No doubt about it, Ghostbusters is a classic.
I got the two films on VHS back in about 2003 and on DVD only last year. I wanted something to watch after an operation, and decided it was time to get it.
The four characters play off each other very well indeed. The plot is properly linear and follows a logical course. It all makes sense. Egon is very much the brains of this outfit, Ray the eager-but-not-too-bright occult expert and Peter the one who isn’t really that into the scientific side but provides a useful contact point with the public. On the face of it, you wonder why he’s there when he’s not that fussed about the principle, but the team needed him as a point of accessibility with the public. He’s the most easily approachable of the initial three.
Which brings me onto Winston. The one mistake this film made was not introducing his character earlier. As it is he doesn’t appear until he comes in answer to the job advert about which we knew nothing until that moment. (It’s the one thing that the reboot does better, but that’s going off on a tangent!) He provides another point of accessibility. This is inevitable given that his function is essentially “cabbagehead” - as in, someone who doesn’t know what something is about so that the other characters can explain things to the audience.
The other main characters are good too. Janine is surprisingly well-rounded, and her crush on Egon is very well done. He doesn’t really understand this! Dana Barrett is very believable too. She’s not mad, she’s not stupid, she’s a real, rational person who has a problem that can’t be explained rationally. Louis Tully is really the comic relief. He keeps getting locked out of his apartment, and nobody takes him seriously. The obvious cliche would have been for him to ultimately become Gozer rather than just “the Keymaster”, but they refrained from going down that alley. Although exactly why that spectral hound needed to possess the two of them in turn and make them, er . . . do what they did to, er . . . open the gateway, as it were, is unspecified.
And Walter Peck, the EPA man, is perfectly plausible. It’s perfectly natural that there would be environmental concerns about what the Ghostbusters were doing, and Peck expresses these concerns in a very understandable and reasonable manner initially. He possibly over-reacts a tad by bringing in the policeman and technician to shut the grid off so soon (perhaps another encounter with him in between might have made this scene more plausible), but it’s only an hour and a half - well, an hour forty - and I guess they had to get everything happening.
The visual effects are excellent. Yes, as Wilycub pointed out, perhaps a little dated in one or two places, but on the whole, still very effective. The books floating from one shelf to another is very well done, and my personal favourite is the cards shooting out of the drawers on their own. (The DVD commentary explains how this was done. Easy when you know the answer!) And the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man . . . classic! Tongue firmly in cheek here, this is where you can’t help but laugh. “A horror film with comedy moments” - this is where it’s sort of both at once. It’s causing devastation . . . but it’s Ray’s idea to think of something harmless and lovable . . . beautiful.
Also, Egon’s whole crossing-the-streams stuff was good. Again, they could possibly have introduced the “don’t cross the streams” concept a little better than an offhand remark he forgot to tell them about. Maybe they could have had a “pay attention 007” moment when they first put the proton packs on. But it’s nothing major. It all still works.
Absolutely a great film!
