BOO-GLEECH

Written by Jonathan Wojcik

THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS
One Hundred Demon Parade:
Part Five!

Last time we gawked at Homer Simpson as a dead squid fetus. Can we top that? Well, probably not. You be the judge!

Fire Belcher

Episode: Robobuster

There's a couple of interesting foes in an episode where a ghost-blasting robot gives the real deal some stiff competition, and one of them is an exceptionally interesting pyromaniacal manifestation, its skin like cracked lava and its head like a cartoon hippopotamus with ribbon-like strands of "hair." Mostly head and maw, it belches fireballs and has only tiny, pitiful arms and legs! It was apparently scripted as just "fire demon," and I'm glad that was interpreted so loosely.

Wall Crawler

Episode: Robobuster

The first ghost we see in the Robobuster episode is another I've always remembered fondly, a nasty little green beast with legs ending in singular talons, a punched-in looking face and a tapir-like snout above its eyes, and while almost any ghost in this continuity can defy gravity as it pleases, this one's penchant for running vertically up walls always stuck out to me as one of its special qualities. I guess it just looks like the kind of thing that would still scurry up the sides of buildings even if it weren't a ghost at all.

Aardvark Cyclops

Episode: Lights! Camera! Haunting!

There's a whole lot of ghosts haunting an old house in this one, but my favorite is that yellow critter with the single, eerily human eye, red lips on the end of a wrinkly snoot, and fleshy goiters on its head. I especially appreciate the wrinkles placed just above its eye, making its head growths look like a "hat" at first.

While we're looking at this bunch, though, dig the little guy on the floor; the one who's just a lump with big lips and five eyes, lying there like some pathetic blobfish corpse!

Big Mouthed Ghost

Episode: Lights! Camera! Haunting!

A friend of snooty, this monster consists mostly of a huge, goblinoid head with little feet, and a grotesque tongue ending in three "fingers!" The unusual number of eyes in each of its sockets are also pretty creepy for an otherwise cute, lighthearted design.

Ghost Actors

Episode: Lights! Camera! Haunting!

The main villains of this episode are three humanoid ghosts who sign on as "authentic" actors for a horror movie, provided the director help them lure and defeat the Ghostbusters. By now, we've seen more than one trio of off-human spirits, and these are probably the most human example, yet they're still given that classic Real Ghostbusters flair, with unsettlingly caricatured features and memorably odd fashion sense. My favorite is definitely the blue guy with tiny eyes and large, lipless mouth, which in some shots opens from ear to ear more like a dinosaur than a person.

Kitchen Ghost

Episode: Buster the Ghost

In this sad, sweet little episode, a harmless ghost gets fired from his job as a tooth fairy and mistakenly believes that the Ghostbusters provide shelter to ghosts in need. They agree to take him in, but when he further misunderstands why the Ghostbusters go looking for spirits, he invites a bunch over in an attempt to be a good guest.

Buster's guests include a lot of cool, strange creatures, and among them a creature wearing a variety of huge, metal kitchen instruments like a suit of armor. Its arms and legs are even made of utencils, but that definitely doesn't seem to be all there is to this thing, since it has red eyes and black, bristly hairs poking through the giant colander on its head. It's either a ball-shaped creature or something curled up inside its protective "suit!"

Alien Skeleton

Episode: Buster the Ghost

Another Buster friend looks like the skeletal ghost of something from another planet, and I really really want to take it as exactly that, in line with what I said before about these ghostly hordes potentially coming from every corner of reality - not just our own.

The Glutton

Episode: Buster the Ghost

Ghostbusters wiki came up with the nick name for this one, and it fits. This hilarious monster looks how I'd imagine a sea cow if it re-adapted to land and replaced us humans as the planet's dominant bipeds. More hilarious is that all it wants to do is eat Ray's vintage record collection. He even tries to take one away from it, only for the creature to swallow his whole arm...and leave him with nothing but a handful of slobber. It doesn't harm a human even when it has an immediate opportunity! They keep Slimer around, and he eats all their shit too...why does he get a pass, and this lovable oaf has to go?

The Sleaze

Episode: Don't Tease the Sleaze (Slimer short)

The Sleaze is a ghost who first appears in one of the much-reviled but honestly kind of cute "SLIMER!" shorts, which came later in the series run and starred the eternally ravenous snot ball in his own childish adventures. The Sleaze is an egotistical, garbage-munching, stink-belching ghost sort of like a slug with arms and legs, and Slimer assists the Ghostbusters in capturing him by...uh...dressing like a woman and seducing the Sleaze. The shorts were pretty much attempts to put Slimer in "Looney Tunes" scenarios, I guess. They even gave him his own "Elmer Fudd," a dorky professor named Dweeb bent on capturing and studying Slimer for his own scientific fame.

What's interesting about The Sleaze, though, is that it ties the Slimer shorts into the canon of the "real" show, and the Real Ghostbusters episode "The Slob" is a direct sequel to "Don't Tease the Sleaze." Freed from the containment unit, we now see what the Sleaze "really" looks like, which is quite a bit more menacing, so do the shorts represent how the real world actually looks to Slimer, or what? In any case, I do love my snail-eyed trash-eating mutants, and Sleaze is not alone!

The Glob

Episode: The Slob

The Glob is apparently the Sleaze's older brother, with a more defined head and neck, grodier flesh and a single periscope-like eye, calling to mind the Dianoga from Star Wars. Glob teams up with the aforementioned Professor Dweeb to free his younger sibling, and together, they vow revenge on Slimer. Why just Slimer, when the Ghostbusters were the puppet masters and the more tangible threat? I guess betrayal by a fellow phantasm is what stings the most.

The Slob

Episode: The Slob

Fans of alien rock moms take note: when The Glob and the Sleaze are reunited, they do a little song and dance routine ("No more Sleaze, no more Glob! Now the Slob is on the job!") to fuse into THE SLOB, an even gooier abomination with...two eyes? Really? Giving Slob three eyes should have been a given. Maybe it has another one somewhere we can't see. Probably somewhere we don't even want to see, given its entire theme is trash, filth and being disgusting.

As the Slob, the brothers even have the power to transform any discarded objects into various anthropomorphic amalgamations of refuse, which in turn have the power to fire streams of rancid green scum. As much as fans hate these silly later episodes (and sometimes within reason), the villains and monsters themselves never lost entertainment value.

The Metamorph

Episode: Drool, the Dog-Faced Goblin

This popular episode features one of those rare encounters with an explicitly friendly ghost other than Slimer, but one who keeps taking blame for the activities of a more malevolent monster capable of taking any form at any time. Not many of these forms are all that strange, until it erupts into a huge mass of monstrous heads. The one in the upper left here looks amazingly like Anomalocaris, if a little humanized with its forward-aimed eyeballs and prickly hair. The upper right, on the other hand, looks like almost nothing I can think of, except maybe a wolf-trap Anglerfish with too many eyes? Both are likely to be happy accidents. I wish we could see these strange faces on ghosts of their own, but I think we can easily assume this being "picked up" the forms from existing monsters on some other plane of existence.

The one other truly memorable form of the metamorph is a robed humanoid with a uniquely monstrous face. The circular, glassy lens-like eyes and huge tusks give it a very insect-like appearance, even though, anatomically, it seems to be more vertebrate based. Of course, we can't see its body, which could very well be some chitinous hybrid of hominid and beetle. It's only shortly thereafter that the monster assumes the form of a cockroach - Peter Venkman's phobia.

Drool

Episode: Drool, the Dog-Faced Goblin

The metamorph's unwitting and unintentional scapegoat, Drool is a wonderfully grisly little beast with a rugose, hairless, rat-like body, a muzzle like a mandrill, eight legs and shiny, black eyes that make me think of a jumping spider. It's scientifically impossible not to love Drool at first sight, especially since the little guy loves nothng more than shocking and entertaining humans as part of a travelling sideshow, showing off such talents as...

...Melting all his flesh off and prancing around as only a skeleton...

...turning his front four limbs into wings and sprouting bat-like ears...

...and transforming into a hairy, undulating black maggot.

Unfortunately, even once his name is cleared, Drool ends up in the Ghostbuster's containment unit when he attacks the metamorph to save his human friends, distracting it long enough to suck the both into a ghost trap. According to Ray, there's no way to let one out without letting out the other, though we've certainly seen them retrieve other ghosts from containment, so maybe Ray is just full of balogna, or maybe they just didn't want to ruin their tearjerker ending.

Oddly, I could SWEAR that when I first saw "Extreme Ghostbusters" items in toy stores - before having seen the show itself - the show synopsis on the packaging promised that Drool would be a part of the series. WHERE WAS DROOL, EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS?

WHERE. WAS. DROOL?

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