Review for Ghostbusters

Introduction

“So what, I guess they just don't make them like they used to?
“Nobody ever made them like this! I mean the director had to be a certified genius or an authentic wacko!”

Forgive the paraphrasing, but that quote is as wholly applicable to the Ghostbusters movie, as it is to the gothic edifice at the heart of its plot. It’s one of those perfect storms that come along in cinema, a film that perfectly captures the moment, eighties entrepreneurism embodied in a nugget of comedy gold. It also crystallised a phenomenon that had been gestating for the past ten or so years, that of bringing comedians to the big screen in a way that had never been done before, the advent of the stand-up as rock star phenomenon. Previously there had been comedies, and comics had appeared in funny films, but this was usually as variations on themselves. Now the comedians were acting, and not just in comedies. The films were becoming bigger budgeted and concept driven and director Ivan Reitman would bring some of the more fantastic concepts to screen in films like Twins, Dave and Kindergarten Cop.


National Lampoon were making feature films, the Saturday Night Live alumni were graduating to the silver screen, this was when comedian Eddie Murphy was hot on his way to becoming the biggest movie star in the world, in action movies like 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop, and comedies like Trading Places, the latter of which also starred Dan Aykroyd, who had already written and starred in The Blues Brothers at this point, and would then turn his pen to another vehicle for him and John Belushi about busting ghosts. John Belushi passed away tragically young, but the idea for the movie didn’t die. Harold Ramis, Bill Murray and Ivan Reitman had already worked together on Stripes, and later Ramis would direct, and Murray would star in another film landmark, Groundhog Day, Ramis would also write another Murray vehicle, Caddyshack (which starred another comedian movie star in Chevy Chase). These talents would keep bouncing off each other and sparking memorable moments, a lot like neutrons buzzing around a chunk of subcritical uranium, keeping it nice and hot. All it needed was the right impetus to push it over the edge and mushroom cloud. That impetus was Ghostbusters, a comedy movie which was no longer just comedy, but the start of a franchise which spawned a sequel, cartoons, comics, videogames, and that still remains in the public consciousness even now, thirty years later. It also catapulted its stars into the stratosphere. It became one of my favourite films the first time I saw it, and it remains so to this day, and you can bet that the Blu-ray was an instant upgrade for me.


To be thrown out of a university may seem like the ignominious end to a secure academic career, but for Doctors Ray Stantz, Peter Venkman and Egon Spengler, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. For they have discovered that they can capture and contain a ghost. With the right technology, and for the appropriate fee, people can be saved from the blight of hauntings, of possession, and of general spookiness. When the adverts start appearing on TV, it seems like a joke at first, things that go bump in the night! But Ghostbusters may have just appeared at the perfect time, for night-time bumping is getting a lot more prevalent, and behind it all is the imminent fulfilment of an ancient Sumerian prophecy. It’s a prophecy that will draw into its embrace hot cellist and Peter Venkman’s dream date, Dana Barrett, and her neighbour, nebbish accountant Louis Tully, who just happen to have apartments at Spook Central.

Picture

Eighties film stock was never the most pleasant of storage media. This Blu-ray transfer brings across the 2.40:1 widescreen 1080p image impeccably. I saw no issues with compression and the like, and neither has the film gone through any kind of digital processing to scrub it of grain. What you see is film, grainy, a little flickery, the odd speck here and there, organic, rich and alive. It looks great, but as I said, there is the issue of eighties film stock, and Ghostbusters’ image is a tad soft, grainier than the average film, and with the overall palette slightly muted, although certain colours do come across strongly, as do the film’s visual effects. Skin tones appear a little waxy, particularly in the first few minutes of the film. The biggest issue might be that shadow detail is a little lacking (there’s not a lot of detail in Dean Yeager’s suit at the start of the film), but of course the bottom line is that it’s still a world away from the old DVD transfer. The proof of the pudding for me is how much I see of a film for the first time, and even watching Ghostbusters for probably the twentieth time in my life, on Blu-ray I was still noticing things I had never seen before, getting a proper look at the detail atop the apartment building, the richness of the production design, the ‘No Ghosts’ logo popping off the ‘busters’ jumpsuits, and the prevalence of product placement.

Sound

Ghostbusters gets Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround English and Italian tracks, with subtitles in English, Italian, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Hindi. I went with the English audio, and after being whacked up to halfway on my player, it delivered a nice, expressive and immersive track that isn’t too contrived, or far removed from its stereo roots. The dialogue is clear throughout, Ghostbusters still has one of the more memorable eighties music soundtracks, and proton packs have never sounded cooler than in HD audio.

Extras

The disc says PG, the case says 12 (Ghostbusters was reissued on Blu-ray in 2012), and the reason is that in the 3 years between releases, the film was resubmitted to the BBFC, and it was decided that the sight of spectral fellatio, borderline when first released, warranted a nudge up to the 12A rating today. Ghostbusters is presented in a Blu-ray Amaray case, and the disc, which takes a little while to boot up, presents its content with an animated menu.

Let’s get the crap out of the way first. BD Live, or as I call it, Cold Day in Hell. I don’t know what it does, and I don’t want to know. My player and the Internet shall remain unacquainted.


That’s not the reason I’m not interested in Cinechat though. If someone talks to me while I’m watching a film, they’re going to get a peeved glare. Anyone who has the temerity to pull out a smartphone and socially network during a movie is scum of the Earth. Cinechat lets you do this with your Blu-ray player, opening up a chat window, over the movie, so you can talk about the film you’re watching, while you’re watching it, with like-minded scum of the Earth. Whoever invented Cinechat should be taken out and shot, then buried in a shallow grave, their spirit should be allowed to rise from said grave, and then their ghost should be busted!

The Blu-Wizard lets you set up the extras to play automatically at appropriate points in the film. Another gadget I’ll never use...

The audio commentary on this disc is the same as that on the DVD, with contributions from Harold Ramis, Ivan Reitman, and associate producer Joe Medjuck. It’s still an entertaining track to listen to, and it’s easy to lose track of the time. It’s subtitled in English and Italian should you need it. No silhouette mode this time though.


New to this Blu-ray release is the Slimer Mode, which erects a Ghostbusters themed frame around the film as it plays, and pops up little picture in picture interviews with the actors, director, and production crew while the film is playing, a sort of visual commentary put together for the film’s 25th anniversary, and featuring new content in comparison to the DVD. You’ll also have little trivia notes, and production stills pop up as well. So that’s two hours for the film, two hours for the commentary, and two hours for the Slimer Mode, six hours worth of value from one disc, and that’s before you’ve even looked at the video extras on the disc. I must admit that it would have been useful to be able to watch the interview footage separately from the film as well.


Most of what is new to the Blu-ray though is promotional material for the 2009 Ghostbusters videogame. Two featurettes focus on restoring the original Ecto-1, which is probably the most interesting of the new material, although it helps to put it out of your mind that the only reason a restoration was bankrolled was to promote the game. There is a 16 minute featurette and a 5½ minute image gallery for this restoration. Then there is the Making of the Videogame featurette (11 minutes), and a trailer for that game. The one positive about that featurette is that it offers some contemporary interview footage with the cast.

The rest of the extra material comes from the DVD and includes the deleted scenes, the 1984 featurette (10 mins), the Cast and Crew Featurette (11 mins), the SFX Team Featurette (15 mins), 3 multi-angle featurettes and 3 storyboard comparisons.

It’s worth noting that the image gallery, the rest of the storyboards, and the film trailers haven’t made it onto the Blu-ray.

Conclusion

I would have thought that this would be the best quality that you’d see Ghostbusters in, short of watching it in an actual cinema again, but then Sony went and released a Superbit edition, I mean a Mastered in 4K edition, which strips out all the extras and adds more bits to the audio and video. From the few screenshots I have seen, that amounts to the film having a smidge more detail at the expense of looking a little duller, but your mileage may vary. As for me, I am delighted with this Blu-ray release of Ghostbusters, as my favourite eighties supernatural comedy now looks better than I have ever seen it.


Even after all these years, and the countless times I have watched it, it’s lost none of its charm, somehow combining comedy, sci-fi and horror to create something greater than the sum of its parts, a unique experience which many have tried to emulate, but no-one in my opinion has succeeded. Certainly I don’t have the same soft spot in my heart for the sequel, Ghostbusters II, and Ivan Reitman tried again with Evolution, but again that’s a film that has slipped from the memory. At the time of its release, you might have expected Men in Black to take Ghostbusters’ crown, but that too is very much a film of its time. None of these films have the staying power of Ghostbusters, and it really is a timeless classic, a one-off.


It’s a combination of a great story, engaging characters, a razor sharp script, and somehow tapping into the public zeitgeist of the period, with effortless branding. The summer of 1984 saw No-Ghost logos all over the place, and had Ray Parker Jr’s theme song rocketing to the top of the charts. As stated in the extras, films are lucky if they have a line that can adorn a T-Shirt; Ghostbusters was filled with them, every other line a quotable zinger.


Going from VHS to DVD was easy, it was a case of upgrade everything. That hasn’t been the case with Blu-ray, with DVD just about good enough for the average TV screen, even when up-scaled to HD, and a financial crisis restricting disposable incomes. I’ve had to carefully consider which films I watch the most, and which would benefit most from the HD treatment, and upgrade accordingly, selectively. Such deliberations can take minutes, even hours of hovering over a buy button. Not with Ghostbusters. This is one of those films that you simply want to have in the best possible quality. I guess that means I’ll be getting that SuperBlu edition too.