The pReview retRo Re-viewing of..
Ghostbusters!
CLICK BELOW TO VIEW THE TRAILER!
(it is highly recommended to view the trailer and THEN read)
(warning: There's a rumor that David Bowie resurrected Ziggy Stardust to play the main bad guy in this!)
by Jeff Finck
written: 8/28/2014
Release Date: June 8, 1984 (also, August 29, 2014)
So, Carl Spackler from Caddyshack, Elwood Blues, the goofy guy from Stripes, Half Dead from Penitentiary II, and Ellen Ripley all team up to fight ghosts, eh? Next thing you'll tell me is that Conan the Barbarian, Rocky, one of the Kids from Shaolin, and King of the fucking Gypsies Eric Roberts will all be in a movie together, some day. Actually, that would be pretty wicked. Sorry, got side tracked, there.. We're here to talk about four adult men who bust ghosts. And it takes place in NYC! Though, if someone did make a list of cities that probably have some spirits with major attitude problems, New York City is more than likely the one aggressively urinating all over said list.
The trailer starts in the dark stacks of a library-- And I'm already terrified because I fear intelligence and the mere mention of learning spreads fear throughout my testicles. But I digress.. The librarian unwittingly goes about her librarian ways: Putting up books, possessing knowledge of the alphabet, being intimately familiar with whoever the fuck Dewey and his Decimal System is. Unfortunately for this lady, some ectoplasmic a-hole is making a mess of her libraristic toil and scares this poor woman into hiring three young men wearing pajamas who drive a car that looks like an ambulance and a hearse got a little too drunk at a Christmas party and banged it out in a fire station.
The Ghostbusters-- made up of one Dr. Pierre Vank-Man (Bill Murray), Roy Stansbury (Dan Aykroyd), and Egghead Spinster (Harold Ramis)-- then arrive at some fancy shmancy hotel to loudly, and very publicly, hunt down a ghost. They first track down and subdue the haunted chambermaid's cart. They blast the living balls out of it with their nuclear powered laser guns. And good thing, too.. I swear, that cart was just seconds away from possessing that woman and causing her to continue being a chambermaid for the rest of her life.
So, we discover that these guys are dangerous professionals who run the largest (read: Only) paranormal removal company in America and they're the last line of defense in the invisible war being waged on the living by the hordes of undead that, seemingly, didn't really pose a problem until these guys showed up. That's like a team of professional bear hunters going all over the country, rounding up bears, trapping them for days in Time's Square, taunting them with flash photography, finding King Bear (which is a thing, I think) and daring him and the rest of the bears to do something about it.
Doctors Venkman and Stantz attempt to convince the mayor that New York City is headed the way of biblical disasters if they don't get a handle on all of this ghost infestation business that the Ghostbusters may or may not be the cause of. I'm sure he'll cave in and hire these guys, though.. What with threats like fire, brimstone, police cars being eaten by the ground, inter-species common-law marriages, people not being able to find the TV remote, people having just that twenty seconds or so of a song stuck in their head.. But they can't find the cassette they put it on so they can listen to it in order to get it out of their head.. You know, REAL mass hysteria!
After recruiting a fourth member, Winston Zedde-me-baby-one-More-time (Ernie Hudson), Ray and company track down the source of all of this paranormal fuckery to Venkman's girlfriend's penthouse. Venkman's main lady friend is called Dana (Sigourney Weaver) and she's as possessed as a 1958 Plymouth Fury. Now that they have a location and the loving support of the masses, they can take the fight to.. I don't actually know who. The building, I guess? I mean, the trailer makes it seem pretty clear that they have it out for this building. Because.. You know.. Fuck this building.
You heard it here, first, folks: 1984 will mark the year of the Ghost Hunter. These motherfuckers will be everywhere, thirty years from now. On a different note: I think it's a nice (comic) relief from all these straight forward ghost stories like Poltergeist, Amityville, or The Fog-- To just be able to sit back and laugh instead of worrying every ten seconds about the fucking clown puppet under my bed, is nice.. Although, in hindsight, it's my own fault for actually putting the clown puppet under my own bed. In any case, I can't wait for this movie!! And I don't think I've ever wanted to be a ghost hunter more in my life than after watching this trailer!
Ghostbusters (1984) poster, trailer and screen shots courtesy of Columbia Pictures
Grizzly Bear Roar found on iPad Wallpapers
The Shining (1980) screen shot courtesy of Warner Bros.
All credited images found on Google Image searches