After waging war on slime that cost New York City millions, the Ghostbusters find themselves out of business -- until an ancient tyrant, preparing a return to the Earthly domain through his portrait at the Manhattan Museum of Art, sets his sights on Dana Barrett's baby as the new home for his wicked soul! With the help of the Museum's possessed curator, he plans to turn New York into a really scary place to live! Now only the Ghostbusters can save New York City, by turning paranormal pest control into an art form!

"On a mountain of skulls, in the castle of pain, I sat on a throne of blood! What was will be! What is will be no more! Now is the season of evil!"                - Vigo

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         Ghostbusters 2 pulled off what most sequels can only dream of. It's just as good, if not better, than the original. There are plenty of reasons why sequels usually fail:

         - Storyline direction differences
         - Main characters disappear
         - New director, writer, ect.
         - Budget problems
         - ect., ect., ect.

         But Dan Aykroyd and Ivan Reitman assembled the same cast, continued the story in true Ghostbusters fashion and kept the look and feel exactly the same. Fucking awesome.
         Our arch nemesis from the original Ghostbusters, Gozer, has been replaced by a giant muscle-bound Carpathian named Vigo, who's soul was trapped inside a mysterious painting. In the words of the professionals:

         Dr. Egon Spengler - "Vigo the Carpathian, born 1505 - died 1610."
         Dr. Peter Venkman - "One hundred and five years old. He hung in there, didn't he?"
         Dr. Raymond Stantz - "And he didn't die of old age either. He was poisoned, stabbed, shot, hung, stretched, disemboweled, drawn and quartered."
         Dr. Peter Venkman - "Ouch."
         Dr. Egon Spengler - "Not exactly a man of the people. Also known as Vigo the Cruel, Vigo the Torturer, Vigo the Despised and Vigo the Unholy."
         Dr. Peter Venkman - "Wasn't he also Vigo the Butch?"
         Dr. Raymond Stantz - "And dig this, there was a prophecy. Just before his head died. His last words were, 'Death is but a door, time is but a window, I'll be back!'"

         Now, that's some badass shit right there. If a new writer would've came into the picture, they probably would've turned the sequel into a kiddie film where parents could drop off their kids to be babysat by cinema staff. (Ever see the Ghostbusters TV cartoon that arrived shortly after the success of the first film?) Thankfully, this didn't happen.
         There's a whole new batch of ghosts and ghouls. We have the Scalarrie Brothers, the Titanic, a possessed baby carriage, the famous river of slime and soooo much more. I felt the river of slime was particularly clever. All the bad energy festering through New York manifesting into a goo which flows beneath the city was a good plot direction. The color of the goo was also chosen well. A pinkish-purple effect seems much more fresh than the stereotypical blood-red or trioxin-green.
         The acting was stellar, as usual. A cast containing Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis and Rick Moranis is a 100% guarantee of a great film. Wilhelm von Homburg's portrayal of the villain "Vigo" was also an amazing performance. What rock did they pull him out from under, anyway?
         Make a long review short, Ghostbusters 2 is fantastic. If you have children, you'll want to purchase the Ghostbusters films to get them ready for real horror when they're older. There can never be too much horror, and if you throw in a good dose of comedy as well, the film can only get better. 5/5 severed flesh fingers.

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          - Will and Hank Deutschendorf, the twins who play Oscar, are the nephews of singer John Denver.

          - In the scene when Egon looks up information about Vigo in the database, Vigo's full name is listed as Vigo Von Homburg Deutschendorf. The actor who plays Vigo is Wilhelm von Homburg and the twins who play Oscar are Will and Henry J. Deutschendorf II.

          - Several pieces of material from the trailers did not appear in the film:
            1. Egon uses a PKE meter to read a piece of floating crystal.
            2. When someone says the Titanic just arrived, Venkman replies "Better late than never." In the film, this is said by Cheech Marin.

          - Dialogue including "There's always room for Jello" was re-recorded for the finished film.

          - Chloe Webb (better known as Linda Mason in 1988's "Twins") makes a cameo as a guest on "World of the Psychic".

          - The kid who tells Ray that, according to his dad, the Ghostbusters are "full of crap" is played by Jason Reitman, the son of director Ivan Reitman. Reitman's daughter plays the girl with the puppy in Egon's lab.

          - Originally, the producers planned on having the crashed Hindenburg appear as a ghostly blimp. They dumped this in favor of the apparitions coming off the Titanic.

          - At the beginning of the second ghost montage, a movie theater is shown that is playing the movie Cannibal Girls. Cannibal Girls was director Ivan Reitman's second movie.

          - The scene involving a woman's mink coat coming to life was originally written & storyboarded to be in the first film.

          - When Peter arrives at Ray's Occult book-store, pretending to be a strange customer looking for a particular book, the gag was originally intended to be that Peter had previously made a prank phone call to Ray asking for the book, and Ray realizing it was Peter who made the call when he arrives at the store repeating the act. The prank call was not used in the final edit of the film, resulting in it seeming that Peter is just fooling around as he enters the shop.

          - A scene of Egon and Ray experimenting on the bowl of slime, with them wearing head devices with multiple wires connecting to the bowl (which would have gone before the scene with the 'dancing toaster'), was filmed but not used in the final edit, but a shot from the scene was a commonly used publicity still for the film.

          - The shot of the Ecto-1 on the verge of breaking down at the start of the film is fitting in that while filming the bridge scene that's seen in the montage, the car finally did break down.

          - A scene featuring Ray driving Ecto-1 recklessly at speed, as a result of being possessed while conducting tests on Vigo's painting, was filmed but not used in the final edit of the movie. However, some shots of the sequence (Ray running a red light; Peter, sitting in the back, pulling a surprised face) were used in the montage as the Ghostbusters go back into business. (This continued a trend of unused scenes being used in montage - in the first film, a scene of Ray and Winston investigating a haunted castle, where Ray encounters a beautiful ghost, was filmed and not used, but instead used as a 'dream' in that movie's montage sequence.)

          - In the German dub of the movie Dana's child Oscar is renamed to 'Donald'.

          - The original VHS issue of this movie (and Karate Kid III) were in Letterbox, causing complaints to video stores prompting them to call RCA/Columbia to find out if there was a problem in the printing.

          - The joystick the team uses is an NES Advantage joystick with most of the body removed.

          - The phone number on the side of Ecto-1 is JL5-2020. (555-2020)

          - The cameo appearance of Slimer the green ghost of the first film was prompted by the fact that in the years in between the two films, the cartoon series "The Real Ghostbusters" introduced the idea that Slimer was living at the firehouse as the Ghostbusters' pet. Because the original film and the cartoon series were so popular with children, they put Slimer in the film.

          - During the montage sequence after the courthouse scene, when the Ghostbusters sign is being put up, the sign-maker's phone number, (516) 374-2340, is visible. This was and still is the phone number for Five Town Neon Service Inc., also known as "Johnny's Signs".

          - In the courtroom scene, the prosecuting lawyer is carried out of the room upside-down by her leg by one of the ghosts. In the trailer, you see the prosecuting lawyer floating out of the room upside-down as the ghost SFX have not yet been added.

          - The pneumatic subway line that Ray finds when they lower him below the street actually exists under part of Manhattan. The line was built prior to any other subways in the area and was actually built without any City approval. It operated using compressed air and pushed Victorian New Yorkers a number of blocks in "elegant comfort". When the City of New York found out about the subway line, they shut it down and the line was buried, including two beautifully appointed stations with extensive tile work and even full-size chandeliers above the tracks! Several decades later, when digging for the modern subway system, workers punched into the then unknown subway tunnel and found the station and the subway car completely intact and in remarkably good condition. It's still there today.