MOVIES

30 years on, 'Ghostbusters' still matters

Bill Goodykoontz
Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis in "Ghostbusters" (1984).
  • Comedy and horror are the essential elements%2C but so is Bill Murray.
  • The film shows us fears and teaches us to laugh at them.
  • The horror is scarier than you probably remember%2C and the comedy is hilarious.

It sounds like such a strange idea for a movie: A group of out-of-work professors starts a company to exterminate ghosts.

Actually, maybe that's not such an odd idea — for a horror movie. But "Ghostbusters," Ivan Reitman's 1984 blockbuster, is a comedy. And yes, there have been plenty of horror-comedy mash-ups, as any Vincent Price fan can tell you.

This, though, was something different. No one skimped on anything. This was a movie where the horror is surprisingly scary (almost certainly scarier than you remember it), and the humor is flat-out hilarious. The writing is top-notch, the direction assured.

"It was one of those movies where you say, 'I've never seen anything like it,' " said Joel Hopkins, a writer and director whose latest film is "The Love Punch." "It was truly, 'Where did that come from?' It was like coming from another world."

And then there's Bill Murray, of course.

Now, 30 years later, the movie still holds up, it's still quoted, a random remark with "Godzilla" star Aaron Taylor-Johnson results in him singing, in his British accent, the "Ghostbusters" theme. The movie still matters. But why? And what made it so good to begin with?

"Because everyone was peaking," said Wheeler Winston Dixon, the coordinator of the film studies program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, director Ivan Reitman, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver — the whole thing was going to explode wide open. It's the perfect mix of comedy and slapstick spookiness."

Murray, the former "Saturday Night Live" star, was carving out a name for himself in such comedies as "Caddyshack" and "Stripes." Aykroyd and Ramis, who wrote the film, were thinking of "Ghostbusters" as a vehicle for Aykroyd and John Belushi, but when Belushi died, that obviously changed things. Murray was now their man.

"I tend to think that the film had (and has) such a good vibe because it was salvaged from the ashes of that sadness that came from Belushi's death," said Anthony Pomes, the vice president for marketing at Square One Publishers Inc., in New York, "not unlike how Americans came to love the Beatles in the wake of JFK's assassination. But I really believe what made the film … most charming was Bill Murray's zanily anarchic performance as Dr. Peter Venkman."

Murray again. But Pomes is right. Murray is terrific as Venkman, a parapsychologist with no respect for authority, an aversion to research and a fondness for beautiful women. This combination eventually lands him out of a job, along with fellow professors Raymond Stantz (Aykroyd) and Egon Spengler (Ramis). Desperate for money, they create a service that will eliminate paranormal activity in homes, hotels, wherever it's needed.

A scene from the 1984 film "Ghostbusters."

To their surprise, business booms, so much so that they hire on a fourth Ghostbuster (as they call themselves), Winston (Ernie Hudson). Venkman becomes particularly interested in a case involving Dana Barrett (Weaver), whose apartment is haunted. Her case winds up being crucial to a demonic plan to destroy the world. But Venkman's mostly interested because she's beautiful, and their offbeat chemistry is one of the movie's highlights.

"You don't act like a scientist," Dana says to Venkman. "You're more like a game-show host."

It all culminates in an epic battle against … the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, which gives you an idea of the mixing of genres. But it worked. The movie, made for $30 million, has grossed more than $229 million. More importantly, it dug its way into popular culture in a lasting way. You still hear people saying, "He slimed me" or, "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together — mass hysteria" or, "Don't cross the streams!"

And, as noted, people like Aaron Taylor-Johnson can sing the theme song on command.

"The movie's staying power lies in that intersection of the comedic genius, the originality and the psyche of a child," said CarrieLynn Reinhard, a self-described big fan of the film, as well as an assistant professor of communication arts and sciences at Dominican University, in River Forest, Ill., by e-mail. Fitting because she was a child when the movie came out, and she thinks that is important to its continuing power over the young audience the film found.

"As kids, we would sneak looks at the horror films our parents would watch, and there were horror elements being brought into our movies (thanks to the formation of the PG-13 rating). But here was a comedy about a subject traditionally meant only as horror — ghosts. Ramis, Reitman, et al., gave us the scares and thrills we love from horror (even if they do keep us up at night scared of our dark bedroom) with the adventure and comedy of the big movies we were being groomed on."

Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson in "Ghostbusters" (1984).

And that's the key, Reinhard said.

"It gave us our scares, but it gave us a way to laugh at them. And that is a lesson I think every little boy and girl needs to learn: how to face down the thing that scares us and laugh in its face."

Or just laugh, period. The comedy works in part because of what Ramis and Aykroyd brought to the script — namely a manic attention to detail about everything, from the equipment the Ghostbusters use to the paranormal information the scientists spout to the environmental codes of New York.

And then they let Murray run all over the place, like when his Venkman is holding a container filled with a spirit and a man gets on the elevator he's riding in. "That's gotta be some cockroach," he says, to which Venkman replies, dryly, "Bite your head off, man."

A sequel didn't rekindle the magic of the original, but that hasn't stopped unceasing talk about a third film. (Ramis' recent death obviously changes the equation.) That's kind of a scary thought.

"I'm sure the execs would love it," Dixon said, "but it's just like 'Taxi Driver.' It was of its time and place, and it can't be repeated."

That won't stop studios from trying, of course. But no matter how many sequels or cartoon spin-offs or anything else come our way, there will always be the original, showing up seemingly out of nowhere in the middle of the Reagan years. We had plenty to fear, and "Ghostbusters" gave us more. But it also gave us something to laugh at; here we are 30 years later, laughing still.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: twitter.com/goodyk.