The Real Ghostbusters: Manhattan Madness DVD Review

With the news of official Real Ghostbusters DVDs from Sony coming soon, I thought I'd write a little review of a non-official DVD that has just hit the marketplace. It's called The Real Ghostbusters: Manhattan Madness and was released by OS Films (UPC Code: 545618314678). You can buy it at Amazon here, here, or here. Read on to find out more about it...


This DVD contains the episodes: "The Spirit Of Aunt Lois," "Beneath These Streets," "Sea Fright," "Adventures In Slime And Space," "Ghostbusted," "Knock Knock," and "Venkman's Ghost Repellers."


Product Details: 153 Minutes (exact), English, Color, Stereo, NTSC, Region 1, 2005, OS Films.


This is a well produced bootleg, (it's a professionally-replicated DVD, not a DVD-R) containing 7 of the 8 episodes from the Adventures in Slime & Space and Sea Fright PAL Region 2 DVDs, which Sony released in 2004 ("Ragnarok & Roll" is the missing episode). The video quality is decent, but not as good as an official DVD from Sony from the original master tapes.


When you boot-up the DVD, after the copyright warning screen, you are treated to a beautiful comic book style menu introduction (though they misspell Egon and Winston's last names) using footage from the episodes and scans from the Marvel U.K. The Real Ghostbusters comic books. The problem is that it runs for two minutes, can't be skipped, and if you go back to the menu from viewing the program (by pressing the Menu button on your remote), you'll have to sit through the whole thing again (as you would every time you put the DVD in your player).


Since all of the video content is on Title 1 (there is no Title 2 or higher), for future viewings I suggest pressing the Stop button on your remote several times after you insert the DVD into your player to prevent it from auto-playing. That is, of course, if your player lets you do this. My player will let me do it with some DVDs (if I'm quick or persistent enough), but I couldn't do it with this DVD. If you can do it, all you have to do is then press 1 on your remote to go straight to the episodes on Title 1. All of the episodes are shown back-to-back on Title 1 (152:40 exact runtime - 2 hrs 32 min 40 sec).


Although each episode has it's own opening titles and end credits, the opening titles have been altered. The episode titles are on new text screens and are shown *before* the opening title sequence into which it now dissolves. When the ghost jumps towards the screen and becomes the No Ghost logo, the animated logo is replaced with a new deformed one. At the end, the title screen ("The Real Ghostbusters") has been redone with new deformed text in place of the original text. The episode starts right after the opening title sequence since, as previously stated, the title card screen is shown before it. The end credits are unaltered, except that they now end after the original DIC logo is shown. The Columbia Pictures Television logo screen is omitted.


I have no idea why OS Films didn't want to use the original title logo texts and No Ghost logo. It's not like they were paying the copyright holder (Sony) for the content, anyway. There is no logical reason why they would alter the episodes like they did. A bootlegger normally wouldn't have gone through so much trouble, nor would they have created such an elaborate menu intro. [NOTE: I haven't viewed the episodes themselves in their entirety, so I don't know if they made any alterations to them - though it appears that they're fine.]


The episodes are shown in a windowboxed format, and not entirely full screen as they should be. There are black bars on all sides of the image, though you may only notice them on the top and bottom of the screen very slightly. The windowboxing is possibly there to maintain the aspect ratio that the PAL discs are encoded in, which is slightly wider than NTSC.


Chapter marks have been placed at the start of each episode. After the last episode, the video ends, and the DVD stops playing.

The cover image is from the UK Marvel Real Ghostbusters Annual 1989. Also, all of the screenshots I did can be obtained in this zip file.

If you want to buy The Real Ghostbusters: Manhattan Madness DVD, it's only available at Amazon here, here, or here. You will not find it in stores because it's not a legal retail product. Until Sony releases these episodes in an official capacity, this will have to do.

[UPDATE - 7/3/2025]
I never expected to update this review almost 20 years later, but there's some important information that needs to be written. Obviously, this DVD is no longer relevant in light of the TimeLife Complete Collection DVD set that was released in 2008, or even Sony's 10 volumes (1-5 and 6-10 were reviewed) that were released in 2016. That said, if you still have a copy of the Manhattan Madness DVD, or may want a copy, it MIGHT NOT BE PLAYABLE ANYMORE!

The copy I had in 2005, of which I wrote this review, was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in late 2012. I never bothered to replace it because it is inferior to the TimeLife set in every possible way; aside from having the Tahiti music versions of "Knock Knock" and "Venkman's Ghost Repellers" (because it was sourced from Sony's UK DVDs). Recently, I felt like reacquiring a copy for the sake of keeping it as a "collectible". It's not like I don't already have other inferior home video copies of Ghostbusters movies and animated series that are only kept as part of my "collection". I could not re-buy the Manhattan Madness DVD through any of the Amazon listings I linked to, originally, in my review because there are no Marketplace sellers still selling it. I suspected that all stock that "OS Films" produced had been purchased a long time ago and that was it.

Lo and behold, eBay seller "vospkrd" is selling them for $11.95 + $4.63 U.S. shipping in Brand New condition. I bought one, figuring that he obtained what ever old stock may still remain from 2005. Sure enough, the copy I received was sealed, and based on my memory of owning one in 2005, it felt like legitimate old stock. The shrink wrap was a little dirty and it didn't seem "freshly made". I was very happy... until I played it. It froze around 54:19 during the episode "Sea Fright" (all episodes are shown back-to-one as part of one video). There was nothing physically wrong with the disc, so what could be the problem?

I think it's the same issue plaguing Warner Brothers DVDs manufactured from around 2006 to 2008. Dual-layer discs weren't manufactured correctly at the replicating plant, and over time, the bond between the layers has degraded. The discs played fine at the time, but now, they either won't be recognized by the player, won't boot up, or will freeze halfway through the movie (at the point where the layer change is). Given that the Manhattan Madness DVD is a dual-layer disc, and happens to be from the same time period (it has an authoring date of November 12, 2005), I suspect that that's what's going on here. I mean, if this issue happens with discs from a major studio at a professional replicating plant, it stands to reason it would happen with a bootlegger (OS Films) using a (presumably) substandard replicating plant.

Vospkrd sent me a replacement, which was also sealed (with water-damaged artwork), and that disc has the same issue. It starts glitching and freezing during "Sea Fright", won't play the next episode ("Adventures of Slime and Space"), and only when I skip ahead to the next episode after that, "Ghost Busted", do I get it to play again. I even tried both discs in my computer, but it was a no go. VLC Media Player also freezes during "Sea Fright", and all my copying and ripping programs (the disc is NOT copy-protected) give read errors, such as "L-EC Uncorrectable Error".

Had either of these new DVDs played fine, I would have alerted all of you to the availability of the DVD from Vospkrd. Unfortunately, if his entire stock is bad, there's no point in doing that. Had I been able to keep my original DVD, I wonder if it still would have been completely playable now. I really wish I would have created an ISO file of it as a back-up.