Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 1 (Ghostbusters)

In this scene, Bill Murray is secretly possessed by one of
the movie's investors.

Damn. October crept right up on us, didn't it? I'm still disoriented from the big rush of a weekend vacation, so in my case it really did just sneak up on me. Regardless, summer's last grasps are gone. The air's chilly, the grass is no longer growing, and fall has well and truly started. So too has October. The spooky month! It's another 31 days of spooky content from me, and we've picked a classic to kick things off. I've wanted to do this one for a while, but I never got around to it. Until now, of course. I want to preface this by saying that I like Ghostbusters. Note the key phrasing there. I am not one of the many who grew up with this as a nostalgic classic on constant rotation in the VHS player or anything like that. It's not one of my very favorite movies of all time by any stretch. This will become relevant in two days time, probably, but for now just know that this isn't a sacred temple for me. It's an enjoyable movie that's fun to watch, however. I do like it. There's a lot to love, of course. It's charming and witty, with lots of great little comedic moments. It's spooky and imaginative with all of its ghost business and its special effects. It's got a killer cast! It really isn't hard to see why it's a classic, but I don't want to simply get in there and talk about why it's classic. I want to go a little weirder with this. I want to sink into this movie's implications a bit, explore the dark undercurrents of the period in which it's made, and get a little something going to kick things off here. I want to go back to the old ghosts of the Nintendo Project days and talk about the spectre haunting this movie. The Dread Beast GREED, I called it back then. Hell, let's not make up funny words for it. Ghostbusters is a movie about capitalism and apocalypse.


Certainly, being a movie from 1984, there's a big stink of yuppie-level moneymaking all throughout this movie. The opening act, when you distill it down, is three folks starting up a unique new business together and finding massive success with it, leading to them becoming celebrities in their own right. Of course, the unique new business is a ghost-catching service. The fact that this is at all needed is an important plot point of the movie, and all but stated by their new hire of a fourth man at about the halfway point. The Ghostbusters are so busy and successful because the literal goddamned end of the world is conjuring up a paranormal energy storm in New York City... and they're making an honest job out of it. Now, they're not hypercapitalists or anything. Far from it. They're working class guys who have gotten a bit of fame from their weird and wild service. You can see it in the montage at about a third of the way in, with their faces plastered on every magazine and them getting talked about on radio shows. Casey Kasem has a bit about them in the middle of American Top 40! The fact that a bunch of dudes caught a ghost as part of their job is a trivial factoid on the radio! There are some undertones of class divide in Ghostbusters, and their base intent was probably to play for comedy. The snooty upper class turning up their noses at this whole "ghost" business is prevalent throughout the movie. Look at the scene at the beginning when the Dean evicts the three of them, giving his little speech about how unfit they are to RECIEVE FUNDING AT SUCH A WELL-TO-DO INSTITUTION FOR FUNNY SPOOKY SCIENCES, WELL I NEVER! Or when Rick Moranis is running from a Sumerian demon dog and the fancy restaurant is locked up and nobody at all gives a shit about him out there. Hell, half the comedic beats of the hotel scene are based on the juxtaposition of the working-class Ghostbusters with the fancy hotel and fancy hotel staff! The money is a real concern to me, and maybe I'm overthinking it... but that's just what happens when you've seen a movie so many times. The price for the Ghostbusters catching Slimer in the hotel is $5000. That's a lot of goddamned money, and they catch a lot of goddamned ghosts in that montage. A fancy hotel can afford that, sure, but what about the average small business? Or, God forbid, a normal family haunted by some spooky ghost? The Ghostbusters really should be rich as almighty fuck, and yet you don't really see any changes in their lifestyle or expensive extravagances. Winston claims in a one-liner that he's only making $11,500 a year. That's like, two ghost catchings according to the hotel thing! Where's that money going?


Of course, with this unique business comes the form of government regulation. On paper, Walter Peck of the EPA is absolutely correct in wanting to examine this new ghost-catching machine shit to make sure its environmental footprint won't harm the planet. You wouldn't let big oil just do whatever it wanted, after all. If you give capitalism an inch, it won't just take a mile; it will take the entire goddamn highway and lobby for a special "existing on the same planet as the highway" tax for everyone to pay them. But then, the Ghostbusters aren't a big business. They're three scientists and a new hire who catch ghosts! The movie doesn't have anything to say on the possible ecological ramifications of the ghost containment unit, preferring to just have Bill Murray call William Atherton names and then say "COME BACK WITH A WARRANT, DICKLESS". Which he does. The movie does Peck no favors by having him simultaneously order the ghost containment unit shut down and then blaming the Ghostbusters for the ensuing explosion and release of all the fucking ghosts. Like, no shit all the ghosts will come out if you turn off the ghost containment unit! All of this is what finally powers the end of the world; the coming of Gozer. I really do wish the movie got into what Gozer's domain as a god was. All we know for certain is that Gozer is from ancient times and brings about destruction via its chosen form. Ivo Shandor, Gozer worshipper and engineer of the apartment complex that serves as Gozer's gate into our world, wanted to cleanse the world after the horrors of World War I. Did he want a new beginning, or a complete wipeout? We don't know. We can't know. What we do know is that Gozer appears, here and now in 1984... and that the form of the destructor is chosen. Lest you think I've been bullshitting this entire time about this capitalist undercurrent, let me remind you that the form of the destructor is literally a giant corporate mascot for a brand of marshmallows stomping through New York like Godzilla. Hell, as pointed out to me on Twitter by the ever-wonderful Jack Graham... the logo the Ghostbusters use for their business is the movie's own logo! The capitalist serpent is eating its own tail! Jesus Christ! The only thing left to do is blow it all up. Yeah, okay, the resolution of the movie is basically just a bit of Doctor Who technobabble. It does the trick, though. That's Ghostbusters. It's very good, and I managed to get a pretty neat reading of it with this. I'm satisfied. What else does this franchise have to offer now that it's a big hit? We've got 30 more days and a lot of time. Let's find out, shall we?