"Cathulhu? I've heard of him. He's bad, right?"
"He makes Gozer look like Little Mary Sunshine."
- Winston and Egon
I hadn't intended to review a single episode of a children's show from the 1980s but, struck by whimsy, I couldn't help but revisit it. Very rarely in life do we have the capacity to point to a single thing or incident responsible for your fandom but, in my case, I can point to this episode as when my little mind was warped forever.
Really, Ghostbusters is a surprisingly subversive work which parents completely ignored the implications of (thank God). I mean, the movie starts with the premise of the afterlife warping the souls of individuals until they become hideous monsters then segues into an ancient Babylonian (sorry, Sumerian) god wanting to destroy the world.
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| Alice Derleth is meant to be an attractive woman. How do I know? She's drawn relatively realistic looking unlike the rest of the characters. |
Why? Because someone was asleep at the wheel since this episode is one long faithful adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Literally, the only change they made to his universe is adding an 'A' to Cthulhu's name (which is a perfectly valid way of pronouncing it anyway) and giving Old Batwings a weakness to electricity. Privately, I would have had the unlicensed nuclear accelerators on their back work fine but what do I know about anti-mystical science?
"Anything that looks like Godzilla wearing an octopus hat shouldn't be hard to find."
- Peter.
When I watched this episode at the tender age of seven, I knew I was watching something special--something which hinted at a much-larger universe I was only getting a glimpse of. People made reference to a lot of things which they seemed to know about from cults of Cathulhu to Shoggoths to the Necronomicon. It would take until the release of Army of Darkness and my introduction to the Evil Dead series to realize the show from my childhood had been referencing something.
This lead me to H.P. Lovecraft. So, thank you Michael Reaves.
So what about the episode itself? How does it hold up to a 33 three year old man versus a 7 year old boy? I.e. "Would a parent enjoy watching this with his child?"
The answers are surprisingly well and yes.
The writing is pretty simple, obviously, but Star Wars is a fairly simple tale when you get down to it. **WARNING - SPOILERS** The Necronomicon is a book of spells, different from Lovecraft but fundamentally true, and has been stolen by a bunch of Cathulhu worshipers. The Ghostbusters contact Alice Derleth (hehe), first female Mythos investigator of note, to help with their investigations.
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| Actual C(a)thulhu cultists! In a children's cartoon! |
Aside from all the Lovecraft shout-outs, this is a pretty decent Cthulhu Mythos story. It wouldn't be out of place with some of the scenarios I've run for the Call of Cthulhu tabletop game. It borrows heavily from August Derleth's interpretation of the Mythos, where the Elder Gods are allied to humanity if not good, but I've never had the knee-jerk reaction to it that other fans have. The very fact Cathulhu will rise again is pretty surprising for a Ghostbuster's episode.
In conclusion, watch this on Youtube or Netflix it somehow if you have the time. It's by no means a must-see for Lovecraft fans but is a cool sign of how thoroughly H.P. Lovecraft's influence has infiltrated the writing world (there's another more-or-less direct homage to the Big C on "Justice League").
8/10