From the beginning of this film you are fully aware of its intentions as being a fun movie, this is especially reinforced the the song over the opening credits.  Made in 1984 Ghostbusters proved a blockbuster hit worldwide for Columbia

A group of Scientist friends, with some interest in the supernatural start up a business catching ghosts, and call them selves Ghostbusters.  Peter (bill Murray) Ray (Dan Akyroyd), and Igon (Harold Ramis) form the business, run from a near abandoned ex fire station in New York city only after a public library reports a haunting to which the boys investigate and see the ghost for themselves. 

After seeing their advert on TV, musician Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) called the Ghostbusters to when her refrigerator turns into the portal to a supernatural dimension, acting as a house for a demonic creature.  Soon after, her very nerdy neighbour Louis (Rick Moranis) is chased down by one of these creatures and possessed as is Dana shortly after.  With the building these two people live in being the portal to the other world that could destroy human civilisation, it is up to the Ghostbusters to save the girl and the world!!!!

So How Does This Transfer Hold Up??
There really is no doubt about Columbia's commitment to DVD.  Time and time again, they have proven themselves the masters of video mastering and have done so again with Ghostbusters.  Shot over 15 years ago, this 2.35:1 anamorphic (16:9 Enhanced) piccy is fantastic.  Granted there are a few signs of a dirt speckled print, and a soft focus here and there, but damn it still really good.  Fleshtones are consistently accurate and never oversatutated,  with a great amount of image detail and depth, and there is very little evidence of aliasing ( what is there, is of no real consequence)   With so many extras (see below) this is an RSDL DVD and there is a layer change in the movie located at 46:43 ( or chapter 15 to 16). 

To compliment this very special collector's edition, the audio track has been remixed into Dolby Digital 5.1 (in English only for this particular DVD)..  The german track is DD2.1.   Though nothing to really write home about, it's certainly better in 5.1 than stereo.  The front sound stage is used the most, with a few moments of split surround use.  The music can be heard in the rears, but is really a low level ambience, rather than being aggressive (that's left for the sound FX when they do kick in).  The bass sounds like it has been upped a touch for that extra punch, and for a 15 year old movie sounds okay, though not as "clean" sounding as today's bass rumblers.

As for the extras, now this is really where this DVD shines.  You couldn't ask for more & to prove that here's what you get :-

Interactive animated menus (though I first found the navigation to be a little confusing (I was wondering what the bloody hell was highlighted when the menu first appears, and it was PLAY BTW, I love these menus.   The different selections you can make are located on the surrounding buildings and the transition from one menu to another consists of a Point of view from the camera [I guess] which essentially FLIES over to that part of the buildings to show the next menu, it has a very smooth and 3D-ish feel about it)

Theatrical Trailers

• The original trailer is presented as 4x3 letterboxed, with DD2.0 audio
• Ghostbusters 2 trailer is Pan and Scan with 2 Dolby 2.0 audio

Featurette - an original featurette shot during the making of Ghostbusters (runs about 10 minutes)

Scene Cemetery - 10 deleted scenes

Special Effects

• Meet the FX team (this is a recently shot set of interviews with ALL the main FX crew ) runs 15min
• Special FX before and After - an terrific idea that uses the MULTI ANGLE feature to show you before and after FX shots. 
  You press your remote's ANGLE button and you can flip between the two sequences to see what additions were made for FX pieces
•  

Story Boards

• Still storyboards
• Split Screen Comparisons - 3 sequences of story boards above the actual shot sequences so you can compare them

Ghost Gallery - still photos of creature models, etc featured in the movie

Live Video Commentary - Now THIS is a cool idea.  Unlike your normal audio commentary track on a DVD.  With a LIVE Video Commentary, you can get a silhouetted image of the guys talking about the move ON your TV screen.  This gimmick works by using the subtitle feature of DVD, (using subtitle tracks 1 and 2)  when you turn either subtitle track on the 3 guys (writer/actor Harold Ramis, Co-Producer Joe Medjuck, and director Ivan Reitman) will appear on your screen from a behind shot so your essentially looking at the back of their heads.   The only niggle I have about this feature, at least on THIS DVD is that you CAN NOT activate  the VIDEO Commentary component if you DVD player is outputting the Video as 16:9 WIDE.  your DVD player MUST output a 4x3 letterboxed image of the movie.  I am assuming that Columbia were unable to get this feature to work with a 16:9 output, which really is a shame, seeing as I don't need to letterbox 16:9 Enhanced movies as I have a widescreen TV (kinda defeats the purpose otherwise).  Though for the purpose of this review, I did view it this way to see the live commentary which I though was great fun.  Hopefully on future titles that use this cool feature, 16:9 output will be do-able. The audio commentary itself is terrific, these guys obviously had a blast making Ghostbusters, and while the comm track is quite funny, never fails to be informative at the same time.

Columbia have done a bang up job with Ghostbusters Collectors Edition and I HIGHLY recommend it for any DVD collection

Review Equipment
TV: Pioneer SD-T50W1 (16:9 RPTV)
DVD: Pioneer DV717  (using RGB outputs)
Receiver: Marantz SR870 & Sony SDP-EP9ES
Speakers:-
     Fronts: B&W 602
     Centre: B&W CDMC-SE
     Rears: Jamo Magic 14
     Subby: M&K V125 

- reviewed 12th November 1999