Last year, I wrote an editorial about Ghostbusters merchandise I hoped to see this year. It was a "wishful thinking" kind of thing because I knew the chances of any of it becoming a reality was slim to none. Well, one of my ideas became a reality...a virtual reality, of sorts.

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A new Ghostbusters history book was just released entitled "¿A Quién Vas A Llamar?: De Tracy El Gorila A Peter Venkman - La Historia de Los Cazafantasmas". As you can surmise from that title, which translate to "Who You Gonna Call?: From Tracy the Gorilla to Peter Venkman - The History of Ghostbusters", the book is in Spanish. Read on to find out more about it...

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For the first time since the 1980s, a new Ghostbusters informational book was published. Entitled Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History, this 224-page hardcover tome was written by Daniel Wallace, with a foreword by Dan Aykroyd and an introduction by Ivan Reitman. The embossed cover is designed to look like the original RCA/Columbia Home Video release from 1985, which was also embossed in its original release. Coming in at a nice size of 9.5" x 11.25" closed, in full color print on high-quality paper, the book comes factory-sealed, so you'll know that you're getting a new, clean, untouched copy.

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This year's Halloween Treat is really special because it's not, specifically, Ghostbusters-related. It does feature two stars of Ghostbusters: Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray.

Thirty-seven years ago, long before there was a Marvel Cinematic Universe where everyone was teaming up with everyone else, there was a comic book series titled "Marvel Team-Up". As you would expect from that name, it featured collaborations between different characters in the Marvel canon. What you wouldn't expect, however, is that issue #74 featured Marvel regular, Spider-Man, teaming up with Saturday Night Live's Not-Ready-For-Primetime-Players. Yeah, Peter Parker and Mary Jane shared the stage with Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Bill Murray, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner, and Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels. Oh, and Stan Lee even makes his usual cameo appearance, long before that would be his usual thing.

I, honestly, have no idea what prompted this rather unusual cross-over. Saturday Night Live was three-years-old at the time and was pretty popular, but it would be another five months before they would spoof superheroes with the now-classic Superhero Party sketch (aired on March 17, 1979 with host Margot Kidder). I guess the folks at Marvel were just big SNL fans.

Sadly, this issue has never been published again since October 1978. When Marvel reprinted Marvel Team-Up issues #52 through #75 in Essential Marvel Team-Up, Vol. 3 (ISBN 978-0785130680), it was not included because they don't own the rights to the Saturday Night Live property, and either NBC didn't want to play ball, or there were issues with the likeness rights of the individual actors. What ever the case may be, I carefully scanned in my personal copy, and I'm sharing it so everyone can enjoy this classic craziness. Super big thanks to Matthew Jordan for cleaning-up the pages so they look even better than the actual 37-year-old book. Click on the cover to download the PDF.


For more Halloween Treats, check out my other site/blog, where you can find the movie scripts for Who Shot (Framed) Roger Rabbit and the Full Moon Pictures classic Arcade. For more on this issue, besides the sites I linked to throughout this post, also check out iFanboy and Brian's Comics.

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For the complete list of Spook Central's Halloween Treat posts from years past, click here. Thanks to Miss Kate for the "Halloween Treat" title banner that appears at the top of this post.

A rather odd grouping of stuff for this Spook Central site update. The bulk of the update is that ALL of my Real Ghostbusters Animation Cels are now part of the site. Eventually, I'd like to identify every episode each cel comes from and find the final frames in the episodes.

A super-large scan of The Real Ghostbusters Kenner Dual-Sided Door Poster/Calendar is now on the Real Ghostbusters Merchandise page. If you ever wondered what the source is for most of the Spook Central holiday images seen in the upper right corner of the main page...well, now you know.

Finally, the artwork for the Ghostbusters II CD & Cassette Singles of Bobby Brown's and Run-DMC's hit songs from the movie have been added to the songs respective pages. The music will be added, eventually, but I still have to see what I can do to clean the audio files. Right now, I'm concentrating on images, so I figured it best to get the art up first and get a placeholder made.

Making Ghostbusters by Don Shay is considered the "Ghostbusters Bible". Well, this month the "New Testament" has been released. That being, Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History by Daniel Wallace. I contributed a lot of images for the book (you'll see my name in the credits). Most of my contributions are in The Real Ghostbusters section. Specifically, several animation cel scans from my collection are in the book.

My cel of Slimer & Peter, without the background, was reproduced as a mini-cel, affixed to page 187. The publisher has given me the exclusivity on presenting this item to all of you as a preview of the book.


Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History, which you can order at Amazon, was originally slated for a September 27th release here in the U.S., but since the U.K. publisher released it a month early, it seems that the release has gotten pushed up. As of right now, Amazon has it in stock and ready to ship!

I will have a detailed review of the book here on Spook Central soon. I still have some stuff for Spook Central that I want to get done with first. I originally had planned to write it next week, but I have been dealing with a family member in the hospital for the past five weeks, which will likely cause it to be delayed until after Halloween.

Overall, I think the two Blu-ray discs released in 2014 for both films are the best available copies of the films. When I need to pull new images, I tend to go with my Blu-ray rips over my DVD rips, so it seemed fitting that I replace all of Spook Central's old movie frame grabs with new ones from the Blu-rays So, here's the quick laundry list of pages that have new movie images on them, all in the original 1920x800 high-resolution/definition quality. The music video frames are, of course, not high res/def, since they're standard def on the Blu-rays. But they are larger and infinitely better than what I used to have. The quality of details is amazing! With the Props pages, if you click on the header image you'll get the full image. The Deleted Scenes pages also include a few re-done book-scanned images in high-resolution.

• Filming Locations pages
• Props pages
• GB1 Deleted Scenes pages (some on main page, Nobel Prize, Fort Detmerring ghost)
• GB2 Deleted Scenes pages (some on main page, many on other pages)
• GB Music Video
• On Our Own Music Video

For the most part, the 2014 Blu-rays are significantly better for both movies. Some frames are a tad darker, but not usually by very much. As mentioned in my review from last year, all pink slime effects shots in Ghostbusters II are significantly darker, but I still felt that they were acceptable. I only encountered three images where the new Blu-rays were too dark to replace them, so I had to keep the old images.

1. GB1: Ecto-1 aside FDR drive before Ray & Winston talk (two frames used from this one shot).
2. GB2: My Slime Blower header, which is a crop of Winston and Peter firing on the Vigo painting after Ray gets possessed.

I did notice a few interesting things, so I made a few quick comparison images to illustrate what I found. Old images are on top/right (sourced from the 1999 DVDs) and the new images are on the bottom/left (sourced from the 20104 Blu-rays).

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This is a first for Spook Central's Shot on Site series. This is a Ghostbusters II location that was already identified, but I will be writing about it based on its usage in another movie - and tying it all together using images from both movies, some behind the scenes images, and the usual Google Maps images to show it in real-life. This is going to be quite image-intensive, so keep that in mind as you proceed.

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Way back in October 2006, Roger Barr wrote an article entitled "Ten Things I Liked About Ghostbusters II" (since renamed to "Some Things I Really Like About Ghostbusters II"). I've been meaning to write a counterpoint article since I often consider Ghostbusters II to be a textbook example of how NOT to do a sequel. It took me almost 10 years, but this is that article.

It should be noted that my article/list shares similar points with James Greene, Jr.'s February 10th, 2010 article "Ten Mistakes That Could Ruin Ghostbusters III". That just proves that I'm not the only one who was irked by these elements of the film.

Also, this list is in no particular order, though some items flow into each other.

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What do you get when you cross Ghostbusters with McDonald's? Well, you get a set of school supplies, tray liners/placemats, and bicycle accessories. That's true, of course, but you also get the McBusters!

What are the McBusters, you may ask? Simply put, it's a trilogy of short videos created by Myke Chilian in 2010 that re-create bits and pieces of both Ghostbusters films using the characters and paraphernalia of the McDonald's fast food universe.

Most of the cast and crew you will likely have never heard of. The most well-known, at least in geek circles, is Chris Hardwick, who voices Morgan Spurlock in parts 2 & 3. Chris hosts "The Talking Dead" and "At Midnight", and has been heard as Otis (the world's only transsexual cow) on "Back at the Barnyard" and as Craig the snake on "Sanjay and Craig". Eric Bauza (who voices Hamburglar, Grimace, Walter Peck and others) is another familiar name to me, though I only knew the name and couldn't place it to any roles without looking him up. I've heard him in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (as Tiger Claw), "The Looney Tunes Show" (as Marvin the Martian), and "The Fairly OddParents" (as Foop). He's also popped up in some of those Lego Star Wars shorts as Luke Skywalker. While I've never heard of the other cast and crew, the IMDB's McBusters page shows that they've done other high-profile projects in the field of animation. A lot have gone on to work on "Uncle Grandpa", it seems.

Below are all three videos (click on each to play), which form one continuous story. WARNING - The language is a bit crude at times, most of it used unnecessarily. I would definitely give this a PG-13 rating for language, though the MPAA would give it an R rating since they have that "only one F-bomb" rule for PG-13.


They bust food goblins and turn them into delicious McDonalds food. They're the McBusters.

CAST
Eric Bauza ... Hamburglar, Walter Peck
Myke Chilian ... Ronald McDonald, Janine Melnitz
Vatche Panos ... Mayor McCheese
Demorge Brown ... Mac Tonight
Amy Roiland ... Cashier, Lady At Restaurant


Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock tries to get in the way of the McBusters.

CAST
Eric Bauza ... Hamburglar, Grimace
Myke Chilian ... Ronald McDonald
Chris Hardwick ... Morgan Spurlock
Richard Lee ... Burger King
Vatche Panos ... Mayor McCheese
Demorge Brown ... Mac Tonight
Vivian Badashian ... News Anchor
Tommy Meehan ... Bathtub Monster


The McBusters wrap it up in their tasty 12-minute finale.

CAST
Myke Chilian ... Ronald McDonald
Eric Bauza ... Hamburglar, Grimace, Announcer, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Jury Foreman, Frymer
Vatche Panos ... Mayor McCheese
Demorge Brown ... Mac Tonight
Richard Lee ... Burger King
Chris Hardwick ... Morgan Spurlock
Dave Brockie ... Oderus Urungus
Craig Kellman ... Judge
Jenny Goldberg ... Prosecutor, News Woman
Ryan Ridley ... Street Thug
Tommy Meehan ... Car Crush Guy
Lilo Papikyan ... Cereal Girl
David Yegorian .. Cereal Boy
Mary Papikyan ... Neighbor Girl
Suren Yegorian ... Neighbor Boy

Now that you've seen the entire trilogy, go to the Spook Central Facebook page for a large gallery of images. Then go to Ghostbusters News for the McBusters intro & outro themes and an interview with creator/animator Myke Chilian.

Finally, here's a little fun bit of trivia for you. In part 3, when Mayor McCheese's dream starts (at 4:15) there's a little guy hiding on the pathway in the background wearing an orange vest atop green clothes with yellow gloves on; he's got brown hair and really large glasses and possibly buck teeth. I asked Myke who it was, and he said that it's his musician friend, DJ Embryonic Petit Sac. Also, at 10:05, are all of Myke's friends that worked on the show with him. Neat!