Seeing Ghostbusters was not my idea, nor was it my Mom's idea. That came from kid brother Michael, who was just itching to see it, and we were along for the ride. The Royal Father wasn't there; he was off on some business trip that nicely took him to a nice resort in the Ozarks without the rest of the family.
 |
| A look at the films that have left a mark on my life. I'm now counting down the films that left the biggest marks. |
What we didn't understand yet was that we were about to see one of the funniest movies of the decade, a movie that would leave a tremendous cultural landmark and propel the red circle-and-slash international "no" symbol to new popularity. Dad didn't know what he was missing -- yet.
But Ghostbusters did even more than that. It perfected the sci-fi action comedy. Men In Black, Guardians of the Galaxy, and to some degree, Iron Man all have the power of the proton packs in their DNA. You could be both highbrow and lowbrow with special effects added in.
I ended up seeing this film at least three times in theaters. The second time was with Dad, when he finally got back from that so-called business trip and we filled him in on what we saw.
I couldn't wait for this movie to make it to home video. Some relatives bought it, and we made a copy for ourselves (in a time when everybody who had multiple VCR's was doing that). I watched it while it copied, and then I rewound it and watched it all over again.
Halloween of 1984 had me dressing up as a Ghostbuster, complete with a toy machine gun and an emergency light flashing in a backpack wedged into a cardboard box for my proton pack, uniformed with my Dad's old Kansas National Guard attire.
My brother and I also got those famous "no ghosts" logo t-shirts. I wish I had held onto mine. I'm still looking for another one.
In the meantime, Ghostbusters is #2 on my list of favorites.
No comments:
Post a Comment