The cruddy spin offs, the endless badgering Bill Murray about Ghostbusters 3 - it's all testimony to the genius of the surprisingly salty and definitely prescient Ghostbusters (Channel 5, Sunday, 6.55pm GMT)
"Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes" - Winston Zeddemore
It's a wonder that Dan Aykroyd isn't a full-blown recluse right now. Judging by all the interviews and soundbites he's done on the subject – not to mention the mountain of half-formed almost-speculation that appears immediately afterwards – the poor man must spend his entire life fending off questions about Ghostbusters 3. If it'll be animated or live action. If it'll star a new generation of Ghostbusters. If Bill Murray will appear in it or not. If it'll even happen at all. At this stage, Ghostbusters 3 is the Chinese Democracy of paranormal comedies, and all this fuss is down to how incredibly well-regarded the first Ghostbusters is.
That can be the only reason for it. Ghostbusters 2 was such a catastrophic, series-ending failure that – unless people really, really want to see the Statue of Liberty moonwalk across New York City to a New Jack Swing cover version of a Jackie Wilson song again – all the anticipation for Ghostbusters 3 must solely rest on the shoulders of the original. And little wonder; it's nothing less than a cultural touchstone now. Everything about it, from the ghosts to the cars to the outfits and locations and music, is fully iconic. Only a handful of films ever made are as beloved as Ghostbusters. If you made a film as funny and scary and fat-free as this, wouldn't you spend your entire life chasing its tail as well?
"This man has no dick" - Peter Venkman
The surprising thing, if you're watching Ghostbusters for the first time as a grown-up, is just how salty it is. Everybody smokes in it, constantly. People in Ghostbusters smoke like doctors from the 1940s. It'd be unthinkable now. We're introduced to Peter Venkman in a scene where he's simultaneously trashing the results of a scientific study and pestering a much younger woman for sex. Fourteen minutes later, he's drinking from an uncovered bottle of spirits in the street. One minute after that, he's blackmailed his best friend into remortgaging his house to fund an unproven get rich quick scheme. Then, later on, that friend gets fairly explicitly fellated by a ghost. A graphically charred corpse drives a taxi. There's much, much more swearing than you remember.
And they made this into a cartoon. For children. The moral is this: if you want to extend the financial prospects of your sweary film about the mildly erotic adventures of a chainsmoking alcoholic sex pest and his friends, make sure you have a cute green ghost in it.
"He slimed me" - Peter Venkman
This might not be the case now but, when I was growing up, the biggest star of Ghostbusters was probably Slimer, the spook that the Ghostbusters first encounter in the Sedgewick Hotel. And that's entirely down to the cartoon spin-off, The Real Ghostbusters.
In the film, Slimer doesn't even have a name. But he's a main character in the cartoon. More than that – after The Real Ghostbusters had run its course, it was repackaged into Slimer! And The Real Ghostbusters Hour; a series of shorts detailing all the hilarious everyday scrapes that Slimer would get up to on his time off from the Ghostbusters. Maybe he'd save a baby pigeon, or enter a dog show, or become a driver for a new messenger service even though he's lazy and he doesn't have legs and, as a ghost, he has no real need to trade his skills for a sustainable wage of any kind. Slimer was crazy!
The film became such a phenomenon that it allowed all kinds of toys and games and spin-offs to spring up in its wake. A rival studio even produced an unrelated cash-in Ghostbusters cartoon. It stars a funny monkey in a hat. I don't recommend watching it. But this is the sort of ephemerally faddy crap that Ghostbusters inspired. The fact that it could do this, and that people don't completely hate it as a result, is proof of what a great film Ghostbusters is.
Observations
• Ghostbusters was one of those films I watched and rewatched hundreds of times on VHS as a child. There was a six-month period when I thought the buttocks on the Terror Dogs represented the single greatest moment of comedy in all of human history. There is another anecdote, about crossing the streams, that I will only tell you in person.
• Similarly, I have never been able to run down a flight of stairs as an adult without mentally singing Cleanin' Up The Town by The Bus Boys.
• I really do owe Ghostbusters a profound debt. If it hadn't invented Zuul, then thinking up a lazy shorthand comparison for three quarters of the female contestants I mention in my X Factor liveblogs would take an awful lot longer.
• Between last week's Die Hard recap and today, this series is turning into something of a William Atherton love-in. And a Films Featuring Conspicuous References To Twinkies love-in. What'll it be next? Zombieland? Jersey Shore Shark Attack?
• A fancy upscale New York hotel. Precise framing. A vaguely ironic font. Bill Murray. There is a thesis to be written about how Wes Anderson wouldn't have a career if there wasn't a Sedgewick Hotel elevator scene in Ghostbusters.
• "Print is dead". Egon Spengler Ph.D, telling it like it is, 29 years ahead of his time.
• Read more on Ghostbusters online!
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/oct/27/ghostbusters-tv-recap
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