Greatest 80s movie of the 80s - thankfully doesn't look too 80s.

Rating: 9/10 (12 January 2015)

This movie was a huge commercial success when it opened, partly because it mixed big budget visual effects with small scale human comedy, but also because the perfectly cast and designed Ghostbusters created such a memorable impression that audiences seemingly had the movie etched on their consciousness for decades afterward.
Ghostbusters follows basic comedy plot tropes, broadly speaking; when three unsuccessful parapsychologists are removed from their campus, they face the reality of starting a business in a competitive, uncaring world. In doing so, they offer to capture ghosts with high end industrial lasers, and along the way, lovable goof-ball Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) falls in love with Dana Barrett, a concert cellist who initially rejects him.
The movie effortlessly combines sci-fi with horror, fantasy, comedy and romance elements, and no element ever feels out of place or at odds with the underlying structure. The films classy, almost fifties retro visual style has weathered well, and László Kovács classic cinematography is put to good use in the films various comic set ups and large scale visual effects set pieces, as is Elmer Bernstein's classic score.
What's little known about the film is that a T.V. series from the seventies "The Ghost Busters" already existed a decade earlier, although unrelated to the film except in name only, also some of the visual effects appear to be an extension of the effects created for the 1982 movie Poltergeist.
Ultimately, the cast of Ghostbusters have gone on to do other things, although internet fandom has made noise about a new film for a decade or more, but none has actually come to light. Plans for a female-led Ghostbusters installment are in the works, but really, who cares? It would mean more to create something new and challenging, but the temptation to rework a successful franchise is too much for the for-profit investment model associated with Hollywood filmmaking.
That said, for all of the fans/collectors/geeks/obsessives who love Ghostbusters, its official sequel from 1989 is flat in terms of fantasy OR comedy material, and its also surprising how many utterly hopeless films have been made with the names "Ivan Reitman" or "Dan Ackroyd" attached to them in the passing decades.