 Welcome to another edition of Tales from the VHS Vault, but before we get started, what are we drinking? Sir Alexander Saxton's missing link. It's a fossil! It's a fossil! Today we're going to be talking about a movie that I think every kid born in the 80s and grew up in the 80s and the 90s loved and played and collected memorabilia from and that is Ghostbusters. Yeah. This movie, yeah, it goes way back to when we were kids. It was one of the first movies that we kind of bonded over. We used to play this all the time. Like, I remember it used to be at the top of the list of things to play. Like, oh, what do you want to do today? Play Ghostbusters? Yeah, grab your proton pack and like the firehouse or whatever and you had the trap and everything and fuck, it was great. Yeah, I remember that when I got my first proton pack, my mama bought it for me. She hid it for me in my bunk bed, came home I think from my dad's on the weekend on a Sunday and they would climb up my bunk bed and it was all hard and they would lift up the sheets and you know, there was the box there with the proton pack and I was like yeah, I did! They would lift it up, open it up, strap it on, run outside and then you're like there too and you have your room which you just got too so we like both got them on the same weekend and it was like yeah! Yeah, it was a while. You can't have one without the other, right? Yeah, especially when you live next door, it's like the other's got to have it too or else you'll feel left out. Yeah, one thing I remember getting too was the firehouse which you also had but there's pictures of me with it like with the pack on and everything and holding the Ecto-1. I do remember the first time I ever watched the movie because the cartoon was on first of course and that's what you're familiar with, being so excited, right? And pumping it in and be like what this, these don't look like the same guys and I was like who's who? I couldn't tell who is who because they don't look the same, right? It's different, totally different. It's different. This is fucking weird and then when you finally start a piece, okay that's Egon, you can tell that's Egon with the glasses, okay that's Ray, that's Peter, oh Winston's in here, that's an ensemble, then you just get fucking sucked in and like you don't care that it's different than the cartoon. It's just fucking great and that's all you care about, right? It's along the same lines as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, right? I was gonna say the same thing. Yeah. Which will be its own episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exact same thing. It's different but you don't care because that fucking good. Exactly, it's fucking real. I got my first handheld video camera camcorder. We'd make Ghostbusters movies in the basement. Right, yeah, re-enacting the movie and then doing our own thing. Our own spin, kind of a spoof on it, you know? Yeah. You were Ray, but you were super fat with all that like a huge, like a whole cushion from like a couch. Nothing really made any sense. What the hell were we thinking? Well, typical kid, they don't plan anything out. You just hit record and see what happens, right? Surprisingly, I didn't have Ghostbusters on VHS even though it was like my favorite movie of all time. You had it. Right. And remember, you had the copy but it didn't have the cover. It was just the tape itself, right? Yeah, I don't know what happened. I don't even know what happened to the damn movie. That was in my possession for so many years. Like you lent it to me or whatever. I just never gave it back ever. I finally gave it back to you. But I remember that tape you had had, again, like we talked about in Three Amigos, the trailers. They weren't in the beginning of the movie though. They were after the credits, which I always thought was weird because who's going to sit around? The only reason I knew that they were there is because they just watched the movie and just left it on and didn't hit stop and walked away. Like what? Something else is, what's happening? Oh, look, there was a trailer for like Passage to India. A passage to India. Karate Kid. This is it. This is the end of the line. I think Starman. John Carpenter's Starman. But I remember that was the first time I heard about some of those movies. The guy with the deep voice. Now, the new hit movie of the season. Trying to track down another copy of that exact version for myself was a pain in the ass. I only found one last year. I remember, like, whenever I'd find Ghostbusters, you somewhere, you know, I'd pick it up. I've got a whole bunch here. I'd pick it up. I wouldn't even watch the movie. I'd stick it in fast forward to the end and see if those trailers were there. I got a couple of versions where they're not there at all. There's a different set of trailers. But I finally found one that has that set of trailers at the end. And I guess it depends on what year the tape was manufactured. So when was the one? I think the one is the actual 84 version. Really? Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah, so that's the one you want with the kind of embossed. And yeah, it's a movie that it just can never be duplicated to. It touches on so much subject matter too. Even though it's a comedy, I like how there's a lot of serious parts in it too. Oh, very serious. Scenes with serious tones. Yeah, exactly. Like when they're driving over the bridge there. Do you believe in God Ray? I don't know. Never met him. But it gets really serious and actually kind of a little creepy too. Yeah, it's definitely a lightning and a bottle type movie. You'd never be able to duplicate it. You know, they tried with that 2016 reboot. And you know, I can talk forever about that reboot. But the biggest thing is it just wasn't the same people involved. It was something that happens when you get the right director with the right actors, the right writers and the amount of improvisation that happened on set. You know, it was a lot of it too, you know. Yeah, of course, Bill Murray didn't know him for doing that, right? And showing up at the last fucking minute. Yeah, I think he showed up on the first day of shooting, basically showed up in a cab from the airport, got in his uniform and was like, okay, let's go. Yeah, everybody probably wasn't expecting it either. They didn't think they thought he wasn't going to show up that day before he started the show. And the most busters is not, you know, shoved down your throat. It's not like, ah, look, we're being funny now. Look, guys, we're funny. It's very typical of the day. It's very subtle and dark, dark humor, but it's very underlying. It's one of those movies you kind of have to watch, you know, five times before you start getting all the jokes and see all the little like nuances that are happening, you know. Yeah, because it's not entirely made for kids, right? It's actually more of an adult movie where kids can sort of latch onto with the effects and with the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man and all this sort of kiddy stuff, right? But it's more an adult's film. Yeah, I don't think it was marketed towards kids. It's just that the kids happen to really gravitate towards it, but you can see why, you know. It's like, kids are scared of the dark and scared of ghosts and stuff like that. Well, ghostbusters, well fuck, who's scared of ghosts now? I got these guys around. I can pretend to be them and stuff like that, you know. And all the nifty gadgets too, right? Of course, are marketed towards kids after. And then when the cartoon came out, well, of course, that was meant for kids. And then re-watching it when you're older, you realize how well-written that cartoon is. It's fucking great. Yeah, and like the famous actors that voice the characters too, right? Arsenio Hall and Frank Welker. Yeah, yeah, you know. And then, of course, later Dave Cooley and stuff. They all fire Lorenzo music and get Dave Cooley. That's when the show takes a fucking turn to the worst that Dave Cooley ate bullshit. Arsenio Hall didn't quit. He left because the show was getting too big. He couldn't do double duty. But yeah, the show also does a very good job of staying true to the movie. It diverges a little bit where it needs to be to be more accessible for kids. But for the main, you can tell they really stuck to the rules set by the movie and the characters and everything. They did a great job. Yeah, and I actually find the cartoon is actually a lot more times scary or creepier than the movie. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, some of the monsters. Yeah, and the music. The music is really good in the cartoon. A lot of times, even watching them now, it's like, ooh, I'm getting shivers here. It's kind of creepy. One of those movies I think every kid that grew up when we did, you know, loves and liked to play on the playground, lucky enough, like, we did to have a play structure with a pole that you could slide down. Oh, that was awesome. You know, they almost played Ghostbusters and all these kids wanted to play. Like, no, there's only four of them, guys. So the rest of you can fuck off. Other neighborhood kids also had, like, the same toys too, right? So you'd kind of get together every so often. They went to their house. You'd see the proton pack there. You know, it's like a transcending thing amongst kids, right? So I'm sure you guys out there have a lot of stories about Ghostbusters watching the movies and the cartoons and collecting all this fucking shit they're just going to garbage when we die. So let us know in the comments. Until next time. Keep drinking. And busting. Bust a liver. Liver busters.