Well, it’s day 13 of my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown and I haven’t been slowing down at all (which is nice considering how grueling this posting schedule was in years past.) Like I’ve mentioned about two hundred thousand times so far, 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’s monster is pretty straight forward, the Mutant Ghost Thug. Complete with tipped forward bowler, wife-beater shirt, and hitched up waders, this guy looks like he could knock your head off just as soon as look at you (with all four of his beady yellow eyes…)
In the episode, #104 "Partners in Slime", this guy is an example of the muscle utilized by a mob boss ghost named Poso. What kind of struck me while watching it was how off the mark the series was starting to get around this time. At this point ghosts are trying to take down the Ghostbusters left and right, and there’s no rhyme or reason to the styling of the characters. Why a mob boss? Why not I guess, as it doesn’t do anything for the story. Also, when I first saw this cel, I expected the voice to come out of this guy would be really imposing. In reality he ended up in the very whiney annoying kind of range. I still love his design though…
He’s just a pretty imposing yet simple figure. The one aspect that I really dig is the pencil under-drawing, which is just rendered so well. I’m not sure if this was a favorite of the animator, or if he was just in the zone that day, but the line work looks so fluid and perfect. It doesn’t feel rushed like so many of these drawings tend to (knowing the time crunch these studios were under to turn around 65 hand-drawn and painted episodes in under a year.) This is one I’m going to consider framing when I get the time.
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!
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)!
Once again, if you’re enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters. 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…
