With Halloween coming, along with the release of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, I thought I would visit the nearly forgotten Filmation live-action series, The Ghost Busters, which predated the legendary Ivan Reitman movie, Ghostbusters, by nearly a decade.
The Ghost Busters showcased the adventures of a trio of monster hunters who visited a haunted house each episode to encounter a different ghoulish threat– not just ghosts, despite the show’s title. The cast was fronted by Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch, who had previously starred in the wild west-era primetime sitcom F Troop, and their roles on The Ghost Busters— Jake Kong and Eddie Spencer respectively– were similar to their F Troop characters. They were accompanied by Bob Burns, as Tracy the gorilla, who wore a beanie with a propellor on top, and who drove their jalopy to the haunted house each week. Burns was billed as Tracy’s “trainer” in the credits.
The name “Kong” is clearly a reference to King Kong, but in a twist, it was given to one of the human characters. The names “Spencer” and “Tracy” are a reference to the actor Spencer Tracy, although… I’m not sure why.
Filmation founder Lou Scheimer voiced Zero, their boss who sent them out on each mission via a cassette recording which self-destructed at the end a la Mission: Impossible. But invariably, the cassette would explode in Tracy’s face.
Among the ghosts and monsters, the trio “busted” were Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, an Egyptian Queen and Mummy, Count and Countess Dracula, Dr. Jeckyll/Mr. Hyde, Merlin, The Abominable Snowman, The Red Baron, The Canterville Ghost, Billy the Kid and Belle Starr, a werewolf and gypsy fortune teller, The Phantom of Vaudeville and his ventriloquist’s dummy Elmo, and more.
The Ghost Busters was a live-action slapstick comedy that made it stand out on Saturday mornings. The show was a big hit during its single 15-episode season on CBS. Unfortunately, it wasn’t AS big a hit as another Filmation live-action series, Shazam!. So rather than produce a second season of The Ghost Busters, Filmation chose to put the money into a second season of Shazam! and create the spin-off, Isis.
Allegedly, it was believed that the original recordings of The Ghost Busters were lost or destroyed over time, but a complete set of videotapes was later located and used to transfer the series to DVD in 2007.
When Columbia Pictures decided to make Reitman’s Ghostbusters, they had to negotiate a deal with Filmation to use the name. Reportedly, part of the deal was that Filmation would get the first crack at making an animated series based on the movie, but for some unknown reason, that didn’t happen. When Columbia created a cartoon based on the movie, which would be called The Real Ghostbusters, it was animated by DIC.
However, Filmation decided to revisit their old Ghost Busters concept in a cartoon. This time around they combined the two words into one name, Ghostbusters, just as the film had been titled. The Filmation cartoon is usually called Filmation’s Ghostbusters these days, but when it originally aired, it was simply labeled as Ghostbusters.
Filmation’s Ghostbusters focused on the sons of Tucker and Storch’s characters, Jake Kong Jr. and Eddie Spencer Jr. Tracy the Gorilla returned as a regular character (with an Indiana Jones-style fedora instead of his signature beanie), and animated versions of the fathers appeared.
Like most shows of the era, Filmation’s Ghostbusters traded out the monster of the week format of the live-action series for a Big Bad, Prime Evil, and his crew of ghouls.
The Filmation Ghostbusters was clearly a ploy to cash in on the Columbia film’s success. Like the live-action series, the animated Ghostbusters was released in its entirety on DVD.
I may write about that series in greater depth one day, but it was a syndicated afternoon program, and for the time being, I’m focusing on shows that actually aired on Saturday mornings (this column IS called SATURDAY Morning Superstars, after all). But one day maybe…
As mentioned, the live-action Ghost Busters was released on DVD in 2007 and was packed with extras. Unfortunately, it is long out of print as BCI Eclipse went out of business, partially due to investing so much into these high-quality releases of Filmation shows which simply didn’t sell that well. I believe a low-price, barebones boxed set was later released by Mill Creek.
Did you know there was a group called the “Ghost Busters” almost a decade before Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson became the “Ghostbusters?”
