We’re in the home stretch now on day 26. For all of those joining me for the first time, welcome to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown! In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I’m counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.
Today is my all time favorite of the Ghostbusters monsters, not to mention the second most iconic villain from the 1st movie, the Terror Dog. I love the librarian wraith in the first main sequence of the original film, as well as Vigo the Carpathian in the 2nd (he has one heck of an imposing stare), and I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but the Terror Dogs have always been my favorites. When the artists and prop makers designed them they really hit the nail on the head in terms of an awesome, scary monster…
I also love this cel. Part of it is the action of the dog smashing through the log, flinging wooden shrapnel all over the place, and part of it is that the artist just nailed the look from the movie (well except for the other-worldy blue in the body color), simplifying it just enough to translate it into the cartoon. This is also an interesting piece for me because the guy who originally applied the paint to the log chose a color that was too bright and so they printed out a second copy of the line-work on another cel, re-painted the log and the bits of wood and then taped it over the original cel. This provided me with a peek into another example of the process, an almost paint-free cel that has the line-work photocopied onto it…
I could guess what it would look like, but now I don’t have to. Take that imagination! Seriously though, it’s just a neat little addition to the collection.
I also managed to pick up another cel in the sequence of the Devil Dog’s attack with a pratfall gag that leads into the jump above…
This one also came with a “corrected” cel taped to the top. I decided not to scan it so that you could see the original color chosen for the log. Though the Terror Dogs are pretty a pretty darn important part of what makes up the look and feel of the Ghostbusters franchise, they weren’t in the cartoon nearly as much as Stay Puft.
In fact they only make an appearance in two episodes, #73, “Egon’s Ghost” (where is where these cels hail from), and #88, “Copycat”. They are in the second version of the opening credits though…
Also, for any of you Real Ghostbusters fans out there that haven’t picked up any of the new DVDs, I’ve decided to give away a copy of the Volume 1 Steelbook edition of the show! There are only five days left to enter, so get to the typing…
This 5-disc set contains the first 25 episodes of the series (including the 1st thirteen episode Saturday Morning run) as well as some fun special features. So what do you have to do to win this beauty? All you have to do is send me an e-mail (or click on the Creature From the Black Lagoon monster in the sidebar) and make sure to include the following:
-Please put “The Real Ghostbusters Contest” in the subject line.
-List your favorite monster/ghost/creature from the series.
-Include your name.
The deadline for entries is October 31st at Midnight eastern standard time. I’ll be drawing a winner at random from the e-mails, and will respond to the winner via e-mail on November 1st. Also, if you feel inclined, I would love everyone to spread the word about the 31 Days of Monsters countdown and the contest, so hit up those social networks and tell a friend (my twitter handle is smurfwreck)!
If you’d like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year’s Halloween blogging event…
