Les vrais chasseurs de fantômes

I'm 26.

"The Real Ghostbusters" is as good and as real as an animated TV series based off a popular movie franchise can possibly get. When I was growing up during the early 1990s, "The Real Ghostbusters" was one of four popular cartoon TV shows that helped shape my formative childhood years; the other three cartoons from that time were "Transformers," "G.I. Joe" and my personal favorite, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

Toward the mid-'90s, "The Real Ghostbusters" was ultimately removed from an early-morning TV line-up on USA (that's now channel 35, if you have Comcast cable like I do) that included the other three aforementioned animated shows, which soon left me without a source of entertainment that would spark my wild kiddie imagination. But thankfully, the advent of TV-on-DVD in the last decade has brought this utterly fantastic TV series back from the land of classic TV show entertainment oblivion.

Of course, "The Real Ghostbusters" was spun off the wildly popular 1984 cult supernatural comedy "Ghostbusters," about three unemployed university parapsychologists who become New York City's leading investigators and eliminators of pesky poltergeists. Drs. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) were eventually supplemented by a fourth member, Everyman Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), as they battled an ancient, malevolent, other-worldly entity that had designs on dropping in on Central Park West and laying waste to human civilization.

"The Real Ghostbusters" is a continuation of that exact same storyline with the same classic characters and a new legion of evil ghosts needing investigation and extermination from our four popular heroes.

"The Real Ghostbusters," like its original 1984 film-spawn, is a work of unquestionable uniqueness, brilliance, and originality. "Ghostbusters" was one of the most unique and original comedies to come out of the early '80s (and it's also one of my all-time favorite movies), so it's no wonder why it was the highest-grossing film of 1984 - after a cash-grabbing theatrical re-release one year later in 1985 to beat out "Beverly Hills Cop"; it's also no wonder why it also had a best-selling musical soundtrack, too, which featured the pop culture classic "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker, Jr., and the song is featured prominently on the TV show as well. Also like in the movie, "The Real Ghostbusters" crackles with humor, strong voice-acting performances, action sequences, special effects, and imagination.

"The Real Ghostbusters" is real creativity and imagination from a time when TV shows were still willing enough to be daring and original.

10/10

I wish I could go back and see this show again as a kid even though I do act like a kid at times. I loved the interaction between Peter Venkman and Slimer. The goofy Ray was always funny for his good ol' boy attitude and Winston and Egon were always there to provide insight. This is one of those series I'm going to one day get on DVD so I can feel like a kid again while eating ice cream all day long.

When I was three and four, I used to watch "The Real Ghost Busters" on TV, so I was surprised when I learned that the "Ghostbusters" movie was live-action!* As for the show itself, it's OK, although now I wish that they could have had Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver's character from the movies) as a character. It seems that Egon was always getting turned into something creepy - a monster chicken, a warlock, etc. I still wonder why the Slimer was on the Ghostbusters' side on the show. Maybe my favorite episode was the one where they got transferred into a ghost version of New York, although that one where they got stranded on the haunted island was also neat.

All in all, not great, but a pretty cool part of TV history. So just who are ya gonna call?

*The first time that I watched the movie (when I was seven), it scared the hell out of me. I was a little thrown off when I saw that it wasn't a cartoon, and by the fact that it was black and white. The lion statue threw me off further, and after the woman saw the ghost in the basement, I could only interpret the movie as horror. When it was over, I never wanted to watch it again. I watched it again when I was nine and thought that it was one of the funniest things that I'd ever seen. As for the black and white part, it came out black and white on the tape when my parents taped it; their only explanation is that the tape was haunted (in which case, that was the perfect movie to record onto it).

Like most animated shows, The Real Ghostbusters got off to a bit of a shaky start and things really improved soon after. Like the movie, there's more to it than just silly stories. The writers took many of their ideas from works of HP Lovecraft and made up their own wild but imaginative plots.

There were some slight changes made to the characters. Peter Venkman became younger, Ray Stantz shorter, fatter, ginger and more enthusiastic, Egon Spengler became blonde with round, red glasses, Winston Zeddemore looks nothing like Ernie Hudson, Janine Melnitz become hotter and Onionhead/Slimer became good instead of malevolent. And they also had different colored overalls. Why? Because kids respond better to colors.

Though it did bug me that there weren't many references to Gozer, why Dana and Louis disappeared and how all of a sudden the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man was good.

Animation fans will be unable to not think of Garfield or Fred from Scooby Doo whenever Peter or Ray talk as they are voiced by the same guys and sound exactly alike.

The show did go on for a good while and spawned a new generation of Ghostbusters toys and merchandise. There have been many bad animated TV shows made out of movies (The Mummy, Evolution, Ace Ventura, The Mask…I could go on) but The Real Ghostbusters ain't one of them. Extreme Ghostbusters followed in the mid-90's, but it didn't catch on too well.

I do wish Columbia would release season box sets on DVD but for now there are ultra-cheap 4-episode DVDs available from Columbia only in Britain. They'll do for now.

With completely imaginative stories, and top notch writing, The Real Ghostbusters was far superior to Ghostbusters 2. This show benefitted from an excellent cast (Lorenzo Music, Arseno Hall, and cartoon workhorse Frank Welker,) as well as an incredible cadre of writers, including Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Strazynski, and Star Trek Tribble-meister David Gerrold.

Unlike the lackluster movie sequel, The Real Ghostbusters assumes that the increase in supernatural activity in New York doesn't subside after the banishment of Gozur the Gozerian. Instead, the series assumes that the guys stayed in business. Now, with most kids shows, this would have rapidly devolved into a series of stupid plots and repetitiveness. However, the production team for the first two seasons managed to avoid this. Instead, they dug into the deepest wells and pits of human folklore to find storylines (Indeed, this is the only 'kids' series that I have ever seen which borrowed from the works of HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton, and August Derlith!) Gerrold, Strazinski, and the other writers (many of whom are extremely well known within Science Fiction circles) managed to construct plots which were always funny, exciting, and genuinely engaging, ranging from a spoof of Gerrold's own 'The Trouble with Tribbles (Attack of the 50 foot Slimer) to a top notch tribute to one of the greats of early 20th Century Literary Horror (Collect Call of Cuthulu) Also, the characterizations were top notch (even though Peter Venkman's lecherousness had to be toned down, obviously)

Unfortunately, after the second (?) season, the show underwent a major upheval, and most of the original creative staff left, along with some of the cast (Lorenzo Music was replaced by Dave Coulier, who, while he did a dead on Bill Murray impression, didn't have the ability to give the character as much personality.) And with the staff, so went the soul of the show. The writing went downhill, and, while the show was still above average, it just didn't catch the viewer's interest like it used to. By the time of it's final season (on the heels of Ghostbusters 2) it just wasn't worth watching...