Retro Thing

The "Real" Ghostbusters - Mystery Solved!

We are pleased to bring Retro Thing readers the following public service. Retro Thing will finally unravel the mystery of the four different pieces of media named something like "Ghostbusters". That's right... four... and we'll be ignoring the 1940 Bob Hope movie "The Ghost Breakers", and the 1946 Bowery Boys comedy "Spook Busters" just to keep things simple, okay?

In 1975 I had a favorite Saturday morning live-action CBS-TV show called "The Ghost Busters". Even as a kid I could tell it was spectacularly cheap (from time to time the networks experimented with kid oriented live-action programming on Saturday mornings to try to get away from expensive cartoons. The problem was... kids liked cartoons). The show starred Larry Storch and Forrest Tucker of F-Troop fame. The third member of their party was a gorilla "trained" by Bob Burns (really Bob Burns was inside the suit - a story for another time). A weekly show with spooks and monsters? what could be better than that?

The episodes are all remarkably the same. The trio would leave their shabby office to receive their supernatural assignment at a local junk shop. Whatever secret object they picked up had a tape recorder hidden inside with their instructions (voiced by Lou Scheimer, one of the show's producers), a la Mission Impossible. The tape self destructed a la Mission Impossible, but always in the hands of the Gorilla who always forgot to simply let go.

Their mission took them to the old graveyard, or the old castle at the edge of town... or both (must have been sweeps week). I'm really not joking at how few sets there were. They'd do battle with some 70s luminary like Ted Knight or Jim Backus, but only after some silent-move type slapstick. Finally, they'd dispatch the evil spirit back to the afterlife with their Ghost Dematerializer.

Sounds a little familar, doesn't it?

Remember that this was 1975, nearly a decade before Columbia's big-budget "Ghostbusters" (note the difference in spelling) hit theaters. The CBS show was shot entirely on video, like a sitcom, and was created by Filmation. You know Filmation as the creators of Fat Albert, the Star Trek cartoon, He-Man, and tons of other quasi-animated fare. I say "quasi" as they specialized in low budget TV animation. Their stock-in-trade was limited animation, rotoscoping, endless walk cycles... you catch my drift. In the 70s they experimented with live action. Their other efforts were shot mostly on film, but this 15 episode opus was shot as cheaply as possible. I remembered it well into adult life, and no one ever believed me that there was a rickety old TV show called "The Ghost Busters".

Now spirt yourself forward to 1984. Columbia is about to release "Ghostbusters", a tale of a trio of guys (no gorilla) who are more or less ghost exterminators. Filmation also thought this sounded familiar, and this earned them a licensing fee from Columbia for the name. The movie became a major hit, and Filmation put a new version of their Ghost Busters series into the pipeline. At first, they hoped to do the official TV adaptation of the Columbia film (Filmation did tons of movie tie-in cartoons), but Columbia had other plans. So Filmation created a new cartoon starring the offspring of their old 1975 characters (yes, yes... with gorilla). This series was called "Ghostbusters" (now one word).

Columbia partnered with animation house DiC to create a cartoon based on their jump-suited ghost exterminators. The ghostly sidekick "Slimer" joined the team in this all new show called "The Real Ghostbusters". Problem solved, right? This is the cartoon everyone remembers, as well as a toyline that far outlasted the TV series it was based on.

[Okay, here's some Real Ghostbusters trivia for no good reason. None of the original Hollywood actors voiced their cartoon counterparts in "The Real Ghostbusters". Bill Murray complained that his character's voice artist, Lorenzo Music, sounded too much like Garfield the cat... and with good reason. Music voiced the lasagna-loving, Monday-hating feline in cartoons. BIll Murray was later the voice of Garfield in the 2006 feature film.]

If you'd like to see the original Ghost Busters series, and I don't recommend it, just poke around on YouTube. I did buy the DVDs, and the show looks as good as it ever did (because it was shot on video, Ghost Busters looks far more like a Krofft TV show than a Filmation TV show). Since it was a childhood favorite of mine, I plunked down the money for the DVDs. Instead of a trip down memory lane, I was sort of mad at my younger self for making such poor TV choices. I probably missed some perfectly good Scooby Doo time just to watch a gorilla blow up... which I hasten again to point out sounds much better than it really is.

Disney's Darker Side With "The Skeleton Dance" And "The Haunted House"

I've always been on the fence about Disney cartoons. I'm speaking of course of the short animations created mostly while Disney was alive. Uncle Walt surrounded himself with some of the best and most innovative in the business, but lots of times all of that quality didn't come together to tell much of a story. The features are mostly breathtaking, but some of those shorts simply don't have much to say.

So many Disney shorts are idyllic bucolic romps that are pretty to look at, but aren't terribly satisfying otherwise. But there's an element of Disney that even ardent fans seem to forget. Disney was great at scaring the Bejeezus out of children. Think of the terror in your heart at the sight of any number of evil queens, witches, and you just try to choke back the tears at the terror of that fire in "Bambi".

While there are lots of classic Disney shorts that I would dismiss as little more than technical achievements, there are still many many animation classics in the Walt Vault. Perhaps none moreso than "The Skeleton Dance". It's (astonishingly!) from 1929, and is a lovely little bit of morbidity of the macabre goings on in your local cemetery. You always knew that these kinds of post-mortem monkeyshines went on under the full moon, didn't you?

The terrific music is thanks to Carl Stalling (yes... THAT Carl Stalling - He was Disney's first musical director). I twas he that suggested creating a cartoon where music was the whole point - sort of a mood piece - so the "Silly Symphonies" series was born. Check out the sheer number of elements in the cartoon that are syncopated to the music. Don't forget that in those early days of animation, lots of animators were musicians (check out some of the wild music of Disney's in-house band "The Firehouse Five"). Timing those early cartoons was usually plotted out on musical bar sheets, which is why early animation has that characteristic look of everything moving to a beat. This is also the first cartoon to use non-post-synced sound.

You'll see lots of other typical earmarks of early animation, including lots of repetition (the more ya loop, the less ya draw) and figures suddenly turning all rubbery. I love it, and so did Disney. So much so that that we see several of the same moves again in Mickey's adventure in "The Haunted House" released later that same year (Watch for the somewhat head-scratching Al Jolsen gag about 2 minutes in).

These are great cartoons for ths time of year (even though "The Skeleton Dance" was released in August, "The Haunted House" in December). It's a nice reminder that Halloween is for spookhouse fun, not just blood and gore. I love ghosts and witches, but when I walk down the Halloween aisle of a store and see stick-on bloody hand prints, I really do long for some graveyard mischief instead.

1974: Super 8 Bicycle Ride Around Vancouver

We tend to be fairly lax in photographing our day-to-day existence. Sure, we gather periodically in front of the Christmas tree or at the pub to smile into the camera, but the little details usually fall by the wayside -- we don't snap panoramic shots of the street on which we live, the office, the messy interior of our car, the kitchen, our favorite restaurant, or the train station platform we loiter on for a few minutes each and every day.

We ignore the mundane, assuming that it's not very interesting because tomorrow will be much the same. But flash forward two or three decades, and something as ordinary as a weekend bike ride around the city becomes a precious time capsule.

As if to prove my point, photographer Hans Sipma shot this timelapse film with a Braun Nizo Super 8 camera mounted on his bicycle during a cool autumn day in 1974 or 1975. The camera was configured to snap a single frame every few seconds, allowing a single cartridge of Kodachrome to capture his epic cycling adventure around Vancouver for us to enjoy in the distant future.

For those interested in a little more detail, Hans created a longer edit that slows things down and intersperses a number of present day stills along his route. It's fascinating to see how much has changed and how some things remain virtually unchanged.

Fly A (Real!) Spitfire

The Supermarine Spitfire is a legendary machine. It played a key role in the Battle of Britain and throughout WWII, earning it an honoured place in the imagination of almost every British schoolboy for decades to come.

I was no exception, drawn to its distinctive elliptical wings, sleek cowl, roaring Merlin V12 and the promise of power and victory. As a child, I spent many hours fiddling with glue and Airfix model kits in a shed somewhere in Oxford. One of my first airplane models was a Spitfire Mk. I, followed a week or two later by a Messerschmitt Bf 109 (just so I'd have something to shoot down).

Of course, the notion of actually taking the controls of a Spitfire was out of the question then and -- for all but a talented few -- remains largely out of reach today. There are somewhere around 40 airworthy Spitfires in existence, but most are single seat aircraft.

That's where the Boultbee Flight Academy comes in. They have a pair of twin seat Spitfires based at the Goodwood Aerodrome in West Sussex. Their two day introductory course (£5500) includes ground and flight training in the three aircraft most commonly used to train RAF pilots during WWI: the De Havilland Tiger Moth, the North American Aviation Harvard (known as the Texan in the USA) and the venerable Vickers Supermarine Spitfire.

Participants are required to have a valid ICAO private pilot license with medical, and there is a weight limit of 100 kg (86 kg if you intend to fly aerobatics). You'll receive six hours of ground instruction followed by a total of 70 minutes flight time in an open cockpit de Havilland Tiger Moth biplane or a post-war de Havilland Chipmunk, a further 40 minutes in the Harvard advanced trainer and finally another 40 minutes in the rear seat of a Spitfire. 

While the instructor will handle takeoffs and landings in the complex and demanding Spitfire, you can take the controls once off the ground to experience the Spitfire's power and lightning fast response first-hand. One Boultbee student was humbled to accidentally climb 1200 feet while executing nothing more challenging than a gentle turn.

If aerobatics are your thing, you can experience loops, rolls and perhaps even an Immelmann or two. If you're the type who wants to maximize you time at the controls in a somewhat more relaxed fashion, the Boultbee instructor will be more than happy to let you take the controls and zorch happily around the sky.

I can think of no better way to celebrate a birthday, promotion or mid-life crisis.

Learn more from the Boultbee Flight Academy.

Pac-Man Matching Necktie & Ceramics

Today it's not strange to see a fully grown adult wearing a My Little Pony t-shirt. Well, it is strange... but that's beside the point. What I mean to say is that our pop culture clothes have grown to include lots of treasured childhood characters, no matter what your age is. That wasn't always the case. It used to be much more rare to show your enthusiasm for your pop culture faves in an "adult" context... where "adult" is defined by a desire for a sad polyester necktie and cheap ceramics.

Adult pop culture of the 70s and 80s had all the usual things - Mickey Mouse T-shirts, sport mascots, concert posters.... but of course video game characters hadn't really hit yet. A pixelated greyscale tank or Pong's phosphorescent slash don't exactly make for exciting garments.

That all changed when Pac-Man started gobbling the world's small change. He's often credited as being the first character in video gaming, I know what they mean, though it's funny to think of Pac-Man as having much of a personality. He's more or less characterized by his having a significant eating disorder.

Being the star of such a colorful gaming phenom made Pac-Man the star of one of the first gluts of video gaming merchandise. As a kid I had Pac-Man tube socks for goodness sake, but it wasn't only all about kid stuff. Check out these grown up Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man ceramics and a necktie.

Nothing says "grown-up" like a maroon necktie - the color necktie most favored by my youth's substitute teachers. This is an officially licensed bit of gear, with small tweaks applied to the look of the characters to be at least a little toned down.

The ceramics look like the sort of cheap thing that I might have given as a misguided mother's day gift. C'mon... Ms. Pac-Man is a lady, right? The inclusion of the Ms. tells us that this is part of a later merch push (there's an "82" scraped into the bottom).

I prefer a world where grown ups have more ways of showing their playful side. Too bad that the days are gone where wearing a Pac-Man tie would be outrageous in a boardroom... or ridiculed when wrapped around the neck of your new sub for Social Studies.

[thanks for the Pac-Man tie, Jeffrey!]

Retro Picture Frames At Target

I was just at my local Target store and found a couple of cute picture frames that cater to those of us who are Old Media Old Timers. They're not available from Target's website - these are specialty items that you have to go into the store to find.

I'm not sure what they're made of (a testimony to the modern world that I can't tell what sort of space age material we're dealing with here), I think they're made of wood, but the frames may be some sort of plastic. In any case, they're adorable and affordable.

For $5.95 you can pick up either a television inspired frame, or a sketchy looking cassette (with room for two photos appropriately). Funny to have reached the age that even a mass market retailer like Target is catering to my nostalgia. I've found that these non-catalog items are sometimes not stocked too deeply, so you may want to trot to your local Target soon. Let us know if you need some pictures of James and myself to fill up your snazzy new frames.

[For the cynics among you, no... Retro Thing didn't get paid for this post.]