"Back Off Man, I'm a Scientist": GHOSTBUSTERS

 Scares aren't for everyone, but laughs have about as wide an appeal as anything.  No matter how much your grandpa may love Abbott & Costello, there's simply no supernatural comedy more beloved than the 1984 comedy blockbuster GHOSTBUSTERS.

GHOSTBUSTERS  (SCI-FI/COMEDY, 1984) 
Directed by Ivan Reitman
Starring: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts, William Atherton, Ernie Hudson, David Margulies, Michael Ensign, Alice Drummond
Rated PG for unspecified reasons (PG-13 level; some language including sexual references, brief suggestive humor, scary images and smoking).
105 minutes
SCAREmeter: 3.5/10 (spooky supernatural moments, potentially frightening for those under 10)
GOREmeter: 3.5/10 (occasional ghoulish specters in partial decay, no blood or guts)
LAUGHmeter: 5/10
OVERALL: 3/4 

Expensive deadpan comedy hit its stride in the late 1970s and early 80s, culminating in 1984 with the deadpan comedy special effects extravaganza GHOSTBUSTERS.  Costing $30 million, it grossed $295.2 million worldwide to become the second-highest-grossing film of the year behind another original action-comedy, BEVERLY HILLS COP.  In today's landscape where nearly every major movie is either a sequel, remake or otherwise adapted from a source material with a pre-established fanbase, all in the name of creating major franchises, the box office charts stand in stark contrast.  In the top ten movies of that year, only two are sequels, with INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM taking third place and STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK taking ninth, and on top of it all, the top two were comedies.
It opened on June 8th, 1984 against another classic supernatural comedy-thriller, GREMLINS, and held the number-one spot on the box office charts for seven consecutive weeks before it was dethroned by PURPLE RAIN and took number one again the following week.  A 1985 re-issue later made it the #1 comedy of the decade.
GHOSTBUSTERS was written by comedian Dan Aykroyd, who had achieved as one of the first Saturday Night Live cast and then starred alongside his good friend John Belushi in the 1980 comedy hit THE BLUES BROTHERS.  Aykroyd wasn't just kidding around with GHOSTBUSTERS; he has some unconventional beliefs, being a loud and proud spiritualist.  In addition to professing his beliefs in spirits that "exist between the fourth and fifth dimension, and that they visit us frequently," Aykroyd is a lifetime member and correspondent of the Mutual UFO Network, a civilian organization that investigates UFO sightings.  Aykroyd wrote the script with Belushi and himself in mind, as well as John Candy for a role that eventually went to Rick Moranis, but in the initial concept, the Ghostbusters, called "Ghostsmashers", were more like a Dr. Who-esque SWAT team who fight ghosts while traveling between space and time.  Introducing his ideas to filmmaker Ivan Reitman, director of Bill Murray-starring vehicles MEATBALLS and STRIPES, and writer/filmmaker/comedian Harold Ramis, who had co-written Reitman's aforementioned films as well as ANIMAL HOUSE and his own feature directorial debut CADDYSHACK.  With Ramis, Aykroyd reshaped the script into something more grounded and economically feasible.  Belushi died in 1982 before the script was finished, and the role intended for him went to Murray, with whom Reitman and Ramis had worked before.  Candy became unavailable, and his role, that of a conservative businessman, was re-written for Rick Moranis, another Canadian comedian who was best known as part of the comedy sketch duo Bob and Doug McKenzie with Dave Thomas, and the feature film they had written, directed and starred in based on their sketches, STRANGE BREW, in 1983.
In GHOSTBUSTERS, Murray stars as Dr. Peter Venkman, one third of a parapsychologist trio also including the much more enthusiastic Dr. Ray Stantz (Akyroyd) and tech whiz Dr. Egon Spengler (Ramis).  Working at Columbia University, Venkman hardly seems to care one way or another, using the school resources to pick up pretty young co-eds and torment the rest, although Stantz and Spengler are working on a way to locate and contain actual ghosts.  After they're all fired from the university, the three open up shop in a rundown New York City fire station and advertise as "Ghostbusters", using equipment developed by Stantz and Spengler to entrap ghosts within a containment unit indefinitely.  Not long after, New York seems overrun with paranormal activity, which some in the media attribute to the Ghostbusters hoaxing people, but they're so overworked, they hire a fourth man, Winstone Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson).  Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver), a musician who catches Venkman's eye, comes to them when the inside of her refrigerator transforms into an inter-dimensional portal and her apartment appears to be at the center of the soon-coming Gozer, a Sumerian god of destruction.  Making matters worse, Walter Peck (William Atherton, who cornered the market for play a-holes in the 80s), an overzealous EPA agent, charges the Ghostbusters with unlicensed waste management and deactivates their fully-loaded containment unit, unleashing all the captured specters back into the city.

From left: Ernie Hudson, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis.

GHOSTBUSTERS is one of the most beloved movies of the 1980s and spawned a multi-media franchise including two animated TV series, comic books, video games and a host of merchandise, including "Stay-Puft Marshmallows", which are stupid, square and for God-knows-what-reason, caffeinated, even though they were just ordinary marshmallows in the film as seen on Dana's kitchen counter.  The catchy theme song by Ray Parker, Jr. is a Halloween standard and was nominated for an Academy Award (competition was tight that year, including two songs from FOOTLOOSE, "Footloose" and "Let's Hear it for the Boy", Phil Collins' "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" from the little-remembered AGAINST ALL ODDS and the winner, Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You", from the also otherwise forgotten THE WOMAN IN RED).  Curiously, Akyroyd was reportedly reluctant to make the 1989 sequel, although he's been driving the fight to make a third film that has been in development hell so long that "GHOSTBUSTERS III" has become a running joke in the world of movie journalism.  Just recently, BRIDESMAIDS director Paul Feig and THE HEAT writer Katie Dippold were reported to be working on a script for a Ghostbusters reboot with a cast led by women to be directed by Feig, which could turn out to be a real possibility, but for all of Aykroyd's efforts, the possibility of an actual sequel continuously has failed to break ground.
For all its popularity and cultural resonance, GHOSTBUSTERS is less a great film and more of a good one.  The obvious highlight is Murray as Dr. Venkman, his most famous role and heavily improvised, though not far removed from what I can imagine Belushi having done with it.  Murray's deadpan wit results in an assortment of great quotable lines such as, "Back off man, I'm a scientist," "Yes, it's true, this man has no dick," "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!" and "We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!" just to list a few.  I also have to throw some love over to Ernie Hudson's Winston's line, "Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say 'yes!'"
Most of it is very low-key, deadpan humor though, providing plenty of light chuckles, but little in the way of belly laughs, which I suppose is a matter of taste.  The script is structurally messy, with a climax that feels mismanaged, from the introduction of the giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and jumping clunkily to the idea of crossing the streams to close the inter-dimensional portal, which, what do you know, it works and that's that.  It would be preferred to have some trial and error, rather than such a loosely-established plot device, from "don't cross the streams" to a "let's try it" and it all works out.  It's a fun movie, but undeniably imperfect.

Gozer the Traveler, the Destroyer, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.