Ghostbusters (1984)

 

Ghostbusters

When I was 11 years old, I went to watch “Ghostbusters” in the local cinema. I do not remember why I went alone, but it was the first time I was in the cinema without any friends or family. When the stone creatures came alive, I got so frightened that I left the cinema, not very proud of my self. You might have thought such an experience would scar me for life and maybe it has. Today it is one of my favourite movies of all time, somewhere in top 10 or so.

Doctors Stanz (Dan Aykroyd), Venkman (Bill Murray) and Spengler (Harold Ramis) conduct highly dubious and not quite productive research in the paranormal at Columbia University, when they get thrown out of their protected world for being just that. Stanz and Spengler are tech nerds while Venkman is just a deucebag.  Left to themselves they form a paranormal investigation unit, the Ghostbusters, to catch and remove paranormal pests.

After a slow start, the trio gets busy as something is staring to unravel in the city, starting with a demonic god living in the fridge of Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver). Catching ghosts is messy business, involving lots of slime and mayhem, but the Ghostbuster becomes good at it with their beam guns and traps.

As a crescendo builds, it becomes clear that two things are threating the future of mankind: The god Gozer, brought forth by the mating of the Gatekeeper (Weaver) and the Keymaster (Rick Moranis), the destroyer of worlds, and Walter Peck (William Atherton), the dickless, from the EPA, who wants to shut down the Ghostbusters facility. Even with the addition of a fourth member, Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), this is an uphill battle (literally).

This is a fun story and a very eighties one at that. As “Ghostbuster” follow a well proven story arch, there are not terribly many surprises to the plot, but then again I like those rather predictable eighties movies. What makes “Ghostbusters” stand out is how fun that ride is along that plot.

The fun is partly based on the premise. It is a loony idea to have a bunch of grown men running around in a city in coveralls, chasing ghosts. Just plain wacky. Yet, the only one of the three who is not taking it seriously is Venkman, but then again, he takes nothing serious. Ramis and Aykroyd both go all in with their characters and that in itself is totally hilarious. Then you have a demon inside Sigourney Weaver’s fridge and Rick Moranis as the little accountant who is being possessed by... something badass. Just the thought makes me chuckle.

Moranis’ line “Okay, who brought the dog?” we find can be used on so many occasions and it always makes us laugh.

The other big source of the fun is the play between Ramis, Aykroyd and Murray. A lot of it is the awesome script, but in three lesser hands this could well have fallen flat. I happen to be a fan of all three and having them together is just pure joy.

Then there is the wrapping of the movie. The iconic music, the montage, the crowds, the setting and I get transported back to a better and happier time, even if it was prone to giant marshmallow men and refrigerator dwelling demons.

If there is something wrong in your neighbourhood

Who are you gonna call?

GHOSTBUSTERS!!!

Highly recommended.

It also feels like a good Halloween movie.

 

The Element of Crime (Forbrydelsens Element) (1984)

 

The Element of Crime

In the Danish edition of “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die”, the local editors have added Lars von Trier first feature movie, “The Element of Crime”. I am not a fan of his, but at least it saves me from reserving a slot for a Danish off-List entry in a year otherwise so bountiful.

In an undefined future or past, a police detective, Fisher (Michael Elphick) is undergoing hypnosis to go through his latest case. Fisher is based in Cairo, but returns to “Europe” to solve a case known as the “Lotto murderer” case. It is never entirely clear on what basis he is working, but he seems to be in competition with a policeman called Kramer (Jerold Wells) and being tutored by his old master, Osborne (Esmond Knight), who devised a method called “The Element of Crime”, through which the detective must embrace the personality of the criminal to fully understand and find the perpetrator.

Fisher finds the trailing log of the suspected murderer, Harry Grey, and embark on a chase together with a prostitute, Kim (Meme Lai), with whom Grey has a child.

Here is the thing: Nothing in this movie makes the slightest sense.

The plot is a neo-noir detective story, while the imagery is acid-yellow pictures of broken, wet sets. The two are barely connecting and, more often than not, entirely disconnected. Most of the dialogue is narration on top of the scenes (presumably from the hypnosis), but even the spoke dialogue is strange, abrupt and disconnected. Attempts to follow the plotline is constantly sabotaged by strange cuts, out of the blue events or imagery totally at odds with the narration.

It is impossible to place the story. Is it past or future? Is it a post-apocalyptic world or is it the wreckage of Fisher’s mind seen though hypnosis? The place is referred to as Europe, place names are German, people’s names are English and so is the spoken language. All the while, I get the impression none of this actually matters.

Lars von Trier says quite clearly in the extra material that this is a movie of fascinating pictures with a story on top for those who requires a plot. This is incidentally also my impression. Von Trier concocted some imagery that looks like a mix of “Stalker”, “Alphaville” and “Last Year in Marienbad” and needed an excuse of a story to present those images. So, he is having a lot of fun making some freakish imagery for us to enjoy, except the pictures are so horribly ugly that it is just depressive. But then again, that stuff is high art.

I cannot say I enjoyed this movie. It feels amateurish because of the disconnects and I think by now I hate the colour yellow in a movie. I knew up front that Lars von Trier is not my thing, but I was curious as to where he started. Now I know and somehow this explains a lot.

An interesting piece of trivia: Meme Lai, easily the best part of the movie, had a career in Italian cannibal movies (turns out to be a thing!). “The Element of Crime” was her last movie. After this she became a policewoman in Brittain. I will let that stand for a moment.

 

This is Spinal Tap (1984)

 

This is Spinal Tap

Everything starts somewhere and for mockumentaries it likely happened with “This is Spinal Tap”. I am quite certain that the verité comedy had already been in place for some time (“Real Life” from 1979 comes to mind), but the format of presenting a movie as a documentary, while actually making fun of the subject is often attributed to “This is Spinal Tap”.

We are introduced to the “filmmaker” Martin Di Bergi (Rob Reiner himself, the actual director of this movie), who tells us that he is a long-time fan of the band and wants to make a concert movie based on their tour of the United States. As the filmmaker, he then proceeds by showing up here and there in the movie, either to comment or to interfere with the tour.

Of the band we particularly follow lead singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) with keyboardist Viv Savage (David Kaff) and drummer Mick Shrimpton (R.J. Parnell) more in the background. The band started out as a very mellow flower-power band in the sixties, but then turned to heavy metal or at least the glam-rock version of it, now having the reputation of being the loudest band in Brittain (cranking volume up to 11!). It is understood that they used to be a really big name but is having less success of late.

The American tour is supposed to be a promotion tour of the new album “Smell the Glove”, but there are problems right from the outset as the American record label does not want to print the cover, which is considered sexist (which, from the description of it, is an understatement). The manager of the band, Ian Faith (Tony Hendra), desperately trying to keep it all together, lands a compromise with an all-black cover that satisfy no-one.

The tour is, to say the least, chaotic. Many venues are cancelled or moved to far more humble locations. We see the band interact, both with themselves and the press, and in both cases we get a lot of the tropes on moronic rock musicians. There are some, but sadly few, clips of them actually playing at concerts. Those parts are great, though, if you listen to the lyrics. Those lyrics are simply amazing.

Midway through the tour David’s girlfriend Jeanine (June Chadwick) shows up. She quickly sets herself up as a band member off stage and challenges Ian to his great chagrin. Her ideas are even more moronic than the band’s own and the whole thing explodes with both Ian and Nigel walking out on the band.

The entire movie is a joke, of course. It is a parody of the touring rock band, mocking all the tropes on those. The band members are more air-headed than most, the lyrics totally out there, the attitudes in place, and of course of money-people who are only there when things are going well.

The interesting thing is that all this is played for real. Everybody stays in character and take themselves seriously. They are over the top, but nobody plays over the top. Add to this that all the dialogue is improvised, and you get this real documentary feel to the movie. A documentary of a crazy, but quite real world. There are times where it gets totally absurd as with the pod on stage that does not open, trapping Derek inside or the 18-inch version of Stonehenge on stage with dancing leprechauns. But it is dealt with by the band as serious incidents, crazy, but real and so it works (not to mention the Jazz-Odyssey incident).

It is this balance of keeping the craziness real that is the key to “This is Spinal Tap”. Had this just been about making fun of rock musicians, this would not have been half as funny. As it is, the verité element is so well developed that we believe in the band even though they are stupider than toothpaste. As it happens, I read that several famous musicians are themselves fans of the movie, notably Sting, because this is the story of their experience, and they can see the fun of it.

Although hours and hours of material was shot, it is cooked down to only  82 minutes and I think that was a wise choice. There are simply limits to how long you can draw out a joke. As it is, I was having a lot of fun watching this one, but I am not certain it would have lasted another hour.

Researching this, I looked up the story of Christopher Guest. It is quite amazing. I want to watch a movie about him, his life and family.