Ghostbusters
IN OCTOBER 2020, when Reebok brought out a range of Ghostbusters-inspired trainers that sold out in about five seconds flat, one of them — designed to resemble a proton pack, with tubes and bells and whistles all over it; a bargain at just £119.95 — was called the ‘Ghost Smasher’. A nod to what might have been had Dan Aykroyd gotten his way.
Because ‘Ghost Smashers’ was Aykroyd’s original title for a screenplay that he started working on, alone, in late 1981. And the title wasn’t the only significant difference from the movie that we would come to know and love as Ghostbusters (actually, according to the movie’s own credits, ‘Ghost Busters’, but over the years the space has gradually been eliminated). Aykroyd posited a world in which, yes, ghosts were real, and were hunted, and caught, by licensed professionals, but whereas in Ivan Reitman’s 1984 movie its heroes are pioneers in the field, here spirit-catching was long up and running, franchised, even, with different teams competing for business. Some of the squads are heroic, and others have more malevolent motives. While our main characters do work from a firehouse, the containment unit for the spooky vapours they capture is a deserted, converted Sunoco petrol station in Northern New Jersey. Oh, and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? The giant, smiling sailor shows up midway through the story and is just one of the forms of Gozer. The film ends with our heroes, here named Stantz, Venkman and Ramsey, venturing to alternate dimensions. Epic? Certainly. Achievable? Not on your nelly. When Reitman first read the script, he pointed out that, as written, it would have bankrupted most studios.
The director hooked Aykroyd up with Harold Ramis for further drafts, during which the focus shifted, as did the title. Importantly, so did the scale of its ambition, which prompted Columbia Pictures to take a $25 million punt on a movie that didn’t have an entirely finished script, or FX plan. In exchange, it had to be ready for a juicy mid-summer date in 1984. Reitman said yes. It was May 1983. That Ghostbusters was finished at all was a minor miracle; that it was even vaguely coherent made it a major miracle; that it became a box office-conquering classic is Act Of God stuff.
Aykroyd had started the script initially as another vehicle for himself and John Belushi, his Blues Brother-from-another-mother. Belushi died before its completion, with Aykroyd turning to another SNL alum, Bill Murray, for the lead role of charming, freewheeling, probably problematic scumbag Dr Peter Venkman. Aykroyd would play the enthusiastic engineering genius, Ray Stantz. Ramis would be the bookish Egon Spengler. There are many reasons why Ghostbusters has endured over the years, but their interplay and chemistry is perhaps the main factor. Their exchanges, often pumped up with a little improv, but never in a showy, attention-grabbing way, feel utterly real, grounded, lived-in. It’s not a film crammed with obvious gags or one-liners — all of the
comedy comes from character. Venkman, Stantz and Spengler (later augmented, of course, by Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore, a workingclass man who will believe in anything as long as there’s a steady paycheque in it) may be scientists and brainboxes, but they feel like blue-collar workers, right down to their grubby costumes and nonchalant, workaday attitudes. They’re pest controllers, but for ghosts. For a movie about the supernatural, Reitman chose to emphasise the second part of that word.
All of which only reinforces the impact of the ghosts, who somehow feel more believable for their penchant for popping up in real locations, be it the New York Public Library, a taxi cab, or the hallways of a hotel. Reitman had a $5.6 million effects budget to play with, which unleashed a never-ending array of Terror Dogs, giant marshmallow men and floating, shrieking library ghosts. That last spectre is the first one we see in the movie and her transformation from old biddy to hideous howler serves notice that Ghostbusters is not going to shy away from the ‘horror’ part of the ‘comedy-horror’ equation. Whether it’s that terrifying transformation, or demon arms ripping through a chair to paw at Sigourney Weaver’s Dana Barrett, or the Exorcist riff where a possessed Dana grunts and growls and sleeps above her covers (four feet above her covers), it’s a genuinely spooky affair, and a perfect gateway drug for younger people thinking of dabbling in horror.
1984, of course, is now so long ago that you can set an entire film in that year, and marvel at the daffy fashions in the name of nostalgia. Yet, other than the lack of mobile phones, and everyone sparking up a cigarette every five seconds, and Ray Parker Jr’s Oscar-nominated theme song — which couldn’t be more ’80s if it was doing a Rubik’s Cube — Ghostbusters feels somehow timeless. Perhaps Reitman’s decision to ground his characters in reality future-proofed it. Its themes feel timely, too. The Ghostbusters’ biggest threat isn’t Gozer the Gozerian, or a hotdog-chugging green ghost who loves to slime people, but meddlesome, intransigent authority figures like the college dean who shuts them down at the beginning of the movie, and EPA busybody Walter Peck (William Atherton), a bearded, bureaucratic bellend whose mistrust of science, and dislike of the Ghostbusters, is actually the trigger for the near-apocalypse. It’s a tune that could be played note-for-note today. He should’ve listened to Egon. We should all listen to Egon.
That its reputation remains intact is something of a wonder, given how the Ghostbusters brand has been relentlessly assailed over the years. The law of diminishing returns began with the fairly-popular-but-notthat-much cop animated kids’ show, The Real Ghostbusters, and then continued with Ghostbusters II in 1989. Paul Feig’s all-female remake in 2016 had the best of intentions, and is superficially a more gag-heavy comedy, but lacked the original’s charm and chills.
Yet Ghostbusters endures, enough to prompt a new sequel of sorts in the shape of Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife (see page 80), a much-delayed chance for him to play in the sandbox co-created by his dad. That sandbox contains much of the iconography Reitman and co invented for the first film, and which still connects today — there’s a reason why Reebok are bringing out Ghostbusters-inspired trainers, or why Lego unveiled a stunningly accurate model of the team’s car, Ecto-1 (2,352 pieces! Assemble them all!). Perhaps it’s stuck around because of that theme song. Or perhaps it’s that unique blend of heart, humour and horror. They may not have called it ‘Ghost Smashers’ in the end, but it’s undeniably a ghost smash.
GHOSTBUSTERS IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DIGITAL