Dumb Things In Ghostbusters Everyone Ignored

By and large, Ghostbusters holds up pretty well for a movie that's rapidly approaching its 40th birthday, but there's one aspect of the film that definitely marks it as a product of Reagan's '80s. The ultimate villain of the story might be Gozer the Gozerian, but the real bad guy who gets everything started is Walter Peck, the guy who shows up from the EPA and tries to shackle the Ghostbusters with all those pesky government regulations.

Here's the thing, though: Peck is roughly one million percent correct in virtually everything he does in the film. Just think about it for a second: if you heard that three discredited college professors were running around New York City with what they referred to as "unlicensed nuclear accelerators," and that they were keeping whatever extremely toxic byproducts that resulted in a homemade containment unit that they slapped together out of chicken wire, duct tape, and good vibes, you would probably want someone to look into that. If you found out that they were doing all of this because they wanted to turn a profit by atom-splitting nuclear laser beams at ghosts, you would definitely want someone — preferably several someones, preferably heavily armed — looking into that. Even the most libertarian view of regulatory agencies tends to make allowances for situations that include the words "homemade," "nuclear," and "Manhattan." 

For all his brusqueness, Walter Peck is completely justified in checking things out. The only reason he gets hostile to the Ghostbusters is that Venkman, the least qualified member of the team when it comes to explaining how anything works, responds to his incredibly reasonable questions with open hostility. The fact that Peck comes back with only a single cop and a ConEd technician rather than, say, Seal Team Six, is a testament to just how evenhanded he's being.

While the whole cast of Ghostbusters is full of fantastic performances, Peter Venkman, played by the inimitable Bill Murray, is definitely the breakout fan-favorite star. It makes sense that he would be, too. Egon gets the deadpan straight lines, Ray is the hapless dork, and Winston sadly doesn't join the cast until 45 minutes into the film (much to the consternation of actor Ernie Hudson, who signed on when the character had a much bigger part). Peter, however, has all the sarcastic, smarmy charisma that would define Murray's career throughout the '80s. In fact, he's so appealing in the part that it's easy to ignore that Venkman is a) little bit dim compared to the other members of the team, and b) kind of a total scumbag. 

Let's start with the academic credentials. In his conversation with Walter Peck, Venkman claims to hold two PhDs: one in psychology, and one in parapsychology — which, in one of the movie's most underrated gags, leads to Peck consistently calling a guy who should be a doctor twice over "Mister Venkman" for the entire scene. The first one would explain how he got his teaching position at Columbia, but the second is dubious at best. Parapsychology is usually considered a pseudoscience, and there are virtually no universities that will award a doctorate in the subject. In fact, the only person to ever get a PhD in parapsychology from a major university is Jeffrey Mishlove, who got it from the University of California at Berkley before going on to host a PBS show about alternative views of psychic phenomena, much like we see Venkman doing in Ghostbusters II. 

As for the evidence for Peter Venkman: Total Scumbag, well, it's nowhere near as subtextual as the academic stuff, and makes up most of the film. We are, after all, introduced to him in a scene where he's using an experiment in precognition in order to hit on a student. The most damning piece of evidence, though, is one you might've missed. After he shows up at Dana's apartment for their date and finds her to be possessed by Zuul, Venkman calls up to let Egon know that he sedated her with 300 milligrams of Thorazine, an antipsychotic medication with sedative side effects. Which, apparently, he brought with him on a date. In a quantity ten times the usual daily dosage. You know, for completely normal reasons. Maybe this is one that's good to ignore.

Here's something that's going to seem painfully obvious: in the world of Ghostbusters, the existence of spirits and haints is a scientific fact. It's sort of the premise of the entire movie, largely because watching people wander around in the dark failing to find ghosts with night vision cameras and radio static wouldn't become a viable form of entertainment for another 20 years or so. 

The thing is, the characters within the movie often treat ghosts with the same skepticism as people in the real world, where ghosts are more of a matter of belief. Peck even goes as far as referring to the Ghostbusters as charlatans who are scamming people out of money, which — while a pretty fair assessment of Peter Venkman as a character — is operating from the default position of ghosts being, at best, debatable. And this is despite the fact that ghosts in the world of the film are full-on ghosts with visible translucent bodies, poltergeisting around and causing so much trouble that haunted hotel employees need to be warned about them in advance, as opposed to being, you know, cold spots and creaky floors. 

On the one hand, we know that before the sudden upswing in New York's paranormal activity, ghosts are relatively rare. The Ghostbusters mention on their very first call that they haven't had a chance to properly test their equipment, which implies that they just didn't have access to enough ghosts. At the same time, there's enough scholarly research on ghosts that they've been cataloged with various classifications — i.e., "class 5 full-roaming vapor" — and that a couple of brilliant weirdos have made functional and effective equipment for corralling them. It gets even weirder in the sequel where the potential apocalypse that's averted at the end of Ghostbusters is chalked up to mass hysteria, despite the fact that there would absolutely be news footage of a ten-story marshmallow man and the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church didn't stomp itself. 

Maybe particle accelerators are cheaper than we think. Maybe they're actually pretty affordable, or at least affordable enough that you could cover the cost of three of them by getting a triple mortgage on a house in Morrisville, NY (that's where Ray grew up, according to the cartoon), all while the country was recovering from a deep recession. That seems unlikely, but it's an easy enough set of events for which to suspend your disbelief.

You could even stretch it and say that said triple mortgage resulted in enough money to get the proton packs, the traps, the containment grid, a set of matching uniforms with custom logos, a vintage 1959 combination ambulance/hearse that was completely customized and repaired, television airtime and a production crew for advertising, and one (1) large dinner of Chinese food. If we're willing to accept everything else that happens in this movie, like demonic architecture, that all seems possible.

Here's what's absolutely impossible to believe: that you could get all of that and have enough money to purchase a corner property in lower Manhattan, let alone a historic building that dates back to 1903, no matter how much of a fixer-upper it might've been. Seriously, despite Egon's grumpy claims about the firehouse's location, Tribeca wasn't exactly a "demilitarized zone," even in 1984. Even without the considerable remodeling — like, you know, new lockers, a fresh coat of paint, putting in a synthetic hell to contain the souls of the five boroughs that have been denied even the peace of the grave — that is downright preposterous.