Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Ghostbusters

Written as part of the series hosted by Nathaniel R. over at The Film Experience, where I also contribute on occasion.

The Film Experience's Hit Me With Your Best Shot is BACK, BITCHES!!!!! And I couldn't be happier, even if this season's first episode is a bit of a strange one. I mean, it makes sense: The pop culture mainstay from 1984 just made its debut streaming on Amazon Prime and the trailer for this summer's female reboot/remake/whatever just dropped not too long ago. So that all makes sense. But the thing is, Ghostbusters is a special effects-driven horror/comedy, and as Nathaniel has been reminding us for quite some time now, great special effects DO NOT automatically equal great cinematography.

Not that Ghostbusters is in any way lacking in iconic imagery:

Hello, gorgeous!

Or in imagery that makes me giggle:

Good puppy!

But picking my favorite shot is mostly a fool's errand. I enjoy Ghostbusters, sure. But one of the things that impressed me most while rewatching it for this project is how remarkably efficient it is. The movie's 107 minutes just fly by, and hardly any of them are wasted. And the special effects on the ghosts are absolute perfection, just barely transparent enough so that they feel almost tactile in addition to being fully spectral apparitions. You fully believe that they can touch things like library books and hotel room service trays, but that if you touched them, all you'd feel is some ectoplasmic goo.

All the ghost special effects hold up spectacularly well, by the way. Those with the Keymaster and Gatekeeper in their dog/gargoyle form, not so much, but CGI was in its infancy in those days. But perhaps that's for the best, because those animatronic put the film's true lineage into perspective: Ghostbusters is a perfect '80s blockbuster version of the classic 50s monster B-movies, complete with the EPA butting in to worry and hand-wring about potential nuclear ruin (indeed, how perfectly 1984 is it that the film's secondary villain, and main human one, is an inspector from the Environmental Protection Agency?). And a monster B-movie simply isn't a monster B-movie without a man in a giant rubber suit walking right through the center of the nearest metropolis:

Best Shot

This is The Traveller, and He will Destroy us. So of course, it's going to be a 50-foot tall marshmallow boy in a sailor suit with a jaunty little cap on who is smiling the most innocent smile. It's an image that can inspire both fear and laughter, which is the tone that Ghostbusters works best in. But it's also the image that makes the most sense when thinking about the film's legacy and impact, bridging the gap between the old-school monster movies and the slick "high concept" Hollywood product of the 1980s.