Les vrais chasseurs de fantômes

How do I even begin to describe how much a love affair I have with this series? The darker tone of the first couple seasons was great. It wasn't nearly as dark as Batman the Animated series,another favorite of mine was,in comparison.

One of the things that I heard of which may've affected the series in the last couple of seasons was parents complaining about violent content,which is funny when you compare it to series like He-man and TMNT which were both running around the same time. I say this is funny when you consider that both of the other series I've mentioned used more common weapons as well as attacking things that were sometimes human like living creatures.

Anyways back to Ghostbusters,before a lot of shows started having a chronological plot, I feel like Ghostbusters had some major first steps in that some of the episodes actually did connect,Samhain and Boogeyman are the ones I'm thinking of at the moment,might be others as well.

I also enjoyed waking up each Saturday morning to have the show to look forward to, the plots were good,the ghosts creative and just having a continuation of the first movie was great for a start of interest in the paranormal and supernatural and to find out what is actually out there.

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).

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

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.

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.