Category Archives: Kooky Spooks

Beetlejuice (1988) | Tim Burton

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Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara Maitland (Geena Davis) love the little home in the country they’ve built for themselves, but after they are killed in a freak accident and come back as ghosts, they are appalled to find that their house has been sold to a tasteless and unpleasant family, who plan one tearing down all they’ve built to redo the house in the tackiest way possible. Now they are determined to do what they can to scare away the family and serve out their 125-year term as apparitions before moving on to the next phase, but a wrench stops up the works when the new owners are pleased with the financial possibilities of the attraction of a haunted house, and it seems the more they scare these new inhabitants, the more amused they get. The Maitlands call on the services of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), a crazy and psychotic ghoul who seems to do more harm than good for the Maitland’s tastes. Tim Burton directs.

Ghostbusters II (1989) | Ivan Reitman

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Five years after the events of Ghostbusters,  the heroes are zeroes again, bankrupt after getting sued by the city for the destructive aftermath of clearing out the city of spooks. There’s also a Federal restraining order prohibiting them from continued ghostbusting. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) is now the host of a cheesy local cable talk show called, “World of the Psychic.”  Occult bookstore owner Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) gets side work with Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), cosplaying as Ghostbusters for childrens’ birthday parties. Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) is back at Columbia University, investigating how human emotions affect psycho-magnetic energy.  Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) is a single mother after leaving Venkman for his inability to commit, having a baby, now eight months old, with another man.  Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) applies his knack for accounting to become a tax lawyer.

They reunite after being approached by Peter’s ex, Dana, who reports a strange occurrence involving her baby’s carriage traveling on its own. They discover rivers of mood slime running beneath the city, converging on the Manhattan Museum of Art, where Dana works as an art restorer, including a life-size portrait of Medieval sorcerer warlord, Vigo the Carpathian. Vigo’s spirit lives within his portrait, and to enter into the realm of the living, he needs a baby to be his vessel to come to the mortal realm and continue his reign of terror. He makes a deal with Dana’s boss, Dr. Janosz Poha (Peter MacNicol), to secure her baby, Oscar, in exchange for a date with her.

Ghostbusters (1984) | Ivan Reitman

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Ghostbusters centers on three university researchers (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis) of paranormal activity who go into business of their own once they get into trouble for their uncouth antics, and their grant money runs out.  They emerge on the scene as the “Ghostbusters”, a trio of exterminators (of sorts), willing to investigate phenomena from anyone in New York City willing to call their number and pay their fees.  Though the public is initially skeptical, these men soon become heroes, then celebrities, for their success rate, drawing the attention of the media, as well as the EPA (who are curious about their containment system), as the amount of ghostly appearances seems to be on a major upswing.

Sigourney Weaver co-stars as a cellist named Dana Barrett, who is one of the first in her old building to begin seeing strange things in her refrigerator, causing her to make the call she never thought she’d have to make.  Along with her neighbor, Louis Tully (Rick Moranis), she becomes the conduit for the rise of the malevolent Babylonian spirit, whose aims are to bring darkness onto the world. Directed by Ivan Reitman.

 

Erratum: The artist friend Aykroyd used for conceptual art on Ghost Smashers was John “The Viking” Deveikis, not the cited Thom Enriquez, who made additional conceptual art once Reitman was on board.