On June 8, 1984, forty years ago, the first films of two franchises that would have enormous success were presented at the cinema: Ghostbusters – Ghostbusters And Gremlins, directed by Ivan Reitman and Joe Dante respectively. Both expressed in a comic and light key a genre that at the time was still considered unsuitable for families, namely horror, and achieved enormous success with the public that would last for decades, then exploited in other ways including sequels, video games, toys and other media.
Ghostbusters – Ghostbusters And Gremlins were produced in the midst of a period of enormous creative fervor in Hollywood: in the space of a few years, between the end of the Seventies and the mid-Eighties, many film sagas were invented and became real brands – those called franchise – of great value. Rocky (1976), Star Wars (1977), Halloween (1978), Mad Max (1979), Indiana Jones (1981), Rambo (1982), Terminators (1984), Back to the Future (1985), RoboCop And Lethal Weapon (1987) are some of the most famous, but the fictional narrative universes conceived in that period and still exploited today are more, and include for example Nightmare (1984), Blade Runner (1982), Hellraiser (1987) e The Karate Kid (1984).
The capital of stories and characters built in those years was exploited thoroughly, at different stages of intensity: and in the last ten years it has been particularly useful in Hollywood, given that resorting to sequels, reboots and spin-offs of already existing narrative universes and sure success has been one of the main commercial strategies of large production companies, which prefer to use existing stories rather than invent new ones. In the last decade, three films inspired by the universe of the Ghostbustersincluding the last one, Ghostbusters – Glacial Menacewhich starred some of the original protagonists, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson.
The first Ghostbusters it told of a special team of ghostbusters who are hired to deal with cases that have to do with the paranormal. Gremlinsproduced by Steven Spielberg, is about a group of little monsters who transform into uncontrollable monsters: to imagine and represent them, screenwriter Chris Columbus took inspiration from some folklore legends linked to the world of aviation, and which in the 1940s were were made popular by a novel by the famous British writer Roald Dahl.
The great success of the two films contributed to popularizing a genre with which some directors, such as the American Peter Jackson and the Japanese Nobuhiko Obayashi, had already been experimenting for some years: the horror comedy (horror comedy), characterized by the union of comic elements and others of horror or splatter. This is another famous example Beetlejuice – Pig sprite (1988) by Tim Burton, of which a sequel will also be released this year.
Like many other highly successful films, Ghostbusters It didn’t immediately make a big impression. The producers themselves were quite skeptical about the film’s ability to be successful. The then president of Columbia, which distributed the film, said that during a screening for industry insiders almost everyone present remained silent, while he continued to laugh alone. Finally one of the managers present put his arm around his shoulders and said, “Don’t worry, we all make mistakes.”
Critical reception was even worse. The New York Times he butchered Bill Murray’s performance and compared the film to the teen comedies that were coming out in those same years. Also the Washington Post he was quite critical and wrote that during the film «it feels as if you are watching the same demons and the same electrical storms harbingers of doom that we saw inExorcist and in Poltergeist».
Of course, not all experts agreed: Roger Ebert, one of the most important American critics who died in April 2013, gave the film three and a half stars out of five.
With the passage of time the film has become a classic and critical opinion has become unanimous in its consideration Ghostbusters – Ghostbusters a cult. In its first weekend of screening the film grossed more than $13 million. In just the first five weeks of screening, during which it remained the most watched film at the cinema, it grossed 99 million dollars, i.e. three times the production cost. In all, the film grossed approximately $295 million in theaters.
One thing that almost all fans of Ghostbusters it’s that every time you watch the film you notice something new. This is because it is very rich in details, subtle jokes – often improvised by Murray – or “Easter eggs”, i.e. references to other films or surprises of some kind with which the authors wink at the most attentive fans. For example, in the office of Peter Venkman, the character played by Murray, at a certain point the writing “Venkman burns in hell” appears, the same one seen in Brian De Palma’s film Carrie – Satan’s gaze (where instead of Venkman, obviously, it was written “Carrie White”).
Also Gremlins was enthusiastically received by the public: it was produced with 11 million dollars, a relatively cheap budget for the times, and in the first weekend it grossed more than 12, becoming the second most watched film, behind Ghostbusters. The film caused a stir because, even though Dante and Spielberg had imagined it as a family product, it was criticized for the violence of some scenes.
Because of this aspect, Gremlins and a movie released a couple of weeks earlier (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) led to the inclusion of a new grade in the US rating system (stamps), which suggests how suitable a film is for minors. Before, films were for everyone (“G”, like general audience), for minors accompanied by parents (“PG”, as parental guidance), not suitable for unaccompanied minors under 17 (“R”, as restricted) or absolutely not suitable for children under 17 (“NC-17”, as No children under 17). This had meant that many films labeled PG, therefore recommended for any minor accompanied by a guardian, contained everything that for American culture is considered suitable perhaps for 16 or 17 year olds, but not for children: i.e. images or scenes with a strong emotional impact , scary, with some nudity or bad language.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom And Gremlins were deemed too extreme to be given a PG rating, and sparked protests from several parents’ associations. Thus, at the proposal of Spielberg himself, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America, the association that promotes the interests of the main US film studios) coined a new category, PG-13, an acronym that identifies films that can be seen by minors 13 years old only if accompanied: this development changed the way films were conceived and made, and introduced new criteria that screenwriters and directors of children’s films must adapt to before presenting a story to a producer.
Thus, from 1985 onwards, all children’s cinema became less violent, less scary, less adult and less suggestive of sexual issues, because all the distributions wanted to get the PG-13 rating so as not to narrow their pool of potential viewers. Even today, superhero films, so expensive that they require the widest possible audience, are generally designed to obtain a PG-13 rating and therefore feature limited violence, do not deal with adult themes and do not deal with sexual issues or resort to metaphors to do so. or allusions.
TO Ghostbuster – Ghostbusters they followed Ghostbusters II – Ghostbusters II (1989), the reboot Ghostbusters (2016), Ghostbusters: Legacy (2021) e Ghostbusters – Glacial Menace (2024). In 1990 Dante filmed the sequel Gremlins 2 – The new breedwhich however was received very lukewarmly by the public and critics.
