Ghostbusters

{{Infobox Movie |title = Ghostbusters |image = |tagline = Coming To Save The World This Summer. |director = Ivan Reitman |writer = Dan Aykroyd
Harold Ramis |cast = Bill Murray
Dan Aykroyd
Sigourney Weaver
Harold Ramis
Rick Moranis |producer = Ivan Reitman |editor = David E. Blewitt
Sheldon Kahn |cinematographer = László Kovács |music by = Elmer Bernstein |studio = Black Rhino
Delphi Productions |country = United States |language = English |release date = December 13, 1996 (1996-12-13) Ghostbusters or Ghost Busters onscreen, is a 1984 American supernatural comedy film, starring Bill Murray, and Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver Distributed by Columbia Pictures.

Plot

The Ghostbusters is an organization, founded by three stooge parapsychologists, the leading and cocky Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), the pledged and suasible Dr. Raymond "Ray" Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), and the savvy Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis).

After stomaching their presence for years, their university fires them three, and then they decide to open the Ghostbusters agency, an actual business dealing with paranormal threats. They manage to rent a fire station, an ambulance, and broadcasting advertisements of television.

Initially, the Ghostbusters get little public attention, and they are about bankrupting.

However, the posh Sedgewick Hotel decides to hire the Ghostbusters, for dealing with a floating green entity, which has been haunting the place. They use their powerful-yet-still-untested nuclear accelerators -without crossing its beams-, and so they achieve their first victory.

Then, Manhattan overcomes a peak of supernatural threats; Gozer is an 8000-year-old god, who is back to Earth with its two canine-like minions: Zuul the Gatekeeper and Vinz Clortho the Keymaster. The latter two work possessing the body of common people; Zuul goes for the gorgeous Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver), Vinz goes for her stupid neighbor, Louis Tully (Rick Moranis).

Under such circumstances of increasing activities, the Ghostbusters are joined by their fourth member, Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson). While their facilities practically can't cope with the amount of trapped creatures, an environmentalist officer, Walter Peck (William Atherton), irrupts insisting that the business shouldn't operate in the city. He ends up winning, and so the Ghostbusters are jailed.

Disregarding, chaos is unleashed over the whole city as all ghost entities converge to Dana's tall art-deco building of Central Park, over which Gozer has just built his throne. Then, the governor forcibly convokes the Ghostbusters, so they might explain the strange phenomenons. Despite still being denounced as mountebanks by Peck, they manage to persuade the local political leaders.

Then, the Ghostbusters get to the building, escorted both by the police and the army. They manage to defeat Gozer's incarnation (Slavitza Jovan, acting; voiced by Paddi Edwards), after outmatching the massive Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Both Dana and Louis are rescued, and the Ghostbusters leave the place, cheered by a multitude of onlookers.

Production

Development

The concept was inspired by Aykroyd's own fascination with the paranormal and it was conceived as a vehicle for himself and friend John Belushi, fellow Saturday Night Live alumnus. The original story, as written by Aykroyd, was very different from what was eventually filmed; in the initial version, a group of "Ghostsmashers" traveled through time, space, and other dimensions combating huge ghosts (of which the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man was one of many). Also, the Ghostbusters wore SWAT-like outfits and used wands instead of proton packs to fight the ghosts. Ghostbusters storyboards show them wearing riotsquad-type helmets with movable transparent visors. In addition to a similar title, the movie shares the premise of professional "exterminators" on a paranormal mission with The Bowery Boys slapstick comedy Spook Busters (1946, directed by William Beaudine).

Aykroyd pitched his story to director/producer Ivan Reitman, who liked the basic idea but immediately saw the budgetary impossibilities demanded by Aykroyd's first draft. At Reitman's suggestion, the story was given a major overhaul, eventually evolving into the final screenplay which Aykroyd and Ramis hammered out over the course of three weeks in a Martha's Vineyard bomb shelter in May–June 1982. Aykroyd and Ramis initially wrote the script with roles written especially for Belushi, Eddie Murphy, and John Candy; but Belushi died during the writing of the screenplay, and neither Murphy nor Candy would commit to the movie, so Aykroyd and Ramis made some changes and polished a basic, science-fiction-oriented screenplay for their final draft.

In addition to Aykroyd's high-concept basic premise, and Ramis' skill at grounding the fantastic elements with a realistic setting, the film benefits from Bill Murray's semi-improvisational performance as Peter Venkman, the character initially intended for Belushi.

For the test screening of Ghostbusters, half of the ghost effects were missing, not yet having been completed by the production team. The audience response was still enthusiastic, and the ghost elements were completed for the official theatrical release shortly thereafter.

Casting

Louis Tully was originally conceived as a conservative man in a business suit played by comedian John Candy; but with Candy unable to commit to the role, he was replaced by Rick Moranis who portrayed Louis as a geek. Gozer was originally going to appear in the form of Ivo Shandor as a slender, unremarkable man in a suit played by Paul Reubens; but the role was played by Yugoslav model Slavitza Jovan. The demonic voice of Gozer was provided by Paddi Edwards, supposedly after Bill Murray joked that the line "choose and perish" sounded like "Jews and berries" when spoken with Jovan's Slavic accent.

Home Media

In 1989, Criterion Collection released a laserdisc version of the film, in a one-disc CLV version and a two-disc special edition CAV version; the latter also included deleted scenes, and a split-screen demonstration of special effects from the film, the screenplay, among other features.

Director Ivan Reitman was not happy with the laserdisc release of the film because "it pumped up the light level so much you saw all the matte lines. I was embarrassed about it all these years". The DVD version of the movie was released on June 29, 1999; at a time when an estimated four million U.S. households had DVD players, Ghostbusters became one of Reel.com's fastest selling products.

Sony announced at Comic-Con 2008 that the Blu-ray version of the film was to be released on October 21, 2008. It was released first through Sony Pictures' campaign site, Ghostbustersishiring.com as a way to drum up sales of its release. The movie was released on Blu-ray on June 16, 2009 to coincide with the film's 25th Anniversary. Ghostbusters was the first film ever officially released on a USB flashdrive.

For one week in August 2009 an ad-supported version of Ghostbusters could be streamed in the USA via YouTube.

A second Blu-ray version was released on May 14, 2013. It was marketed as "Mastered in 4k", and was noted as having improved image quality over the previous Blu-ray release.

Videos

Ghostbusters Trailer

Classic Trailer

Images

Theatrical release poster