We Can Just Put it Right Back in There: A Ghostbusters Reconstruction Review

Have you ever wondered what a two-and-a-half hour "kitchen sink" extended cut of Ghostbusters would look like?  Thanks to Matt Silverstone's recently-released We Can Just Put it Right Back in There: A Ghostbusters Reconstruction UNOFFICIAL FAN-EDITED video, we have an answer. Read on to find out more...

The 1280x720 video, which runs 2:31:23, opens with this disclaimer:

This presentation of "Ghostbusters" is an attempt to re-combine all of the deleted scenes, alternate takes, lost audio and music cues that were cut/altered in the final cut.

This edit is exclusively for non-profit purposes. It is not designed as an improvement on the theatrical version, nor is it an ideal viewing experience for the first time viewer. Please buy this movie on DVD, Blu-ray or digital. All copyrights belong to Sony Pictures Entertainment.

All love and respect to Ivan Reitman and Sheldon Kahn for their genius editing. They made all the right decisions. This is just for a little fun...

We Can Just Put it Right Back in There: A Ghostbusters Reconstruction is a stitch job that would make Dr. Frankenstein proud. It combines the Theatrical Cut with the First/Preview Cut, adds in deleted scenes, alternate takes from the TV edit and the raw dailies, and throws in some of Elmer Bernstein's unused music cues to prove him right when he said that his work would have worked just as well (if not better) than the "needle drops" (licensed pop music) that were used in the final audio mix.

Elmer was always irked about Mick Smiley's "Magic" being used during the second montage instead of his own music. Well, I hope he's smiling up there in Heaven when his spirit sees this...


In this clip, Matt not only provides some music and a small "finishing touch" to a deleted scene, but he gives us another example of restoring Bernstein's music in place of a pop song.


Several scenes contain lots of alternate takes. This does make some scenes drag a bit, but I get that Matt wanted to include as much as possible. Like I said, it's a "kitchen sink" edit :-)


One of my favorite parts of the restoration is the first montage, which is no longer cluttered by all of the magazine covers. I hope Harold's smiling up there in Heaven when his spirit sees that he's no longer covered by a magazine outside the Chinese restaurant. I also love that that one flipped Ecto-1 shot is now shown properly.


A few other changes have been made to the film. You have a 6 in 12 chance of revealing a film flub that has been fixed, and the "Dream Ghost" is now back to being the "Fort Detmerring Ghost", with that scene now appearing in its original context (minus the part with the park ranger, for which we still don't have the footage).

I gotta say, not since I watched the first/preview cut a few years ago has the movie felt this "new" to me.  The whole video is fantastic! The only changes I would make is to lower the music, or not even have music, during the end credit outtakes. It made it hard to hear the dialogue in those outtakes. After the outtakes ended, instead of having all that empty black space on the right side of the screen, I would have had the remaining credits come up in the middle. I've seen that done on other movies that show outtakes alongside the end credits.

Being that this is a 100% UNOFFICIAL version of the film, it is not available on Blu-ray or DVD, nor can you buy or rent it through a streaming service. Matt has made it available for FREE through the following sources: Internet Archive. You can download his original 1280x720 .m4v file (7.4 GB) or the recompressed streaming .mp4 file (860 MB). It can be streamed through the previously-mentioned sites, or you can use my player to watch the Internet Archive's streaming file.


I would love to see Sony and Ghost Corps get the master copy from Matt and include it on the next home video release, likely next year for the 40th anniversary.

I would also love to see Matt do one of these for Ghostbusters II, but as Matt and I both agreed, not enough of the missing footage has been released to make it viable to do. A few years ago, I had started a project to restore the "Ghostbusters outside the museum" scene to its proper full version, as dictated by the script. I never got far into it, but I would definitely send Matt the information (and videos) that I have, should the pieces ever fall into place to do it as part of a Ghostbusters II full movie restoration.