Summary
We see Dana doing exercises in her apartment with the news on. The newscaster on the television gives a report about the rising number of accounts of paranormal activity along the eastern seaboard. We see another newscaster report the prevalence of ghosts in the tri-state area, as the film’s theme song “Ghostbusters” plays. A montage begins. We see the Ghostbusters putting on their clothes and getting ready to go to various jobs. The famous television newscaster Larry King breaks a news story about the Ghostbusters, and we see the trio on the cover of Time Magazine. The Ghostbusters run down the city streets as we hear the famous radio newscaster Casey Kasem report on their progress. We see Dana chopping vegetables in her kitchen and listening to the report, smiling to herself. We see Janine answering the phone and screening the caller’s ghost report to see if it’s serious, then a shot of Dana sewing in her apartment and watching Ray being interviewed on the news. The scene shifts and we see Ray and the other men asleep in their beds. A beautiful female ghost hovers over Ray, who wakes up with a start. We see Ray’s pants coming undone by the ghost’s invisible hands and the camera pans up to Ray’s eyes crossing in pleasure as the ghost starts to pleasure him.
We see a man approaching the Ghostbusters headquarters and looking up at their sign. Inside Janice runs down a list of occult beliefs, to which the man responds, “If there’s a steady paycheck in it, I’ll believe anything you say.” Ray and Peter come back into the office from a job, covered in slime and a little worse for wear. Janine introduces Ray and Peter to the man, whose name is Winston Zeddmore, and tells them he’s interested in the job opening. Ray hires him on the spot and immediately hands over some steaming ghost traps. We see Dana coming out of Lincoln Center complaining to a fellow instrumentalist about the conductor. When she looks up, she sees Peter doing a jokey walk nearby. Smiling, she walks over to him, and he tells her that she did a great job in rehearsal: “You’re the best one in your row.” Sarcastically, she notes that usually people can’t hear her with a whole orchestra playing and the duo engages in some banter, before Dana asks pointedly, “Do you have some information on my case?”
Peter makes fun of Dana’s geeky companion, but she wants to know more about her case. Peter has found the name “Zuul” and learned its significance. Zuul is the name of a “demigod worshiped around 6000 BC by the Hittites, the Mesopotamians, and the Sumerians.” Dana takes his sheet of paper, reading that “Zuul was the minion of Gozer.” Peter takes this opportunity to invite himself over to Dana’s apartment on Thursday night. While Dana is initially apprehensive, she eventually agrees as Peter charms her, telling her he respects her “as an artist…and as a dresser,” nodding to her outfit. She says her goodbyes and tells Peter she’ll see him on Thursday.
Back at headquarters, Ray shows Winston around, walking him through how to use a very complicated machine that incarcerates ghosts. Janine approaches Peter and tells him that a man from the EPA is there to meet with him. Janine asks Peter if he will hire someone to help her out because she feels overworked, but he informs her that she’s not going to find a better job than this. In his office, Peter meets Walter Peck, a representative from the EPA. Walter wants to know more about how many ghosts the group has caught, and where the ghosts are stored. When Peter tells him that the caught ghosts are kept on the premises, Walter requests to see the storage facility, but Peter refuses, remaining suspicious about why Walter is there. Walter tells him that he simply wants to inspect to see if the ghostbusting has an environmental impact. He’s worried about toxic waste in the basement, and threatens Peter that if he doesn’t show him the facilities, he will come back with a court order. “You get a court order and I’ll sue your ass for wrongful prosecution!” Peter tells him.
The scene shifts and Egon tells Ray and Winston that he’s worried that the ghost storage facility is getting crowded. Using a Twinkie as a symbol for “the amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area,” Egon explains the risks they might be facing soon. Ray worries that they are on the brink of a huge and dangerous event. Peter enters and informs them that they just got visited by a representative from the EPA. Suddenly, we see Dana’s apartment building from Central Park, as lightning hits the roof and haunting music plays. The camera zooms in on a fearsome-looking gargoyle on the roof of the apartment building. Suddenly the gargoyle begins to break, claws emerging from the stone and red eyes lighting up in its face. We see Dana tip-toeing down the hall towards her apartment to avoid Louis hearing her. It’s the night of Louis’s party. As she passes, Louis opens the door and invites her in, but she tells him she has a date coming over. Louis is crushed that she made a date on the night of his party, and Dana apologizes, before Louis tells her that she can bring her date to the party. She tells him that maybe they’ll stop by.
After putting her things away, Dana answers the phone. It’s her mother, who wants to check in on her. Dana tells her that she has a date with a Ghostbuster that evening, and promises to tell her about it later. As she hangs up the phone, we see a bright light emanating from the other side of her bedroom door. Dana looks over, seeing claws pushing on the door from the other side. Before she has time to respond, claws emerge from the chair that she’s sitting in and hold her down as the door to her bedroom opens, revealing a red-eyed evil demon gargoyle. While Dana screams, the chair moves on its own towards the creature. Meanwhile, at Louis’s party, a nerdy guest asks for some painkillers as Louis puts some snacks on the table. He tells another guest that he invited clients to the party so that he could write it off as a business expense, then begins dancing with a tall woman.
More guests arrive and Louis takes their coats. When he throws the coats into his bedroom, he throws them onto the evil demon creature sitting on his bed without noticing. Re-entering the party, Louis and the other guests notice a growl coming from the bedroom. Before anyone has time to identify the noise, the creature leaps through the door of Louis’s bedroom and onto the snack table, causing people to run and scream in fear. Louis runs out of the party and into the elevator. On the street below, he yells that there’s a bear in his apartment, crossing the street and over the wall of Central Park. A doorman laughs with residents of the building about Louis’s crazy claim, but their laughs are interrupted by the creature bounding out of the building and after Louis. In the park, Louis sprints down a path and towards into the famous New York restaurant, Tavern on the Green. While fancy guests dine inside, Louis presses himself up against the large glass windows, and screams for someone to let him in. The creature comes towards him and attacks, but the diners cannot see it and go back to their meals.
Peter arrives at the apartment building where policemen and a large group of curious onlookers are gathered. The doorman tells him, “Some moron brought a cougar to a party and it went berserk,” and Peter goes upstairs to meet Dana. Finding the hallway in disrepair and peeking in at the destruction in Louis’s apartment, Peter knocks on Dana’s door. When she answers, she is wearing a seductive, robe-like dress, her hair is all done, and she is wearing a lot of makeup. She asks Peter, “Are you the keymaster?” which confuses him. When he says he is not, she slams the door. He knocks again, and again Dana asks, “Are you the keymaster?” This time Peter says yes and she lets him in. As they walk into the apartment, Peter asks for Dana’s name, and she tells him, “I am Zuul, I am the gatekeeper.” Peter looks around the apartment, noticing a bunch of goop and slime seeping out of objects everywhere. Dana (channeling Zuul) tells him that they must prepare for the arrival of Gozer, climbing on the bed seductively. Peter is confused as Dana writhes on the bed and asks, “Do you want this body?” Suddenly she throws him on the bed and climbs on top of him as he tells her, “I make it a rule never to get involved with possessed people.”
She kisses him and tells him, “I want you inside me,” which makes Peter laugh. He tries to calm her down and asks to talk to Dana. “There is no Dana. There is only Zuul,” she tells him. As Peter insists that she relax, Dana repeats, “There is no Dana, only Zuul,” but this time her voice is deep and gravely, the voice of a demon. Peter counts to 3, requesting that Zuul vacate Dana’s body, and as he does her body levitates above the bed, Dana growling all the while.
Analysis
While the Ghostbusters were just recently fired from their university jobs and laughed off by most of their associates not look ago, they now experience unprecedented success, as ghosts sightings become more and more common in the Northeast. A montage shows the spike in their success and fame as they become heroes to the world, helping to exterminate ghosts all over the place. The shift creates some dramatic excitement as the viewer watches the hapless heroes of the film ascend to public acclaim. Their fame and success are rapid and sudden, as the need to exterminate ghosts becomes more and more pressing. The film does not tell us much about why there is such a sudden demand for ghost exterminators, but the Ghostbusters certainly aren’t asking any questions; it’s unequivocally good for business.
Curiously enough, the Ghostbusters—while they are fighting for the public good—come into conflict with the Environmental Protection Agency. Representative Walter Peck visits the facilities to assess whether the Ghostbusters are violating any environmental legislation. Walter Peck is portrayed as a stuffy and formal man, and Peter deals with him in a markedly sarcastic and dismissive way as a result. In his eyes, Walter Peck is little more than a narc, bent on destroying his good fortune. This is meant to establish the ghostbusters as more concerned with fighting evil than with playing by the rules. As we learn in the film, if there’s anything that Peter doesn’t care for, it’s “stiffs,” men that he deems fussy and dorky and overly concerned with propriety, manners, and “playing by the rules.” In the previous scene, Peter also makes fun of Dana’s music nerd companion as she comes out of Lincoln Center from a rehearsal. In Peter’s eyes, Dana’s friend is a nasal spraying nerd who doesn’t know how to let loose and have a good time. Walter Peck is another such man and Peter meets all of the EPA officer's questioning with an obtuse dismissiveness.
As business gets better for the Ghostbusters, one can also sense that something bad is brewing in the paranormal environment. As Egon demonstrates rather confusingly with a Twinkie, there is a bad moon on the rise, and the threat of a potentially very dangerous haunting. No sooner have we learned this than we see Dana’s apartment getting hit with lightning, and one of its stone gargoyles coming to life, sprouting claws and its eyes lighting up red. In Dana’s dark apartment, she takes off her coat and speaks to her mother on the telephone as the camera pans around behind her, as though from the perspective of an intruder. Just as the first scene of the film re-cast the New York Public Library as a haunted house, now Dana’s apartment building, a symbol of New York affluence and comfort, becomes a site of horror and fear. The imposing gargoyles—usually symbols of history and wealth—become horrifying winged creatures and Dana’s tall building becomes a tower of terror.
While the ghosts have been somewhat straightforward up until this point, recognizable representations of what it means to be a ghost, the intrusion of Zuul and his ancient demonic ways is a step in a new direction. The apparition at the public library, while terrifying, was straightforward enough. The strange and grotesque green ghost at the hotel was cartoonish enough to be amusing and disgusting. Zuul’s presence and influence is more mysterious and, as a result, more terrifying. An ancient and evil energy, Zuul seems to have taken hold of Dana’s apartment, capable of releasing claws from the arms of an armchair and cook eggs on the counter. Indeed, Zuul even has the capacity to possess mortals, taking over Dana’s body and turning her into an uncanny and predatory femme fatale.
No matter how dark the film gets, the demons and ghosts and evil primordial overlords cannot take away from the playful and comedic tone of the film. Ghostbusters is, first and foremost, a comedy, and even in the moments of horror and suspense, there is often a lot of room for jokes and lighthearted banter in between creature attacks and evil spirit possessions. Even as Louis runs away from the evil creature through Central Park, unsure if he is on the brink of death, his plight strikes the viewer as comic and absurd. Peter’s date with an oversexed and possessed Dana is at once unsettling and hilarious, as Bill Murray’s iconic deadpan delivery makes Peter’s responses to the strange turn of events cheeky and sardonic. This blending of genres between supernatural/horror and comedy keeps the action at once suspenseful and entertaining.
