults that had a concept that was accessible enough to kids to get a cartoon, just like the R-rated Rambo and Robocop. (Maybe the latter cartoons would have been more successful if they’d also been on Saturday mornings instead of afternoon syndication.)The ACTUALLY deliberately gross kids movie was the Garbage Pail Kids movie.
My last girlfriend preferred Ghostbusters ll. We’re no longer together.