Ghostbusters (1984)

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Directed by Ivan Reitman.

Starring Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, Sigourney Weaver, Dan Aykroyd, Rick Moranis, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis.

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Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson star as a quartet of Manhattan-based "paranormal investigators". When their government grants run out, the former three go into business as The Ghostbusters, later hiring Hudson on. Armed with electronic paraphernalia, the team is spectacularly successful, ridding The Big Apple of dozens of ghoulies, ghosties and long-legged beasties. Tight-lipped bureaucrat William Atherton regards the Ghostbusters as a bunch of charlatans, but is forced to eat his words when New York is besieged by an army of unfriendly spirits, conjured up by a long-dead Babylonian demon and "channelled" through beautiful cellist Sigourney Weaver and nerdish Rick Moranis. The climax is a glorious sendup of every Godzilla movie ever made-and we daresay it cost more than a year's worth of Japanese monster flicks combined. Who'd ever dream that the chubby, cheery Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man would turn out to be the most malevolent threat ever faced by New York City? When the script for Ghostbusters was forged by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, John Belushi was slated to play the Bill Murray role; Belushi's death in 1982 not only necessitated the hiring of Murray, but also an extensive rewrite. The most expensive comedy made up to 1984, Ghostbusters made money hand over fist, spawning not only a 1989 sequel but also two animated TV series (one of them partially based on an earlier live-action TV weekly, titled The Ghost Busters. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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Reviews and discussions

Re:Mad Lib #6: Intimidation
by theunemployedshortstop in Movie Games

hasn't rated it.

"21. adjective: slimy (I feel so funky) " [More]

10 Threequels That Took a Wrong ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com

hasn't rated it.

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"The third part in Universal’s rebooted Mummy franchise takes the series in a new direction. Rather than set in Egypt and dealing again with the same old villain, Imhotep, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor brings us to China and gives us a different sort of preserved corpse baddie. And it looks like the change could actually add some freshness to the franchise. Of course, history would hint that such a move for the Mummy movies is a bad idea. While it seems beneficial in theory to redirect the focus of a series with the third installment, especially if the first sequel was too much a repetition of the original (a la The Mummy Returns), in practice many threequels mistakenly alter things for the worse. These aren’t necessarily the worst threequels ever made (*cough* X-Men: The Last Stand); they’re just some movies that took their series in a completely wrong turn. Halloween III: Season of the Witch - Now viewed as an unfortunate detour in a long series involving the slasher Mich ... " [More]

Ghostbusters Video Game Trailer ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com

hasn't rated it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"Video games today are great for recreating scenes from old films (such as The Godfather) and plopping you into the action. But how faithful do a game’s sequences need to be? From the way Sierra Entertainment is advertising its new Ghostbusters video game, I guess you want the gaming to be as close to the direction of the original film as possible. Not only does the new trailer for the game include many scenes from the first Ghostbusters movie, it displays side-by-side comparisons of footage from the film and the game. Because what would the game be without a near-identical shot of library catalog cards shot into the air? Interestingly enough, the game is not actually a total video game remake of Ghostbusters. Instead, it’s “an all new story you won’t see in theaters,” featuring a script by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, who also wrote both the original and the sequel, and the voices of Aykroyd, Ramis, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, William Atherton and Brian Doyle-Murray, a ... " [More]

10 Movies, 10 Years: NYC in the ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com

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"Jonathan Levine’s crowd-pleasing (in terms of audience awards at festivals, not in terms of uplifting Hollywood endings) film The Wackness opens in limited release tomorrow. In case you haven’t noticed from the ads and the soundtrack, it takes place in the New York City of 1994, a special time for the place because Rudy Giuliani had just become mayor and was beginning to clean up the city, Goldie Wilson-stylee (OK, not really Goldie Wilson-stylee, but who doesn’t love a good BTTF reference?). NYC in the ’90s was quite special for me. It’s when I moved here. And moved here a second time (I’ve since moved here a third time), and watching The Wackness made me nostalgic for the decade. It also made me think of some of the other films from or set in that period, a number of which kind of define my experience with the city. 1990: Quick Change - It’s a bit ironic that this comedy, which features Bill Murray putting down the city non-stop, is the movie that really represents NYC on film ... " [More]

Latvian Ghostbusters. Clip of t ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com

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"Sorry, no, this is not a clip from or trailer for a Latvian remake of the 1984 classic. Instead it is merely a Latvian cover of Ray Parker Jr.’s classic theme song, performed by Intars Busulis and the cello trio Melo-M. And it now accompanies my other favorite movie theme covers, which include GNR’s version of “Live and Let Die,” the ska cover of The Godfather theme (by The Mudsharks), my brother’s snail-paced cover of Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” (from Top Gun) and pretty much any cover of “The Neverending Story” (including Homestar Runner’s “The Neverending Soda.”) The reason I bring you this Ghostbusters theme cover (aside from my having just today discovered it, thanks to Fark.com) is because it (very) loosely ties in with the new movie Wanted. See, both the song and the movie involve the intersection of Hollywood and Eastern European artists (specifically of former Soviet republics). Because Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov is originally from Kazakhstan (yes, home of Borat), ... " [More]

15 Cartoons Calling for CGI/Liv ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com

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"I don’t know what is the worse idea, an all-CGI 3-D Smurfs movie, as Paramount had planned, or a CGI/live-action mix, as Sony Animation is now planning for our beloved blue communists friends. I guess if we only think back to Alvin and the Chipmunks and Underdog, it’s easy to think Sony’s new plan for The Smurfs is a terrible idea. But I think the second Scooby-Doo movie worked pretty well as far as cartoon adaptations go, and there’s a chance Hollywood could do a good job again, despite the majority (including Garfield: The Movie, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, the first Scooby-Doo) being on the bad side. That said, I’m still no fan of the trend. However, if it must continue, I think it would be interesting to see any of the following 15 animated series, all of which feature the necessary mix of talking animals (or inanimate objects) and humans, turned into live-action movies with CGI characters: The Yogi Bear Show - I feel it’s inevitable that we’ll be seeing this one ... " [More]

10 Movie Romances That Probably ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com

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"It took me awhile, but last week I finally saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And to agree with many others, I think it features a few too many ludicrous moments. Yet the most outlandish, in my opinion, is the scene in which Indy and Marion seem to reenact His Girl Friday in about four seconds while riding in the back of a truck. I know it’d been awhile, both for them and for us, but I prefer a little more bickering, a little more holding back in comedy of remarriage plots. Anyway, we knew a long time ago, thanks to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, that Indy and Marion didn’t last long together after the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. So, I didn’t really care if they ended up together at the end of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, either. It’s probable they still wouldn’t last. And I think the same often with other unlikely movie couples at the end of their respective films. Fortunately, a number of sequels tell us outright that the romance of the first film f ... " [More]

Happy Star Wars Day!
by minerwerks in minerwerks Blog

loved it.

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"A couple weeks ago, I was talking with someone about a mutual friend's wedding. "What date is the wedding?" my friend asked. "They're getting married on Star Wars day!" I replied As a youngster with a burgeoning interest in films, I would go to the library and look up facts about my favorite films. I remember looking up titles in the Facts on File and finding little bits of trivia like the release date of a film. At one point, I had compiled a list of Steven Spielberg films and their release dates. I can remember that 'Gremlins' and 'Ghostbusters' came out in June, 1984, but not the specific dates. I can't even recall exactly when in the summer of 1985 that 'Back to the Future' was released, and that's pretty much my stock answer for my favorite movie of all-time. But the date for 'Star Wars' sticks. The one Spielberg film that I can distinctly remember a release date for is 'E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial' - June 11, 1982. Perhaps that's just because my sister's birthday falls on the ... " [More]

Who you gonna call??
by lopezdash in The Movie Blog

is neutral about it.

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"For full coverage and to sign up for a chance to win a trip to Comic-Con International in San Diego, head over to http://comiccon.spout.com. " [More]

New Hancock Trailer Includes To ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com

hasn't rated it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"I’ve been on the fence about Hancock from the beginning. Sure, it’s a Will Smith blockbuster and it co-stars Jason Bateman, both typically prime selling points for me, but it also seems a bit one-note and silly. Upon first hearing about the concept of a drunken has-been superhero, I immediately thought about drunken Superman in Superman III. After seeing the teaser trailer, I felt the exaggerated special effects (including the rather funny whale toss) were a little too over the top. Now comes a full trailer (Quicktime version here) that reveals a lot more action and a lot more plot points. The former seems to have everyone on the Internet suddenly more excited about the movie. But what about those new story reveals? Aside from the usual problem of giving too much away, the trailer exposes the overdone concept of a world without its under-appreciated hero(es) — think Ghostbusters, any one of a thousand comic book titles (the hero is in jail, or half-defeated, or in an alternate sta ... " [More]

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Review by All Movie Guide

All Movie Guide

liked it.

Ghostbusters is an exuberant, fully realized blockbuster packed with plenty of choice moments for repeat viewing. The cast is pitch-perfect: Bill Murray's easygoing comic gifts are at their sarcastic best; Rick Moranis is hilariously pathetic; and Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis do a wonderful job as the dorky, science-minded members of the crew. Aykroyd and Ramis also wrote the one-liner-packed script; the wacky, scary subject matter made the film understandably popular with children, but there's also sophisticated humor which can only be appreciated by adults. Providing a blueprint for the many copycat summer hits to come, director Ivan Reitman impressively balances the laughs with action and horror. The special effects have held up well with time, though the soundtrack and its catch-phrase theme song may feel a little dated. ~ Matthew Doberman, All Movie Guide

Tags: ghost , paranormal , comedy , Loved-It , Classic
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