The Ghostbuster series has a huge following. It has spawned a great cartoon, the best Hi-C flavor ever, and a few video games. There has even been some rumblings lately of a third movie.
The first movie deals with the formation of the group, and the subsequent battle against Gozer the Gozerian. The movie starts off with Peter, Ray, and Egon, who are professors at Columbia University. At least, they are for a bit. They get their funding cut and are left go by the university. They decide to go into business as the Ghostbusters. They have to hire a fourth member, and they find Winston. Everything is going well for them.
All the while, Gozer is preparing to invade and conquer our planet. Gozer's two hearlds, Vinz Clortho the Keymaster and Zuul the Gatekeeper, posses Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis. Oh, and some douche from the EPA shuts down the Ghostbuster's containment field and has them thrown in jail.
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| It's Carl Winslow! We're saved! |
This movie also has one of my favorite movie quotes of all time:
Ray: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Peter: Exactly.
Ray: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Egon: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston: The dead rising from the grave!
Peter: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
The second film sees our boys fighting a possessed painting of Vigo Von Homburg Deutschendorf, a.k.a. Vigo the Carpathian. Vigo was a sorcerer and tyrant in the 16th century, and was eventually killed by the people he ruled over. He was poisoned, shot, stabbed, hung, stretched, disemboweled, and drawn and quartered. In modern day, his spirit resided in a painting of himself, and was using negative energy collected by Psychomagnotheric Slime underneath New York City.
In one of this movie's most iconic scenes, the "mood slime" helps bring the Statue of Liberty to life. Sort of. They coat the entire inside of the statue with the slime, play some Jackie Wilson to energize the slime, and they drive it through the city streets with a NES Advantage controller.
Both of these movies are good, but in my opinion the first one stands head and shoulders above the sequel. The sequel feels much closer in tone to the cartoon than the first movie. That is far from a bad thing though, because the cartoon was great. They are also must-watches around this time of the year. One thing though, do NOT watch these in Full Screen. Even though I don’t think anyone here would do that on purpose, sometimes it just can’t be helped. Like when they are on TV. The last time I saw the first movie on TV, it was on Comedy Central, and it is completely horrible. There is a scene with Ray and Winston both in the Ecto-1, and they are both mostly off the screen. You can only see slivers of their faces. It's pathetic.
Halloween Movie Madness was kind of an experiment for me. To be honest, I wasn't even sure I was going to be able to stick with it the whole way through. I want to thank those of you who actually took the time to read through these and to share your thoughts on the movies covered.
I am definitely going to be doing this again in December with a Christmas Movie Marathon, but I am glad that I have a month off! As much as I enjoy horror movies, this was freaking exhausting!