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Post by ripper on Dec 24, 2012 12:10:08 GMT
Reading through the Generic Tie-ins thread, I saw that Dem had a tie-in for The Munsters and it got me thinking about a short-lived TV series called The Ghost Busters made in 1975. It was a live-action children's show and starred Forrest Tucker (Jake Kong), Larry Storch (Eddie Spenser) and Bob Burns (Tracy the gorilla), as a trio of bumbling ghost hunters, sent on missions around the world by their never seen boss "Zero" to exorcise various ghosts, vampires and other supernatural threats. There were, I think, about 15 episodes, and there was an animated re-make a decade or so later. It was shown weekly in the ATV area in the summer of 1976 or 1977 at tea-times, but has not been repeated so far as I know. I don't know if it was screened in other ITV regions. The rapport between the three principals was very good indeed and I would love to see it again after all these years. I think that they used a kind of camera to get rid of their foes, or at least I remember them using a camera in some episodes. Does anyone else remember this series?
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Dec 24, 2012 17:13:07 GMT
I've never seen The Ghost Busters, but Timothy Burke and Kevin Burke's Saturday Morning Fever: Growing Up with Cartoon Culture has this to say about it: [Filmation's Shazam! and Isis] were vastly superior to the terrifyingly painful Filmation program The Ghost Busters, not to be confused with the later cartoon The Real Ghostbusters or the movie Ghostbusters, though it was the legal basis for the later cartoon The Ghostbusters, a tangle of titles which conclusively demonstrates that intellectual property lawyers are a low species of life. Starring Larry Storch and Forrest Tucker--a pair of actors who make Bob Denver and Allan Hale look like Laurence Olivier and Robert de Niro--and a guy named Bob Burns dressed in a really, really bad ape costume, with a beanie on top, the show featured the adventures (if we can generously call them that) of a team of ghost-eradicators. The Ghost Busters mostly triumphed through repetitious idiocy...
Oh well, at least [Burns] was the best monkey for the job. Filmation executive Lou Scheimer told us, "On Ghost Busters, when we auditioned for the role of the gorilla, we didn't have a very large budget so our casting call was for actors who already had their own gorilla suits. On the morning of our casting call, I knew I had found the right actor when I found a gorilla sitting in our waiting room reading a copy of Variety."
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 24, 2012 17:36:07 GMT
Yes I remember that series, ripper, and I probably saw the same ATV airing of it that you did. My memories of it are a lot less fond than yours, however! I remember the show being awfully cheap, with the same castle set used every week and yes they had some kind of plastic prop camera with a whirly bit on top to get rid of the ghosts. Larry Storch was sleaze personified (see AIRPORT 1975 for evidence) and Forrest Tucker seemed *very* old. But I would only have been about 9 or so when it was on so who knows?
Nice to know someone else remembers it, though!
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Post by ripper on Dec 24, 2012 20:16:51 GMT
Cauldronbrewer, I love that quote about the producer knowing that they had found the right actor when they found a gorilla in the waiting room reading Variety :-D. I guess if the series had been made 25 years before then Crash Corrigon would have played Tracy :-D.
John, I'm glad someone else also remembers the series. Whenever I've mentioned it to friends they've just looked at me blankly. It was very cheap indeed, with very basic sets and props; the graveyard set seemed to be in nearly every episode. Forrest Tucker was in his middle 50s when he made the series but he did, indeed, look a lot older. I've been struggling to remember which part Larry Storch played in Airport '75...was he a passenger? That camera gizmo they used looked as if it came from Poundland. It was a very silly show with lots of slapstick and corny jokes, but I really liked it at the time, and I recall scoffing down my fish fingers and chips as I watched it. I haven't seen it anywhere since 1976 or 1977. There were quite a few cheap US imports around then, but The Ghost Busters is the one that sticks in my mind. It also had a catchy theme song.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 24, 2012 21:46:13 GMT
John, I'm glad someone else also remembers the series. Whenever I've mentioned it to friends they've just looked at me blankly. It was very cheap indeed, with very basic sets and props; the graveyard set seemed to be in nearly every episode. Forrest Tucker was in his middle 50s when he made the series but he did, indeed, look a lot older. I've been struggling to remember which part Larry Storch played in Airport '75...was he a passenger? That camera gizmo they used looked as if it came from Poundland. It was a very silly show with lots of slapstick and corny jokes, but I really liked it at the time, and I recall scoffing down my fish fingers and chips as I watched it. I haven't seen it anywhere since 1976 or 1977. There were quite a few cheap US imports around then, but The Ghost Busters is the one that sticks in my mind. It also had a catchy theme song. To my shame and embarrassment I can probably still sing that theme song! Larry Storch was a sleazy TV newsman interviewing Charlton Heston about his airline's disaster in AIRPORT 1975 (I think - I prefer to wing it with my pointless film knowledge rather than look it up on imdb). I also remember that every week on GHOST BUSTERS the ghost would take up residence in that old spooky castle / house / bus station outside of town and we would then get a cut to exactly the same drawing of a haunted house every week as an establishing shot.
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Post by ripper on Dec 25, 2012 16:10:31 GMT
Thanks for the information on the Larry Storch character in Airport 1975, John. I think I remember the part he played now, though it has been quite a while since I saw that film...my favourite "Airport" movie of the franchise :-D.
I am not really clear about how to post links in messages, but the Ghost Busters opening is on Youtube; just type in "The Ghost Busters Opening Credits" to relive that theme song again :-D. Apparently, the series was released on R1 dvd a few years ago, but the company went out of business, so it is out of print and going for big money now on Amazon.
Yes, you have jogged my memory about that establishing shot of the castle/house, which was used time after time...maybe the ghosts occupied it on a time-share basis :-D.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Dec 25, 2012 17:04:45 GMT
Wow I've just played that theme song - 1975 was a more innocent and, it would seem a considerably more inebriated, time.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 25, 2012 18:35:18 GMT
- 1975 was a more innocent and, it would seem a considerably more inebriated, time. Rest assured, some of us are doing our very best to disprove that. It was like the EEC Fosters mountain in here yesterday and now - panic! - there's only five left! Anyone fancy a mince pie, by the way? The bride made 'em. Well tasty they are.
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Post by ripper on Dec 26, 2012 10:12:40 GMT
It's a really catchy song, John; I was humming it all day yesterday, and, yes, those times did seem far simpler and innocent. In 1975 there were only 3 TV channels, but, speaking personally, there was more back then that I wanted to watch and actually looked forward to watching. Though we can now choose from hundreds of channels I find myself watching hardly anything. The schedules seem to be filled with celebs dancing, skating, eating insects, cooking, and eating insects as they dance and recite recipies from their latest cookery book. Thank goodness for the DVD player. Okay, traditional Boxing Day things not as good as they used to be and country going to the dogs rant over :-D.
I hope that you managed to re-stock with tubes of the amber nectar, Dem, and there's nothing like home-made mince pies; much tastier than shop-bought ones imo :-D.
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