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The VHS Ghostbusters	DVD Ghostbusters	Soundtrack Ghostbusters: Original Soundtrack Album CD
VHS Set: Ghostbusters 1 & 2 DVD Set: Ghostbusters 1 & 2		Ghostbusters: Encore Collection

Slimer?  I Don’t Even Know Her!
by Michael Flanagan

Super

            Without any doubt, there is no better movie about a group of comedians who walk around in jumpsuits with nuclear backpacks and shoot, capture, and/or explode supernatural matter into gobs of slime and/or marshmallow than Ghostbusters.

            The plot is technically simplistic:  Ghosts come, scientists are out of work for hunting ghosts, scientists start their own non-internet company, more ghosts come, scientists get rich and famous, bad people come, bad ghosts come, scientists defeat them all and save the day.

And all the while spouting hilarious comments like “I find her fascinating because she sleeps above the covers.  Four feet above the covers,” and “Ray, the next time someone asks you if you’re a god, say YES!”  And these are only one-liners!  The comedic genius of all four men, especially Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd, provides a tone all to its own; it brings laughs where you least expect them.

The special effects are great.  This movie came out in 1984, and it the effects look better than some of the effects for The Phantom Menace!  When I first saw this movie, I was a child.  (No, I mean, on the outside, too.)  Then, and now, I believe Slimer is real.  I know him.  I fear him.  He makes me laugh.

What could this movie have been?  Imagine Akroyd and John Belushi, not driving around in the dark with a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, and wearing sunglasses (hit it), but traveling through time, fighting ghosts, and being cool (...hit it..).  That was Akroyd’s original plan (and script.)  I don’t doubt this would have been a great film, and it’s one of many reasons to mourn the loss of John Belushi.  But after Belushi’s death, Harold Ramis took it, helped to rewrite it, took a very funny part in it, and helped guide Ghostbusters  to be the classic film it is today.

If the skeptics are right, and comedy is dead, then the Ghostbusters have done a fine job of catching it.

 DVD Update

Ghostbusters is a very well done DVD.  It’s got good picture (anamorphic), good sound, and the extras are pretty cool: featurettes, documentaries, some entertaining deleted scenes, and the most enjoyable aspect of the extras, the commentary.  It’s one of those MST3K things, with the little figures, and Ivan Reitman and Harold Ramis giving random anecdotes about the filming.  Film students, however, need not look here!  Their comments focus more on the locations and the people than technique, but there’s some interesting information on the history of the movie, and their senses of humor certainly show up from time to time.  I highly recommend it.  DVD Rating:  Super!

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