September 21, 2007:
There were a few Halloween-themed episodes of The Real Ghostbusters, but only one was a bona fide Halloween special. Only one helped Garfield bookend It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown in prime time. Only one never told you...what happened...to your father.
"The Halloween Door" debuted on October 29th, 1989. Even seeing the normal bunch of Halloween specials in prime time meant tons to me, but to find a Saturday morning standard souped up with a custom open and musical numbers...at nighttime...on a major network? This was the real shit.
As an added bonus, the episode was penned by J. Michael Straczynski. I won't give you the complete and total overview of this guy's on-again, off-again relationship with RGB, but here's the summary: He started it off, he wrote the best episodes, he left when the network brass wanted Egon to be a party animal and Janine to wear longer skirts, and eventually came back on his own terms when the "revised" series starting tanking. "The Halloween Door" was written during his second stay as the show's head writer, and in lesser hands, we might not have gotten a devil-themed lead monster with a big mouth in its crotch. It's also worth noting that J. Michael has one of the most impossible-to-spell surnames in history.
The episode starts off with typical Halloween hijinks -- Slimer has a Venkman costume, Venkman has a Slimer costume, and everything's going swell until there's a knock at the door. It's some random extremist mad doctor type named Dr. Crowley, complete with bumbling generic assistant, and he wants the Ghostbusters' help in getting rid of Halloween once and for all!
The giant-headed doctor guy's argument is pretty weak. He's basically miffed that kids dress up as ghosts and goblins, and really doesn't have any deeper complaint about what it all means. So, the Ghostbusters aren't swayed at all -- they like Halloween. Besides, you can't be a hero character in a kiddy cartoon if you take verbal shits all over one of their favorite days of the year. Egon takes the opportunity to get on his soapbox and push the many healthy aspects of Halloween, which is something he will do like seventy-three more times before the episode's over.
I always liked Venkman the most as a kid, but I was totally wrong. Egon is the best Ghostbuster.
The antagonists leave, and just as Dr. Crowley smashes a curbside pumpkin with his bare hands in frustration (seriously), his assistant reveals that they don't need the Ghostbusters' help. He's stolen their PKE Meter, and that's all they were really after, anyway. But for what?!
We'll find out soon, but not before a total mindfuck of a scene wherein the Ghostbusters put on an extended and exhaustive Halloween stage show at the local school. What begins as a simple speech about ancient Celtic rituals evolves into a twisted lights & magic show, with the 'Busters singing and dancing while everything from laser beams to giant clouds of pink smoke punctuate the rhyming words.
From Egon playing a strap-on Casio keyboard while wearing a ghost robe to Slimer morphing himself into the shape of a pumpkin (complete with stem!), it's probably among the top three strangest RGB scenes ever, which is really saying considering that the series made frequent use of a 100' sentient marshmallow who talked like that caveman boy from DuckTales.
Elsewhere, Dr. Crowley utilizes the PKE meter to activate his "Electronic Positronic Anti-Halloween Machine," which zaps the entire city and swipes all of its Halloween goodness. We're treated to a montage of happy trick-or-treaters and partygoers left unamused as their pumpkins, candy and costumes vanish into thin air.
I was going to do this whole bit about what possible role a PKE meter could have in a machine like this, but it seems silly to apply logic to a device that can selectively vaporize pumpkins and Halloween costumes. Instead, I will use this space to practice writing in German.
Wenn Sie diesen Code dechiffrieren können, verwirklicht ein riesigesInsekt hinter Ihnen und beißt Ihren Kopf weg.
A mad doctor stealing Halloween away might seem like a great conceit for a RGB Halloween episode, but that's not even close to the level of drama this episode intends to hit...
Turns out, Crowley's fat assistant wasn't a fat assistant at all, but actually a demon in a fat assistant costume! So, why wasn't his disguise vaporized with everybody else's? Machine's buggy.
As we'll learn later, ghouls and demons have been helping the unknowing Dr. Crowley along with his plan to eradicate Halloween. And they actually have a really good reason why, believe it or not.
Thousands of years ago, humanity struck a deal with the copious amounts of ghouls and demons who endlessly preyed upon our planet: They'd leave our turf so long as we paid tribute to them once a year...on Halloween. Since Crowley's stupid machine swiped the world's Halloween goodness, the deal is off, and the devils are free to run amok once more!
And they do...big time!
The best episodes of RGB were the ones where our heroes didn't fend off against just one ghost or two ghosts, but hundreds. This is partly due to the heightened sense of danger, but mostly because the artists had to draw so many ghosts that they started getting extra creative to avoid boredom. Watch this episode with an eagle eye and you'll see everything from Siamese octopus twins to a supernatural chicken who remains silent despite our very obvious need for him to say "bookaw."
The demons waste no time in blowing up the Ghostbusters' containment unit, immediately freeing the trillion ghosts they'd spent years collecting. I know that the demons are supposed to represent this episode's villains, but they're chiefly responsible for the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man cameo depicted above. I think I'm on their side now.
Finally, we meet the "boss" of the ghouls...Boogaloo! Boogaloo is around Stay Puft's size, but does away with all of the cuteness in favor of a rather devil-like appearance, with extra heads taking the place of less interesting body parts. He's pretty great, and to make sure we understood that he was a big time player, Boogaloo doesn't just hit the scene stomping cars and knocking buildings over. Well, he does do those things, but he does them while singing! It's a whole musical number! "The Boogaloo Is Back In Town" is the song's name, I guess, and I hereby swear that I will find a way to get it on my iPod by dawn.
The Ghostbusters try to zap Boogaloo with their proton packs, but proton packs and kind of funny in that they usually won't work on mega-ghosts who get their own musical numbers. This doesn't keep them from trying, but the batteries drain out, leaving them with no other way to stop Boogaloo than a patented deus ex machina.
At the stroke of midnight, the "contract" (they keep calling it a contract, but I don't think they mean it literally, because I can't picture the demons from this episode sitting around a table with ancient druids, passing around dragon's ink pens and such) will be broken, and to really drive it all home, Boogaloo grabs a gigantic clock and taunts the Ghostbusters with each and every tick. But they have a secret weapon! A girl who ain't afraid of no ghost!
Yeah, I dunno. I mean, I get what they were going for, but...I dunno. The girl isn't afraid of Boogaloo, and the Ghostbusters take this to mean that the contract isn't broken, and that Halloween is saved and yadda yadda yadda. It just seems like a bit of a stretch to me. Like, what if Egon grabbed some random little girl and paid her fifty bucks to go ask the 100' devil monster for candy? Essentially, that's what happened. And it's enough for that same kickass portal that opened up near the beginning of the episode to emerge once more, sucking the ghosts and goblins up like a Dustbuster would sunflower seed shells. The holiday is saved! And the city, too!
The moral of the story: "Halloween is for kids." This episode took a rather obtuse approach in delivering that message, but if you read the article I wrote yesterday about pumpkin ice cream, I guess you're figuring that I shouldn't talk. Magically, the clock "resets" so the world can enjoy Halloween in full, leaving the Ghostbusters with ample time for a picture-worthy group hug before they go trick-or-treating.
"The Halloween Door" definitely felt like a special episode. Giant devils, cities full of demons, musical numbers...it had everything we'd come to expect from prime time programming. I'm not sure how often it was rerun, and am ashamed to admit that I can't recall if the episode entered into rotation with the "regular" episodes during reruns. I sort of hope that it didn't...the episode would just feel a little more special if the world only got to see it once. Plus, it makes the three videos I've compiled below seem like more badass finds:
