Ghostbusters
By James Slone
When “Ghostbusters”was released in 1984, many critics disregarded it as an effects-riddled science fiction extravaganza disguised as a comedy, a mediocre vehicle for SNL alumni. But audiences loved it and the marketing bonanza surrounding it, making it an immediate blockbuster. Since then, “Ghostbusters” has gradually taken on the aura of a certifiable classic, a film that most kids who grew up in the 1980s can quote in its entirety.
With midnight showings in most major US cities, a hit video game, and talk of a new film sequel, “Ghostbusters” fandom has entered a full-fledged renaissance, accompanied by the usual backlash (see http://www.avclub.com/articles/ghostbusters,35378/).
But “Ghostbusters” (written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, and directed by Ivan Reitman) actually deserves its classic status. It’s one of the best screwball comedies ever made (I place it next to “Bringing up Baby”), and the rapport between its leads—Aykroyd, Ramis, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis and Annie Potts—is among the funniest you’ll encounter in any ensemble comedy. The pacing is fast, and the one-liners come in a deluge. Special effects are present but not dwelled on, leaving the actors to drive the story—“Ghostbusters” is as character driven as any comedy this side of Robert Altman.
Most people in the English-speaking world are aware of the story, but I will repeat it for the benefit of newcomers. Peter Venkman (Murray, wry), Ray Stantz (Aykroyd, nerdy) and Egon Spengler (Ramis, geeky) are parapsychology professors at Columbia University. After a confrontation with a real ghost (a “free-floating, full-torso apparition” in the junk science jargon of the film), the three men go into business as ghost exterminators, later joined by Winston Zeddemore (Hudson).
A nasty run in with an EPA bureaucrat (the great William Atherton playing to the Reagan era’s irrational fear of government regulation) ends with the forcible emptying of the Ghostbusters’ ghost containment unit, precipitating the arrival of a Sumerian god called Gozer and presumably the apocalypse. Who ever thought the agency designed to curb pollutants would have a hand in the end of the word?
Fortunately the Ghostbusters are armed with state-of-the-art firepower, like the proton packs (“unlicensed nuclear accelerators”) they wear on their backs and ghost traps, cool-looking props practically designed to sell toys. The lasers they fire no longer hold up that well as special effects, but who cares? They still look cool, and the action scenes are shot competently enough that only a literalist scold would have a problem suspending his or her disbelief.
“Ghostbusters” has a lot of fun with urban lore. In the film’s alternative NYC history, the doorway to the spirit world was placed on top of an art deco building (the real-life 55 Central Park West augmented with a matte painting) by an insane architect and cultist Evo Shandor in the cataclysmic years following World War I. According to Egon, the building was constructed with space-age materials that conduct psychokinetic energy. Two of the building’s residents, Venkman’s girlfriend Dana and her nerdy neighbor Luis (Weaver and Moranis), are possessed by demon dogs and become living fulcrums for the building’s gate mechanism.
This emphasis on turn-of-the-century architecture, secret societies and the spiritualist movement position the film’s metaphysics (rationalized hokum) squarely in the tradition of early-twentieth-century detective and horror fiction. The New York of “Ghostbusters” is a deeply layered city with shadowy secrets and untold depths, a place of haunted misery. Because it’s a comedy, these trappings are easy to overlook, but they give the film a uniquely dark undercurrent. That funky urban horror is one of the reasons the film has such staying power—you come away with the sense of a larger, stranger world at the edges of the frame.
The real novelty of “Ghostbusters” is that it melds the romantic screwball humor with an eerie, otherworldly horror that works as both old-school urban gothic and Lovecraftian horror. The film begins with spooky low-key comedy and ends with an apocalyptic visitation from a trans-dimensional being. Not only do the creators and cast pull it off, they do so with comic aplomb.
The reason “Ghostbusters” works so well is twofold. First, the story starts in the everyday mundane world of academia, but every subsequent scene is a little more ridiculous that the last one, so that by time Gozer takes the form of the Staypuff Marshmallow Man, most audiences are willing to accept, even appreciate, the film’s audacity. Like “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” it starts slight and ends with a huge bang.
Second, Venkman, Murray’s wisecracking team leader, is a skeptic who never quite believes what’s happening around him, responding to every challenge with an incredulous one-liner. He functions as a kind of nonplussed everyman in extraordinarily unrealistic situations, disarming the audience by voicing their silent skepticism. The film comments on its own pseudo-scientific absurdity so you don’t have to. “Crossing the streams” makes no sense, but it doesn’t make sense to Venkman either.
In its final act, “Ghostbusters” walks a delicate line between witty, urbane dialogue and the Old Testament-style fire and brimstone (or “dogs and cats living together” as Venkman would have it). Perhaps my favorite scene is when Ray approaches Gozer and presents her with a rehearsed municipal order to vacate the city, setting up the film’s single most memorable line. The juxtaposing of the awe-inspiring with the banality of city ordinances is one example of the film’s tightrope humor, as funny today as it was in 1984.
The reason you don’t see very many supernatural and science fiction comedies is because they usually don’t work very well. But “Ghostbusters” is different. It works because the writers believed in their material, and the actors (especially Murray) sell it, no matter how outlandish it reads on the page. Through a combination of audacious writing, skillful performances and planet-aligned luck, “Ghostbusters” delivered, and still delivers, the goods.
Note: “Ghostbusters” features one of my favorite film scores by Elmer Bernstein. Like the film, the music balances on a high beam between sweeping impressionistic ghostliness and bouncy good humor.