Insight Editions has just released their new art book “Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History,” which provides fans with the opportunity to witness the evolution (from page-to-sketch-to-maquette-to-screen) of all their favorite ghosts, monsters, vehicles and gadgets from both Ghostbusters movies as well as animated shows, comics, video games, toys, and collectibles.
Check out the gallery below to get an eyeful of the menacing menagerie, and if you venture below that you’ll find photo selections from the new book showing behind-the-scenes looks at the creation of a certain 100-foot marshmallow man!
You can order your own copy of “Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History” by clicking here!
Page 100: A number of Thom Enriquez designs for the Stay Puft marshmallow man that experiment with differing approaches to height, mass, and shape. Page 104: An unused, melty-mouth Stay Puft head. Page 106: Inside a fireproof Stay Puft costume, a stunt performer prepares to be ignited by Joe Viskocil.
Page 105: The full-size Stay Puft suit is prepped for filming as VFX director of photography Bill Neill takes a light meter reading.
Ghostbusters TM and © 2015 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. Images excerpted from “Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History” by Daniel Wallace. Used with permission of Insight Editions.
10 Scariest Ghosts in Ghostbusters
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#10 - The Titanic's Just Arrived
Complete with an inexplicable cameo from Cheech Marin as the dock supervisor at Pier 34, Ivan Reitman resurrected the Titanic nearly a decade before James Cameron. Even though in context it's basically a punchline, if you set the scene to some Fabio Frizzi music it would be eerie as hell.
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#9 - Viggy You've Been a Bad Monkey
This sight of Vigo the Carpathian's ugly mug (courtesy of late German character actor Wilhelm von Homburg) melding with that of the cherubic baby Oscar has an odd, disturbing quality to it. It's a simple effect, basically just a double exposure over the kid's face... but that grin! *shudder*
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#8 - Ray's BJ Dream Ghost
Even though it was only a prelude to a cheap blowjob joke, Ray's dream ghost hovering above him as he doses in the firehouse has a weird ethereal quality that could potentially be as menacing as it is beautiful.
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#7 - Fur is Murder
During the all-hell-breaks-loose montage in Ghostbusters II a particularly memorable site is that of a typical Park Avenue matron walking down the street in an expensive mink coat. Suddenly, the minks that were used to make said coat pop out screaming like banshees and then crawl away. This leads to the question: Was this a political statement or one of Dan Aykroyd's Belushi-era acid trips coming back to haunt him.
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#6 - There is No Dana
"There is no Dana, only Zuul." And with that guttural intonation all of Doctor Venkman's lust for Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) goes right out the window. The now very-obviously possessed Dana makes the kind of faces we would expect to see on a xenomorph, and it creeped us right the f**k out.
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#5 - Look at All the Junk Food
When Dana encounters the first signs of paranormal activity in her apartment, she hears a noise from the fridge, opens it and... "Oh yeah, that's where I left that alternate dimension, behind the soy sauce!" One of Zuul's demon dogs (which Dana will later transform into herself) lets out a roar to end all roars and man alive is it nightmare fuel.
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#4 - Shhhhhh!
The library ghost holds a special place in Ghostbuster fans' hearts because this floating specter was the boys' (and by extension our) first encounter with a bonafide spook. When she transforms into some kind of puppet-from-hell it's a jolt, for sure, although just the site of her hovering amid the stacks is enough to give us the heebie jeebies.
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#3 - Eye See You
Peter MacNicol makes an indelible impression as the nationality-ambigious museum curator Janosz, none more than in this scene set during the blackout in Ghostbusters II. With the evil powers of Vigo flowing through him, Janosz ambles down the hallway with a little too much twinkle in his eyes.
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#2 - Head's Up
During the scene where Ray, Egon and Winston explore the old Pneumatic Transit tunnel and are treated to a hallucination of enough heads on pikes to embarrass Vlad the Impaler. The scene itself doesn't really make that much sense, but the bloody, rotted heads bearing expressions of pure agony are NOT the stuff of kid-friendly fare and would probably never make it past the MPAA today.
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#1 - Ghost Cab
Finally, we come to one of the most overlooked but nonetheless horrifying apparitions in the Ghostbusters canon. This ghostly cabbie pops up during the 1st movie's all-hell-breaks-loose montage and he looks more like a denizen of a Tobe Hooper movie than a jaunty Ivan Reitman affair. It just goes to show you that even if you're doing a horror comedy the laughs will come harder if the horror is just as intense!
