VerhOeverthinking It week may be over, but a lot of the analysis we did on the work of filmmaker Paul Verhoeven carries over into other areas of the popular culture, such as music. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Steel Panther, the Starship Troopers of Heavy Metal.

1985 called. It wants its...everything...back.

There seems to be an increasing awareness of something we Americans have known for some time: that the ten most dangerous words in the English language are, “Hi, I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

—Ronald Reagan, July 28, 1988

In what decade but the 1980s could an EPA inspector be a movie villain?

The Reagan Revolution of the 80s turned pop culture into a battlefield between Capitalism and Communism. Despite the fact that neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. practiced a pure version of either – hundreds of thousands were on Social Security and Medicare in the U.S., and Levi’s had already made it past the Berlin Wall – everyone knew which they preferred. America glorified Freedom (see Rocky IV, Rambo II, Iron Eagle, Red Dawn, etc); Russia glorified The State.

Compare this with movies like Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action, barely two decades later. When the EPA accuses a corporation of environmental wrongdoing, we the audience immediately suspect the corporation. The cultural stage has changed.

Keep this in mind for Walter Peck’s first appearance in Ghostbusters.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of Ghostbusters. We celebrate, as we sometimes do here, with Ghostbusters Week, dedicated to overthinking various aspects of the beloved film.

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

—Egon Spengler, Ghostbusters

Okay, Egon, let’s imagine it. Everybody you’ve ever loved, gone. Everybody you’ve ever met, gone. All the cute girls you’ve ever had a crush on, vaporized. All the cute little babies, exploded. Say so long to your favorite celebrities: George Clooney, Barack Obama, Thom Yorke, all gone. And not just humans. You like pandas? Too bad.

Now tell me, is this an outcome any sane person would risk in order to run a small business?

Of course, it’s possible that Egon is lying about total protonic reversal. Maybe he has no idea what will happen if they cross the streams, so he’s playing it safe. Or maybe what will actually happen is that the proton packs will short out, necessitating a trip to Radio Shack and a long night of repairs. But Egon’s a gadget freak–he wants people to treat his creations with respect. So when Venkman snidely asks him to “define bad,” Egon thinks of the most over-the-top bad thing he can. Sort of like telling a kid that if she keeps making that face, it’ll stay that way.

Weapon of extremely mass destruction.

I like this theory. But for purposes of this post, let’s assume that Egon’s telling the truth. In that case, it seems to me that capturing ghosts, no matter how careful you are, carries far too great a risk. The odds of accidentally crossing streams seems pretty high–the process basically requires the Ghostbusters to all be aiming at the same spot. If Venkman and Stanz were responsible adults, the second Egon told them how dangerous the proton packs are, they would have turned around, gone back to the station, and smashed their equipment to bits with a sledgehammer (although that might be dangerous too).

But what about the moment that they decide to cross the streams on purpose? It’s nothing short of a crime against humanity.

Yes, I realize they were doing it to stop Gozer. But Egon only gives them a “very slim chance” of survival. How small is “very slim,” anyway? 5%? 1%? Doesn’t matter. Even if the odds were flipped, and there was only a 1% chance all life would end, I’d still say the Ghostbusters had no goddamn right to roll the dice like that. They simply can’t gamble all life on Earth on some spur of the moment, back of the envelope hunch. Not unless they were certain that the consequences of not acting were every bit as dire.

It seems to me that it’s only morally permissible to cross the streams if you know, for a fact, that every living thing on earth is about to perish. In that case, your actions at best give people a chance at survival, and at worst offer them a painless death. So if, let’s say, the asteroid from Armageddon is heading towards Earth (“Not even plankton would survive”) and crossing the streams somehow gives you a “very slim” chance of preventing it, in that case it might be the ethical thing to do.

Is the Gozer situation that dire? Not even close.

Eyes front, you maggots!

In this special Memorial Day Weekend Think Tank, Overthinking It takes a moment to honor the fictional sacrifices that fictional soldiers have made to defend our fictional country against its fictional foes.

But these noble heroes could not have made the sacrifices they did without a firm hand to guide them. Someone who was cruel to be kind. Someone who bitched them out like a New Orleans pimp but loved them like a father.

We’re talking about the king of the non-commissioned officers: the sergeant.

This week’s Think Tank: who is the best movie, TV, video game, cartoon, music or comic book sergeant?

Anyone who grew up with a controller in his sweaty little hands had at least one moment when a video game touched him emotionally. For some people, it was Sephiroth turning your girlfriend into a shishkabob. For others, it was Snake visiting Arlington Cemetery. But my most mind-blowing gaming experience was when I beat the Double Dragon arcade machine.

Actually, scratch that. I finished it; I don’t think I really beat it.

It was my freshman year of college. One rainy Saturday afternoon, my roommate Joe and I were contemplating the possibility of doing some actual work. Instead, we headed to Cutler’s Records, which had a row of classic arcade machines in the back. Our plan was to use only three dollars in quarters to win Double Dragon (and possibly pick up the new Britney Spears album while we were there).

We watched as the lovely Marian was gut-punched and dragged away by the Black Warriors. Then a garage opened and our two protagonists emerged: Billy and Jimmy, karate masters with tempers as fiery as their mullets. Joe and I cracked our knuckles and proceeded to crack dozens of digital skulls. The fighting raged through the city streets, a factory, a forest, and finally the headquarters of the street gang, which appeared to be some sort of Pagan temple.

Joe and I weren’t particularly adept, and the quarters balancing on the screen started to disappear at an alarming rate. But finally, we entered a room and saw Marian chained to the wall. At this point, we were low on health and cheering each other on loudly enough to scare everyone out of the World Music section of the store, which was probably just as well. A couple of jump kicks later, the last bad guy hit the floor and disappeared. We’d won.

Then, we saw this…

10   PRINT “Do you have a problem? (Y or N)”

20   INPUT $A

30   IF $A = “N” GOTO 120

40   PRINT “Can someone else help? (Y or N)”

50   INPUT $B

60   IF $B = “Y” GOTO 120

70   PRINT “Can you find them? (Y or N)”

80   INPUT $C

90   IF $C = “N” GOTO 120

100 PRINT “Maybe you can hire… the A-Team.”

110 GOTO 130

120 PRINT “You cannot hire the A-Team.”

130 END

Dan O'Bannon, apparently wearing some sort of bathrobe or kimono.

If you’re any kind of a geek, you’re currently saying to yourself, “But wait, isn’t George Romero the undisputed creator of the modern zombie?” Night of the Living Dead did indeed make zombies into one of our collective nightmares. But it was Dan O’Bannon’s lesser known Return of the Living Dead that introduced some of the big “rules” for zombies that are now almost universally accepted in the genre.

What’s interesting about the zombie is that it’s the only major movie monster that didn’t reach maturity in the 30’s or 40’s. Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), and The Wolf Man (1941) created pop culture archetypes that were pretty cemented by Pearl Harbor. There were also plenty of zombie movies being made during this period. In fact, I had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Kenemore, the author of the very clever self-help guide The Zen of Zombie, and he told me one of his favorite zombie films is actually from 1941.

The film composer Howard Shore has written an opera. It is an adaptation of one of the movies he did the music for. However, it’s probably not the one you’d expect/hope. Here’s a list of operatic movies Howard Shore has scored, that are NOT the movie in question: The Lords of the Rings, The Departed, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, The Aviator, and The Gangs of New York.

Instead, Howard Shore looked back upon his body of work, and decided The Fly really needed to be an opera. And there’s a photo after the jump.

Dear Bryan,

First of all, l’m a big fan. The fact that you spent your evenings down at the drive-in in the summer of ‘69, when you were only nine years old, is truly awesome.

But I have an issue with “Heaven,” your first big hit. The lyrics of the chorus have always bothered me:

Baby you’re all that I want
When you’re lying here in my arms
I’m finding it hard to believe
We’re in heaven

To me, that always sounded like:

Baby, you’re all that I want when you’re lying here in my arms. I’m finding it hard to believe we’re in heaven.

Which makes it sound like you’re really underwhelmed and being sarcastic about it. “This is heaven? If you say so.”

That’s not you, Bryan.

Of course, it’s actually supposed to be read this way:

Baby you’re all that I want. When you’re lying here in my arms, I’m finding it hard to believe. We’re in heaven!

But to me, it just never scanned right.

So here’s my suggestion – just change the lyric “I’m finding it” to “It isn’t.” So the revised quatrain reads:

Baby you’re all that I want
When you’re lying here in my arms
It isn’t hard to believe
We’re in heaven

I think that would clear up a lot of confusion. Thanks, Bryan.

Sincerely,
Matthew Belinkie