Les vrais chasseurs de fantômes

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.

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).

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 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!