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The Fifth Ghostbuster is the twenty-seventh chapter on the DVD of Ghostbusters II. In this chapter, the crowd outside celebrate the New Year and that positive energy weakens the slime and Vigo.

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Equipment[]

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Plot[]

Vigo raised Oscar in his arms. Oscar cried. Vigo proclaimed now they become one. "Auld Lang Syne" could be heard from the opening in the skylight. Ray Stantz asked where that singing was coming from. Winston Zeddemore deduced it was the people gathered outside. Vigo recoiled in pain. The crowds of people outside the Manhattan Museum of Art celebrated New Years together. Louis Tully passed through the crowd and made his way to the front. The Statue of Liberty was on its back on the street. Louis was amazed by sight of the slime shell and whispered, "I'm here with you guys." Louis readied his Particle Thrower. Egon Spengler observed Vigo was weakening because the positivity of the singing was neutralizing the slime. Ray realized he could move. Peter scooted forward. Dana Barrett called out to Oscar. Vigo was forcibly propelled back into the painting. Peter caught Oscar just in time. Dana was relieved. The Ghostbusters stood up. Egon sighted Vigo in the painting. Peter returned Oscar to Dana and told her to go find a shady spot. Ray turned towards the painting and locked eyes with Vigo. Peter taunted Vigo with, "Vigi, Vigi, Vigi. You have been a bad monkey!" Ray suddenly walked up to the painting and stared at it. Egon told Ray they would like to shoot Vigo and asked him to move. He got no response. Peter called out to Ray. Nothing. Winston called out. Nothing. All three yelled at Ray. Ray turned around to reveal he was possessed by Vigo and transmogrified to resemble his true ghost form. Vigo proclaimed he shall rule the earth and told the Ghostbusters to be gone, calling them pitiful half-men. Peter cued Egon and Winston. Peter and Egon fired at the painting. Winston slimed Ray. At the same time by coincidence, Louis fired upon the slime shell.

Ray dropped to the ground as Vigo was ejected out of his body and back into the painting in his giant floating head form. They continued to fire on him. Vigo was drenched in the positively charged psychomagnotheric ectoplasm. Vigo shouted, "No!" He was sent spiraling further into the painting until there was an explosion and a bright white light enveloped the canvas. The slime shell disintegrated and shot up into the sky. The people cheered. Several congratulated Louis. Louis shouted that he did it and declared he was a Ghostbuster.

Trivia[]

Ghostbusters II Trivia[]

  • In the August 5, 1988 draft:
    • On page 111, the Ghostbusters blasted the Statue of Liberty with 2 million kilowatts of electricity. The statue heated up red hot, steam was released, the polarity reversed, and Vigo exploded into dust.
  • In November 27, 1988 draft and February 27, 1989 draft:
    • On page 125, Vigo is half out the painting. Ray tells him the "Vigi Vigi, you've been a bad monkey." Vigo grabs Ray. Winston hoses them both with slime.
    • On page 126, the Vigo painting melts.
  • The restoration room was filmed in Burbank Studios but Vigo in the painting was filmed at ILM. Additional photography was filmed May 1 to 3, 1989 which included stunt work in the Vigo battle and Dana being wrapped up by the vacuum hose.[Note 1]
  • The crowd outside the museum sings "Auld Lang Syne" to signify it is now January 1, 1990.
  • The demonic floating head seen after Vigo returns to the painting was inspired by preproduction sketches done by Thom Enriquez. Lifecasts were done on Wilhelm von Homburg. Tim Lawrence and makeup artist Mike Smithson did a variety of altercations in clay like strengthening the jaw line, straightening out the nose, making a more sinister brow, elongating earlobes, and sharpening cheeks. 10-11 versions were done and sent to Ivan Reitman for approval. Once the final was chosen, Lawrence had three weeks. Then it was cut down to one week. Howie Weed from the creature shop wore the makeup for scenes when Vigo was transformed within the painting and when Ray was possessed.[1]
  • Due to a scheduling conflict, Dan Aykroyd couldn't play the scenes where Ray was possessed by Vigo. Howie Weed volunteered because he was about the same size and he was there, saving time from bringing in another actor for fittings.[2][3]
  • Ray's possession was foreshadowed in Chapter 16: Vigo 101 when he fell under Vigo's trance.
  • The Slime Blowers were 3-4 times as bulky as the Proton Pack props. It took 3-4 people to help get them on Ernie Hudson and Dan Aykroyd. The only practical part was the gun. It was a device with a spinner that sent out slime driven by compressed air. The tanks were empty. In reality, the blowers were attached to external tanks, 4-5 feet in height, that supplied the slime.[4]
  • A preview screening convinced Ivan Reitman to film a new 25 minute ending.[5]
  • In the Ghostbusters II commentary, Dan Aykroyd commented Vigo was dispatched to the "next dimension or the afterworld."[6]
  • The museum exterior was filmed outside the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House at 1 Bowling Green in New York City.
  • For the breakaway of the slime shell, the crew hit the inside of the plug and inflated an innertube with air to make the plug expand. The polymer shattered. The black plug would blend in with the black background and was invisible to the camera. The inverted footage of the shattered shell was then added over a model of the museum then both were combined with a matte painting of the surrounding area.[7][8]
  • In Chapter 28: World is Safe Again, there is a shot of Jack singing in the crowd outside the Manhattan Museum of Art for the Kurt Fuller credit.

IDW Comics Trivia[]

  • In Ghostbusters Volume 1 #13:
    • On Page 10, Janosz recounts several events from Ghostbusters II: when Vigo possessed Ray, when Janosz checked on Dana Barrett during the blackout, when Ray embraced Janosz at the end, and when Peter tried to paint kittens on Vigo.
  • In Ghostbusters Volume 2 #12:
    • On Page 9, between Ray and Peter, among the crowd, is the bald man from the crowd outside the Manhattan Museum of Art with Louis Tully at the end of Ghostbusters II.
    • On Page 11, Ray's fear is of the Vigo possession from Ghostbusters II.
    • On Page 15, Peter suggest Auld Lang Syne, a classic folk song sang at the start of the New Year.
  • In Ghostbusters Volume 2 #15:
    • On Page 2, one of Louis' memories is of when he was suited up as a Ghostbuster and shooting at the slime mold around the Manhattan Museum of Art.
  • In Ghostbusters Volume 2 #17:
    • On Page 13, the close up of Vigo's demonic face is reminiscent of a scene from Ghostbusters II right before Vigo possesses Ray.
  • In Ghostbusters Volume 2 #18:
    • On Page 7, the word 'Bonehead' on the Vigo painting refers to a line Peter uses while he's mouthing off at Vigo during the final battle.
    • On Page 14, like in the previous issue, one panel bears an homage to when the camera zooms in on Vigo's red eyes like in the second movie when Ray is possessed.
  • In Ghostbusters 101 Issue #6:
    • On Page 19, Peter alludes to when he, Egon, and Winston blasted the Vigo portrait.

Tertiary Canon Trivia[]

See Also[]

Notes[]

  1. According to the scene's call sheet, this scene was filmed on May 1-3, 1989 revealed during a private email exchange with Troy Benjamin on May 17, 2023, "May 1st was in the Restoration Room filming a couple adds including Dana being wrapped up by the vacuum hose, some stunt work, and a few other elements to the Vigo battle. Then funny enough, there's day 3 of 2 filmed on May 2nd. Completing things they didn't accomplish on the 1st. Funnier still, most of the main cast was wrapped out and they shot day 4 of 2 on Wednesday May 3rd. More Vigo battle shots they had to clean up."

References[]

  1. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 44-45. Cinefex, USA.Line reads: "The change was accomplished primarily by makeup applications devised by the ILM creature shop. "It was not the first work we did on the Vigo character," noted Tim Lawrence. "Early during preproduction, we were given a variety of sketches by Thom Enriquez depicted a very overweight-looking character with a wild-eyed look and a facial structure such that it would have been impossible to find anyone who actually looked like that. So at the beginning, we were going to be designing a makeup that would be used on an actor throughout the film. Then when it came time for transformation at the end, Vigo was going to be something much more monstrous--some kind of a huge construction that we never quite worked out completely because the whole concept went off in a different direction once Wilhelm von Homburg was cast for the part. Wilhelm has a very distinctive "bad guy" face and Ivan decided to use it without a whole lot of alteration--but he did still want some appliance makeup. So we did lifecasts on Wilhelm and then Mike Smithson and I did a variety of alterations in clay--fairly subtle things like strengthening his jaw line, straightening out his nose, giving him a more sinister brow, elongating his earlobes and sharpening his cheeks. We did ten or eleven versions of the makeup in clay and then photographed them in black-and-white and made up a little book that we sent down so that Ivan and the producers could see the various directions it could go in. They picked one that they liked and we made a set of appliances for this guy. The problem was that they wanted this very elaborate makeup to be used for the whole film and I had asked for three weeks to do it. They said they could only give us two weeks and then wound up giving us one; but they said, 'Don't worry about it, because it's just going to be used for a photo shoot as a guide for the artist who is doing the painting, but that when he comes to life he should look more realistic and less stylized. So we did the makeup very quickly for the photo shoot and then Wilhelm was used without makeup for the film itself." The final transformation was likewise toned down. "We did a lot of drawings for the Vigo monster--some of them pretty horrendous--and we had other things going on as well. At one point the slime was going to bring to life things from some of the other paintings--so we had little Hieronymous Bosch characters running around and a spirally kind of Escher character. Over time, however, all that got more and more watered down to the point where instead of making a Vigo monster we were asked to come up with a makeup that simply represented Vigo's inner evil essence. We sent about fifty concepts down to Michael Gross--some of which were altered photographs. Early in the show there had been some mylar tests done on Ned Gorman--our effects coordinator--to show how the Scoleri brothers could be distorted and stretched. Some of those bizarre photos were blown up and artwork was done on them--and it was one of those that was selected. The difficulty for us when it came time to do the makeup was that the basic understructure was not a human head. Obviously the makeup had to be something that could be added to a real person--we could not stretch a person's head to do it--so we had to start by roughing in a sculpture and getting a lot of people's interpretations as to what the stretch marks and bizarre washes of color on the photograph actually meant in three-dimensional terms. When we got as close as we could to the accepted design, we molded and cast the makeup in about seven pieces." Howie Weed--one of the creature shop crew members--wore the makeup for scenes of Vigo transformed within the painting and for a subsequent scene when Ray becomes entranced by Vigo and momentarily turns into a demon before his friends restore him with a blast of positive slime."
  2. Wallace, Daniel (2015). Ghostbusters The Ultimate Visual History, p. 176. Insight Editions, San Rafael CA USA, ISBN 9781608875108. Howie Weed says: "I'm a big guy, so I asked Dennis Muren if I could do it. Because I was already there they didn't have to bring an actor in for fittings, and they could get on it right away."
  3. Wallace, Daniel (2015). Ghostbusters The Ultimate Visual History, p. 176. Insight Editions, San Rafael CA USA, ISBN 9781608875108. Line reads: "Ivan Reitman OK'ed the look, but Dan Aykroyd's schedule didn't allow him to play the demon-possessed Stantz."
  4. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 37. Cinefex, USA. Dan Aykroyd says: "The slimeblowers were three times as heavy and four times as bulky as the original packs. I think it took three or four guys to get us into them every time. These slimeblowers are going to every mother's nightmare if they ever go to the toy market, believe me--they were built to spew slime all over the walls. They were fun, though--and a beautiful practical effect. The only thing that worked on ours were the guns. The tanks were empty. The gun was actually a practical device with a spinner in it that sent the slime out, and it was driven by a lot of compressed air. Off camera were the real tanks that fed our lines. These tanks were huge--four or five feet high--and contained slime and air. So every time we blew slime on screen, we actually attached to these huge external tanks."
  5. Greene, James, Jr., (2022). A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever, p. 125. Lyons Press, Essex, CT USA, ISBN 9781493048243. Line reads: "A preview screening had convinced Reitman that the movie's ending didn't work. "(It) just died a horrible death," he said (newspaper reports described the director fielding a bevy of "complaints from a baffled audience" at this showing). Four days were spent filming a new twenty-five-minute conclusion for the movie, though it was entirely Reitman's decision--the studio took no issue with his original ending."
  6. Dan Aykroyd (2019). Ghostbusters II- Commentary (2019) (Blu-ray ts. 1:38:02-1:38:08). Sony Home Entertainment. Dan Aykroyd says: "But we don't trap him. We dispatch him to the next... Next dimension, or the afterworld."
  7. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 45. Cinefex, USA. Bill George says: "To create the destruction of the slime shell at the end, we first did a sculpture of the full slime shell and then made a black urethane casting. Over this black slime shell we painted on a brittle polymer that was pinkish in color. Once that was done, we hung the shell upside-down in front of a black backdrop. The black shell casting effectively served as a support plug inside the brittle polymer. The plug was flexible, but the polymer was not. So when it was time for the slime to break away, we hit the inside of the plug and simultaneously inflated an innertube with air to make the plug expand. This caused the brittle polymer to shatter and fall away. When the polymer shattered, the black plug underneath blended in with the black background and was therefore invisible to the camera. The shattered shell was added over a model we built of the museum and both were later combined with a matte painting of the surrounding area."
  8. Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 45 footnote. Cinefex, USA. For the scenes of the slime shell shattering and flying up into the heavens, a brittle polymer shape was suspended upside down and shattered in front of a black backdrop. The inverted footage was then composited over a miniature of the museum – which itself was incorporated into a matte painting of the surrounding area. Modelmakers Brian Gernand and Bill George dress the museum grounds prior to stage photography."

Gallery[]

Selected Screengrabs[]

Discarded Material[]

Behind the Scenes[]

Storyboards of Previous Drafts[]


 
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