Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters is the most bizarre film ever to become the year's biggest hit. It resurrects the long-dormant ghost comedy genre of the '40s, combines it with the disturbing sensibility of H.P. Lovecraft, applies to it some Spielberg-ian spectacle and puts it through the SNL blender, resulting in something defiantly and curiously other. You can tell me it's just more japing by the likes of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, this time as parapsychologists who go into business catching ghosts, but what the hell are unlicensed nuclear accelerators doing in a comedy? What is the meaning of those monster dogs with the burning red eyes? And when was the last time you saw a pack of rabbis praying for deliverance from Harold Freakin' Ramis? The answer is an '80s rarity, a movie where you don't know where it's coming from or what will happen next. The design team reaches into the primordial ooze to throw up images you wouldn't get in any other movie: an archaic religious sensibility suffuses the whole enterprise, selling the lines and giving the whole thing more oomph than if it were one more slob comedy from Murray and Aykroyd. And the constant improvising forces a pace that's more organic, less concerned with exposition, slightly amorphous and just plain weird. Vilmos Zsigmond's moody photography belongs nowhere near an Ivan Reitman movie, except for this mélange of mucus and marshmallow, and I'm thrilled to announce that it still holds up more than 20 years later. Extras include a ho-hum commentary by Reitman, Ramis and associate producer Joe Medjuck, the 1984 featurette, a current, disappointing retrospective clip, some special-effects featurettes, ten fascinating deleted scenes, and galleries of art and storyboards. (Sony)