Alice (Alice Drummond), the librarian at the New York Public Library is going about her normal routine when she finds a free floating full torso vaporous apparition. A ghost. Doctors Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) and Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) are contacted. Already at the library when they arrive is Dr. Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis). The three men are scientists at Columbia University investigating the paranormal. It doesn’t go well. They get fired.
This inspires the boys to go out on their own and create “Ghostbusters”, a paranormal investigation and elimination service. They set up shop in an old fire station and develop sophisticated electromagnetic tools and equipment to catch and store ghosts.
Their first client is Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver). She has a creature called Zuul living in her refrigerator. Venkman goes to her apartment to check it out. The creature is gone and now the only creature in her apartment is Venkman. She tosses him out.
For a while business is a little slow but soon the guys are busy. There seems to be a lot of spectral activity in New York City and they are the only ones who specialize in ghosts. Their secretary Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) begins taking applications for additional help. They hire Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson).
Venkman contacts Dana to give her the information they discovered on her refrigerator manifestation. It turns out that Zuul was a demigod from six thousand BC and was the minion of Gozer. Venkman makes a date with Dana.
Not long after that they get a visit from Walter Peck (William Atherton) from the EPA. Venkman refuses to let him have access to the ghost storage facility. Peck threatens to return with a warrant.
Meanwhile the storage facility is strained to the max and strange things are happening at Dana’s apartment building. Dana gets possessed by Zuul and begins calling herself the Gatekeeper. Her neighbor Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) gets possessed by Vinz Clortho and is calling himself the Keymaster. The Ghostbusters try to keep them separated so that Gozer can’t enter this realm. Peck returns and shuts down the containment grid. Now New York City is flooded with ghosts trying to take over the world and the Ghostbusters are in jail.
“Ghostbusters” was released in 1984 and was produced and directed by Ivan Reitman. The film was written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. Every once in a while a movie comes along that hits you right between the eyes. So it was with “Ghostbusters”. Just about everything about this movie is perfect. The script, the plot, the acting and the actors as well as the music score and the special effects. Not to mention the total insanity.
The special effect where the catalog drawers open and the cards fly out was created by pushing the drawers from the other side and blowing the cards out with air sent through copper piping. Dr. Venkman’s probe that he uses in Dana's apartment is a United Technologies/ Bacharach 300 Series "Sniffer". It is a real tool normally used to locate utility gas leaks or low-oxygen hazards and it does have that squeeze-bulb. The devise on Rick Moranis’ head that looks like a colander with a bunch of wires sticking out of it, however, is just that, a colander with wire sticking out of it. The ectoplasm, or slime, was made from methylcellulose ether, a thickening agent used in processed foods.
The Royal Society of Open Science discovered the fossil of a dinosaur called crurivastator (destroyer of shins) in the Judith River Formation of Montana. The animal looked a lot like Zuul the Terror Dog. The Royal Ontario Museum named the fossil Zuul crurivastator, after the movie’s character.
Harvey comics, creator of Casper, sued the producers of "Ghostbusters", claiming the ghost in the logo was too close to the Casper character "Fatso". The court ruled against them, stating there were only so many ways to draw a ghost.
To keep interest up for the movie Reitman ran a trailer that mimicked the commercial used in the movie, however, the 555 number was replaced with a 1-800 number that was real. Anyone who called the 800 number heard a recorded message from Murray and Aykroyd. The number received 1,000 calls an hour, twenty-four hours a day for six weeks.
I saw a review once that compared the three main characters obsession with the paranormal to a variety of sexual abnormalities. Feelings of inadequacy, and latent homosexuality prevailed. Everything from Venkman’s sadistic torment of other men, Ray’s sexual displacement by fantasizing having sex with a ghost and Egon’s asexual behavior and preoccupation with the phallic trappings of the equipment they use. Specifically the proton packs that ejaculate streams of energy. Then there is the homophobic side with, dick-less, the EPA guy who wants to stop the guys’ fun. This ultimately results in “crossed streams” that explode the Stay-Puft guy and ends up with gobs of white goo on everything. That was just the, shall we say, tip of the iceberg in the reviewer’s interpretation. It was a fascinating review.
Ghostbusters Theme Ray Parker Jr.