Summary
We see a man hanging a sign that says “Ghostbusters” over the door of the trio’s new digs. An old cop car in disrepair pulls up and Ray gets out saying that he found the car for the business. The car needs a lot of work, but it’ll do the trick. Inside, Peter asks the receptionist, Janine, if they’ve received any calls or messages, and she disinterestedly sits at the desk reading a magazine. Egon emerges from beneath Janine’s desk, where he has evidently been working on her computer. “I bet you like to read a lot,” she says to him, but he assures her that “print is dead.” Janine tries to make flirtatious small talk with Egon, asking if he has any hobbies, but he simply tells her, “I collect spores, mold and fungus.”
We see Dana coming into the Ghostbusters’ garage, where Ray is working on the car. She walks past him and into the office, where she asks to talk to someone about hiring them. Peter jumps over the railing and introduces himself, inviting her into his office. With patches attached to her temples for lie detection, she tells the men about her run-in with the ghosts, and that she hasn’t been to her apartment since the incident. Egon confirms that she is telling the truth, removing the patches, and posits that perhaps it is a distant memory from her unconscious, while Ray wonders if it’s a memory of a past life. They tell her they will look into it, even though Dana says she doesn’t believe in the paranormal. Clearly attracted to Dana, Peter volunteers to take her back to her apartment to check it out (after first stumbling over his words and saying he will “check her out”).
At Dana’s apartment, Peter throws open doors and looks for the ghost, assuring her that if anything happens to them, he wants it to happen to him first. He begins checking the space with some kind of device, and when Dana asks him what the device does, he is vague about its purpose. Peter starts to go into the bedroom, but she tells him nothing happened in there. “What a crime!” he says, making a sexual joke. Rolling her eyes, Dana tells him he acts less like a scientist and more like a “game show host.” Peter examines the eggs on Dana’s counter, and she recounts what happened. Peter goes to check the fridge, but there is no sign of paranormal activity and he pauses to comment on how much junk food Dana has. Agitated, Dana tells him that when she opened the fridge there was no food, just a space and “a building with flames coming out of it, and there were creatures writhing around.” Peter cannot find any signs of anything, which frustrates Dana. Peter continues to try to seduce Dana, going so far as to tell her, “I am madly in love with you.”
Dana kicks Peter out, remarking on how “odd” he is, but just before he leaves, he turns, struck by a new idea, to prove himself to her by solving her ghost problem. Dana pushes him out, frustrated by his intrusive and tone-deaf attitude. In the hall, Dana’s neighbor Louis notices Peter coming out of her apartment, thinking that she’s having an affair. The scene shifts to the Ghostbusters headquarters, where the men are eating Chinese food and toasting to their “first and only customer.” When Peter suggests they use some of their petty cash to take Dana out to dinner, Ray informs him that the Chinese takeout represents the last of their petty cash. Suddenly, Janine’s phone rings and she picks it up. It’s a new customer who requests that the Ghostbusters be discreet. Hanging up, Janine yells “We got one!” excitedly and rings the bell. The Ghostbusters slide down the fireman’s pole, put on their suits, hop in the car, and go.
Arriving at a hotel, the Ghostbusters come into the lobby, where they run into the hotel manager. He tells them they have long had disturbances on the 12th floor of the hotel, but “it was never, ever this bad, though.” The manager insists that the Ghostbusters handle the ghosts quietly, to which they agree, heading towards the elevator. A guest at the hotel waiting for the elevator looks at them skeptically, but they deflect his questioning by telling him they are exterminators. In the elevator, Ray worries that they still haven’t successfully tested their equipment. Sarcastically, Peter says, “Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back.” They get off the elevator on the 12th floor and proceed carefully down the hall, Ray and Egon holding up their guns. When a maid comes around the corner, they impulsively fire their weapons. The maid ducks behind her cart and asks, “What the hell are you doing?!” and they apologize.
The Ghostbusters decide to split up, and set off on different courses down the halls of the hotel. When Ray hears a rustling in a nearby room, he calls for Peter, but Peter is nowhere nearby. As he turns the corner, he sees a grotesque green ghost devouring food on a room service cart. Ray loads up his gun, deciding that he will have to confront the “disgusting blob” himself, but when he fires, he completely misses and hits the wall instead. The ghost flies away through a nearby wall, pulling the food cart with him. Meanwhile, Egon investigates a wall as a hotel guest tries to get past him and into his room. Elsewhere, Peter encounters the green ghost, and calls Ray on the walkie talkie to tell him that he found the ghost. “He’s an ugly little spud, isn’t he?” says Ray, advising Peter to stay still in the face of the ghost. Just as he says this, though, the ghost begins flying towards Peter with its mouth wide open. Ray runs to help Peter and finds him in a gooey mess on the floor. The ghost slimed him, which delights Ray, who celebrates that Peter got “actual physical contact!” Egon contacts his associates on the walkie-talkie, summoning them downstairs to where the ghost just went into a ballroom.
Downstairs, the Ghostbusters go into the ballroom and search for the ghost, which they spy flying around a chandelier. They all fire their guns at the same time, but miss the ghost and instead destroy the chandelier, which shatters and falls in a huge mess. They find the ghost at a nearby buffet table, downing liquor. Ray shoots at the ghost but it wriggles away. Then Egon tries, hitting a nearby cake rather than the ghost. Egon continues to shoot even though the ghost manages to get away yet again. Outside, the hotel manager apologizes to a guest about the fact that the ballroom is closed, but assures her that he will open the doors momentarily. Inside, the ballroom is a complete mess as the men overturn a number of tables and put down a trap for the ghost. Egon shoots a “confinement stream” at the ghost which entraps it in the ray of his gun. When Peter also shoots a “confinement stream” they lower the ghost down into the trap. Finally, they capture the ghost.
The Ghostbusters emerge from the ballroom and show the hotel manager that they have entrapped the ghost. Without skipping a beat, Peter begins asking him about payment, charging the hotel $5000 for their work. When the hotel manager refuses to pay, they threaten to put the ghost back in the ballroom, which gets him to agree to pay them for their services.
Analysis
Interestingly enough, even though the men are eager to begin their Ghostbusting business, and they have themselves seen apparitions in person, they are very dubious about Dana’s story about her run-in with the ghosts. Even after she has passed a lie detector test, they posit a number of theories that would discredit the event from having actually happened. Egon suggests that perhaps it’s a memory stored in her unconscious, while Ray wonders if its a remnant from her past life. For a business that thrives on other people’s ghost stories, the trio sure needs a lot of convincing. Ray and Egon offer to do some cursory research about some of the elements of her story, while Peter seems more interested in seducing the client than actually helping her. This is where some of the comedy of the film comes from; the men are the only people in town who allege to take care of paranormal activity, but they are also somewhat lazy, dopey, and incompetent in their work, and they need a lot of objective evidence to believe in a witness.
The film, produced and written in the 1980s, has not aged particularly well in its gender and sexual politics. The character of Peter, played by Bill Murray, while likably sardonic and comic, has a disrespectful attitude towards the women he comes in contact with, particularly Dana. When he agrees to take on Dana’s case, it is unclear whether he is taking it on for the purposes of seducing her or helping her. In the same way that he favored the pretty young college girl in the first scene while punishing her male companion, Peter demonstrates a regard for the opposite sex that can become leering and creepy. Before following Dana to her apartment, he makes gestures to the other men showing how he marvels at her sexual appeal, and when she tells him that “nothing ever happened” in her bedroom—referring to the ghost—he turns her comment into a sexual come-on, remarking that that’s a “crime.” To Peter, Dana is little more than a sexualized damsel-in-distress, rather than an autonomous client who needs his help. What saves this dynamic from pure sexism is the fact that Dana calls him on it, telling him that he acts less like a “scientist” and more like a “game show host,” cutting him down to size for being so sleazy. This does little to deter him, and he is still intent on seducing her.
This section of the film introduces the first actual ghost bust mission in the film. A hotel that has been haunted for years is reporting some increased haunting and they need the men to come in and get rid of the problem. The film is at its most suspenseful and exciting in the moments when the men confront the ghosts. Their bumbling and sloppy antics are an enjoyable and humorous contrast to the spookiness of a ghost infestation. Peter stumbles around, barely invested in the mission and more interested in who he might meet along the way. Egon is clumsy and phobic, cringing as he descends the fireman’s pole, and Ray wanders around with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. The Ghostbusters are a motley crew with unlicensed nuclear capabilities and a thirst for adventure. The two locations in which they have discovered ghosts—the bowels of the New York Public Library and the vacant halls of an old hotel—are the perfect settings for ghostbusting, filled with labyrinthine turns and unusual hiding spots.
It being their first real job, the Ghostbusters are not very good at exterminating ghosts, as evident in their poor aim and clumsy antics. They are not action heroes, but scientists. Not only that, but they are not even respected scientists. This makes them funny and relatable comic protagonists, but it doesn’t help them in their mission. Indeed, they even make a big mess along the way, burning holes in the walls and completely destroying a crystal chandelier. Their destruction of the ornate and elegant ballroom adds to the comic effect of the movie. They are not superheroes, but regular guys with giant guns and a cursory understanding of the ghostly world they are trying to keep under control. Adding to that the fact that they must do their jobs in a stuffy and fancy hotel heightens the comic stakes. The Ghostbusters contend not only with rascal-y ghosts, but also impatient and snobby hotel guests. When it’s all said and done, however, the Ghostbusters get the job done, even if they did ruin the ballroom in the process.
The ghost itself is a comic figure as much as a spooky one. Gorging on the food on the room service cart and floating around in a green cloud, it looks like a kind of physical manifestation of the id, a base and unprincipled being that has only excessive appetites. It is described by Ray as a “disgusting blob” and “an ugly little spud.” As it raids the liquor supply in the ballroom, it guzzles wine, which it seems to not even absorb; the wine goes in the creature’s mouth before dripping down onto the floor. The cartoonish-ness of the creature, its grotesque appearance, confirms that these ghosts are living nightmares rather than friendly apparitions. The ghost is a unsavory trickster, and everyone can agree that it must be stopped.
