Films > Ghostbusters > Home Video
DVD Cover Art
"Ghostbusters" (DVD)

Release Date: June 29, 1999
MSRP: $29.99
Video: 16:9 Widescreen (2.35:1 aspect ratio)
Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: English
Closed-Captioned: Yes
Discs: 1
Sides: 1
Layers: 2
DVD-Rom Content: Yes
Regional Coding: 1
Video Format: NTSC
Total File Size: 7.31 Gigabytes
Package Type: Keep Case
CTHV Catalog Number: 04139

This ground-breaking DVD release features the most extensive and sophisticated interactive options ever offered on DVD releases from Columbia/Tristar Home Video as of June 29, 1999 (it's original release date). This DVD represents a benchmark in added-value options offered to consumers.

SPECIAL FEATURES

"Live" feature-length Video Commentary
Harold Ramis (writer & actor), Ivan Reitman (director) and Joe Medjuck (producer) were filmed in silhouette, watching the entire film, and commenting on it. The viewer can choose to watch the commentary with their silhouettes pointing and gesturing as they watch the film or listen to their commentary as an extra audio track while watching the movie normally.


Feature-length Production Notes
Columbia/Tristar Home Video has taken the text of the book "Making Ghostbusters" by Don Shay and put it into a subtitle stream, so that the viewer may choose to watch the film with antidotes, trivia and bits of interviews that pertain to particular points in the film.


Three Complete Featurettes:

  1. 1984 "The Making Of Ghostbusters" featurette -- With interviews of the cast and crew.
  2. 1999 "Star" featurette -- New interviews with Harold Ramis, Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd talking about the origins of Ghostbusters, how it changed their lives and careers, and how their kids like it.
  3. 1999 "Meet the Special Effects Team" featurette -- Interviews with more than a dozen of the original visual effects team. Includes original production photos and conceptual art.


Storyboard to Film Comparison
Watch a split-screen side-by-side comparison of three scenes in the film next to their animated original storyboards.


Before and After Special Effects
With the Multiple Angles feature of DVD, the viewer can toggle back and forth between the rought cut and the final cut of the film to see three scenes before and after the final visual effects were added.


Still Photo Galleries:
There are a total of 879 still images on the DVD. It should be noted that the 2005 DVD release contains three extra Terror Dog photos, but one less logo drawing. These three extra Terror Dog photos have been included in this collection for the sake of completeness, which brings the total number of images up to 879 (otherwise it would have been 876). It needs to be mentioned that these may not be complete storyboards. For example, the book Making Ghostbusters has some panels from the "Cheeky Ghost" scene that are missing on the DVD. It also needs to be mentioned that in the Drawings - Early NYC Concepts section, all but the very last image (Stay Puft and the city) are actually from The Real Ghostbusters animated series, and not the movie. Sony messed up. Below is the full list of still images, all in the order as originally presented on the DVD. I have used common fan names for the gallery names, with the actual DVD names in parenthesis afterwards (where different). All of the still images are available for viewing here on Spook Central. You can either view the still images in the galleries linked below, where you'll find thumbnails linked to web-friendly 720x540 images (all padding/frames have been cropped out); or you can view the original 720x480 images straight off of the DVD, which I am providing in this 145 Mb zip file.

  1. Production Photos (288 images total)
    1. Library Ghost (Ghoulish Librarian) (24 images)
    2. Dream Ghost (Lovely Floating Ghost) (18 images)
    3. Production Team (4 images)
    4. Slimer (59 images)
    5. Spook Central (43 images)
    6. Stay Puft (Stay Puft Man) (65 images)
    7. Terror Dogs (75 images)
  2. Conceptual Drawings (230 images total)
    1. Early NYC (Colorful Early NYC Concepts) (11 images)
    2. Ecto-1 Interior (Colorful Ecto-Mobile Interior) (3 images)
    3. Stay Puft (Early Stay Puft Man Concepts) (3 images)
    4. Proton Streams (Light Stream Chalk Drawings) (19 images)
    5. Creatures (Pencil and Chalk Creature Concepts) (158 images)
    6. Library Ghost (Pencil Librarian Ghoul Concepts) (5 images)
    7. Terror Dogs (Pencil Terror Dog Concepts) (4 images)
    8. SFX Concepts (SFX Conceptual Paintings) (10 images)
    9. Early Logos (Early Logo Concepts) (17 images)
  3. Storyboards (361 images total)
    1. Bums In Park (6 images)
    2. Dogs Drag Dana (25 images)
    3. Slimer Pigs Out (6 images)
    4. Haunted Stacks (14 images)
    5. Boys In Library (25 images)
    6. Louis Meets Dog (26 images)
    7. Mink Coat (14 images)
    8. Louis Meets Muggers (21 images)
    9. Proton Charging (24 images)
    10. Atop Spook Central (87 images)
    11. Cheeky Ghost (13 images)
    12. Slimer (100 images)


Ten Deleted Scenes:

  1. Stake -- Dean Yeager and the Ghostbusters have a longer talk.
  2. Dana -- Peter talks to Dana in her apartment.
  3. Honeymooners -- The Honeymooners in the Sedgewick Hotel.
  4. Winston -- Janine fields some phone calls while Winston fills out a job application.
  5. Bums -- Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd as two street bums strolling through Central Park as Louis runs past them.
  6. Busy -- Peter and Ray converse with the Mayor on the City Hall Loading Dock while Janine gives Egon her lucky coin.
  7. Promotion -- Outside the Shandor Building, Winston shares his doubts about facing Gozer.
  8. E.P.A. -- Walter Peck speaks to a cop outside the Shandor Building.
  9. Puft Hat -- The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man's hat falls to the ground.
  10. No Louis! -- Louis asks Dana if they did it.


DVD-ROM Enhanced -- Includes the following:

  1. Filmographies of cast and crew -- These will be hyperlinked to detail pages of most of the Columbia/Tristar Home Video DVD titles through filmographies with degrees of separation.
  2. Original Final Shooting Script -- This will also be hyperlinked to the film so that the viewer may jump from the script to that point in the film in order to compare it to the final partially-improvised film.
  3. Web Link -- There will be various links from the DVD-ROM to the Sony website, the Columbia/Tristar Home Video website and the Ghostbusters.Com website.


Three-Dimensional Animated Menus
The main menu is a 3-D view of the Manhattan skyline,with the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man wandering through the buildings. The main menu also has computer rendered animated transitions to the sub-menus.


Four Original Trailers:

  1. Ghostbusters
  2. Ghostbusters II
  3. Groundhog Day
  4. Stripes

(Most of the above text comes from the original press release dated April 14, 1999.)

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OF NOTE ...

The "Tricks & Trivia" option on the DVD turns on the production notes subtitles. So, you might have problems with it if you already have the video commentary on.

The following "defects" are part of the DVD:

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MULTIMEDIA:

FAN-MADE REPLACEMENT ARTWORK:
(to be printed out and used in the DVD keep case outer sleeve in place of what came with the disc)

REVIEWS:

OUTSIDE LINKS: