The Real Ghostbusters - I veri acchiappafantasmi

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.

The Real Ghostbusters is the animated spin off to 1984's kick-ass classic movie "Ghostbusters" which deals with four ghost eliminators (Peter, Egon, Winston and Ray) catching all sorts of poltergeists and saving New York from destruction while at the same time not losing it's nerve to be a comedy. What's different about The Real Ghostbusters after the first movie's release was how they make the character of Janine Melnitz more developed and making her not afraid while adding the character of Slimer as the group's mascot. The highlights of the show were things that people of today wouldn't handle from spooky music; bringing in mythical creatures, classic fairy tales and spirits in the cartoons such as The Bogeyman, The Sandman, even a revised version of The Headless Horseman on a motorcycle was awesome. Even though the series doesn't come on cable anymore, The Real Ghostbusters was a real guilty pleasure in my childhood where every Saturday morning i would wake up to see the cartoons along with having my action figures to recreate the scenes.

That's a memory.

I grew up watching the Real Ghostbusters, and I gotta tell ya, it blew my mind. The voice acting was great, the stories were very original and the effects were incredible. What made the stories great was that the writers didn't insult the intelligence of the audience and presented it like the movie did when dealing with scientific problems. But what interested me were the episodes written by Michael Reaves, the man responsible for the two Bogeyman episodes. What I still don't know is what gave him the idea to not only reveal the reason why Egon wanted to be a Ghostbuster and why he didn't make the Bogeyman a ghost. Pure genius. Too bad he didn't write a Bogeyman episode for the Extreme Ghostbusters, but I guess that's my job. Well, till next time.

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...

I loved this cartoon as much as the movie (except for the slimer and the real ghostbusters part, with only the ghostmaster's revenge as an exception). I love the dark and spooky theme the first three seasons have. I bet you any amount of money that there are some episodes that would frighten even older people (thankfully not in the gory and bloody manner) like the episode "Mrs. Roger's neighborhood where the customer is a ghost that possesses Peter that the other busters need to make an extremely risky move. I loved the Sandman episode and Egon's dragon. But the one episode I love the most would have to be "Ragnarok and Roll" about a man with a southern accent who gets a flute that can bring about the end of the world and his fiancée and quasimodo partner must convince him and the busters must battle the demon in the sky. Watch this show and have the time and fright of your life!