Top Film for Each Year of My Life – 1984

Ghostbusters

“Ted! Annette! I'm glad you could come, how you doin', give me your coats. Everybody, this is Ted and Annette Fleming! Ted has a small carpet cleaning business in receivership; Annette's drawing a salary from a deferred bonus from two years ago! They got fifteen thousand left on the house at eight percent. So they're okay! So, does anybody wanna play Parcheesi?”

“Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "YES"!”

Finally, a year with some serious competition for the top spot. My top ten runs out of steam towards the end, but damn! What a top four! All due respect to Gremlins (Joe Dante may be my favorite director of the 80s) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (three and four respectively), the real battle is between Ghostbusters and This Is Spinal Tap (I don’t know how to accurately insert the umlaut over the “n”).

How does one even decide between the better of these films? They are two of the greatest comedies of all time. Both are endlessly quotable and feature some of the best comedic talent of the past 30 years. It’s almost unfair to choose. Hell, one of these films practically invented (or at least perfected) the mockumentary (I’ll leave it to you to guess which one). But choose I must, and as you all can see, I chose Ghostbusters.

My history with Ghostbusters goes back a long way, as it does with most. When I saw it as a child, it scared the crap out of my (though not literally, at least as far as I recollect). That ghost librarian at the beginning is still pretty terrifying (“Are you, Alice, menstruating right now?). I had the toys and watched the show, even the fake “Ghostbusters” that ran around with a gorilla. Pretty much, instead of actually deciding which film to put at number one, I went with nostalgia instead.
This is by far my favorite Bill Murray role. The fact that he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar once again proves that the Academy Awards hate comedy. And let the record show that Pat Morita was nominated for The Karate Kid. Seriously? I know people love that film, but that spot could and should have gone to Murray. On that note, Splash and Beverly Hills Cop got screenwriting nominations. Jebus. I just don’t understand the world.

I honestly can’t think of a thing I would change about Ghostbusters. The characters are so perfectly realized from Ray’s enthusiasm to Egon’s seriousness (and I love when he has to look for his mark in the commercial) to Louis Tully’s hopeless dorkiness. Let’s not forget, everyone’s favorite recurring black cop, one Reginald VelJohnson (Carl Winslow, if you will), shows up in a very bit part AND Ron Jeremy is an extra! And Elmer Bernstein’s score is a thing of beauty with the whimsical piano ditties mixed in with the dark orchestral pieces.
There’s lots of talk of a Ghostbusters 3, and I don’t know how that will turn out, but I do know this, we will always have Ghostbusters. I can’t wait to show my nieces and future kids this film. I could go on forever recounting all that is great about this film, mostly quoting, but I will just leave it with this one last thing: “Go get her, Ray!”