1984 was a great year for movies. Released forty-one years ago were the likes ofGremlins,Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,The Karate Kid, andFootloose, just to name a few, butleading the pack as the top grossing movie of the yearwasIvan Reitman’sGhostbusters. The horror-comedy took comedy veterans likeBill Murray,Dan Aykroyd, andHarold Ramis, and turned them into even bigger stars. Arguably, the biggest name in the film wasSigourney Weaver, who had just become an iconic heroinefive years earlier inRidley Scott’sAlien. InGhostbusters, Weaver plays Dana Barrett, a woman who is possessed by Zuul, and along with Rick Moranis' Louis Tully, becomes what’s referred to as a “terror dog”. Those dogs weren’t originally in the script, but after Weaver’s bizarre audition went in the wrong direction, Reitman decided to add them.
Sigourney Weaver Acted Like a Dog During Her ‘Ghostbusters’ Audition
When we first meet Dana Barrett inGhostbusters, she’s a cellist living in a Central Park apartment building in a unitacross the hall from the strange but harmless Louis Tully. However, when strange occurrences start happening in her home, such as opening the refrigerator door to see another dimension, she goes to the Ghostbusters for help. Bill Murray’s Peter Venkman is immediately smitten with her, but unable to find anything wrong in her apartment, life goes on. It’s then that Dana becomes possessed by the demonic Zuul, before turning into something much less human.
When Signourney Weaver sat down with Ivan Reitman for her audition, she took the dog scene inGhostbustersvery literally.During an appearance onThe Graham Norton Show, Weaver explained that she likes to do things her own way in an audition first before getting direction. She added, “I misunderstood the script, because I thought the girl did turn into a dog. So, at a certain point, and the director, Ivan Reitman, was filming me, I started to turn into a dog, and started to gnaw on the cushions, and kind of, you know, shake them, and howl a little bit. I’m an actor. I really got into it.”
Ivan Reitman Decided To Add the Terror Dogs to the ‘Ghostbusters’ Script
Imagine Signourney Weaver, a respected actresswho everyone now knew as playing this xenomorph killing badass, barking like a dog and chewing on the furniture, not because it was a demeaning role where she was told to, but because that’s the choice she decided to go with. It turned out to be the wrong choice.
Weaver continued the story with Graham Norton, giving Ivan Reitman’s reaction. “He turned the camera off, he said, ‘Don’t ever do that again. It’s so grotesque an editor might want to use it.’ But in the end they changed the script and had our characters turn into the terror dogs, which they weren’t, that wasn’t the story until I turned into a dog on his couch.” InGhostbusters, Dana and Louis both do turn into dogs, and not like any dog we’d know. These were creatures with red eyes whose only dog-like feature was that they moved around on all fours. Their appearance is also the moment the movie goes from acomedy to pure horror.
No Ghostbusters Film Can Match the Original, Regardless of How Many They Keep Bustin’ Out
The first ‘Ghostbusters’ was lightning in a bottle, which is why the rest of the franchise hasn’t been able to recapture it.
The Terror Dogs Were Brought Back for ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’
If Zuul’s two minions had just been just Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis barking and biting people, thenGhostbusterswould have gotten a lot more laughs, but not in a good way. Instead, they would have been seen as a joke. The film is definitely more of a comedy than a horror movie, but without the scary moments, there’s no reason to care about who the Ghostbusters are.
When we see the terror dogs, Weaver and Moranis are gone.The dogs were created by a mixture of stop-motion and practical effects, and although some scenes look a little dated, they became iconic to the franchise and its lore.The terror dogs finally returned for 2021’sGhostbusters: Afterlife, directed by Ivan Reitman’s son,Jason Reitman. The movie is a bit of a soft reboot, with Zuul returning as the main villain, along with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd,andErnie Hudsonappearing in small roles, and the late Harold Ramis' Egon shown as a ghost.
The terror dogs also look more horrifying than ever,now that better technology, including animatronics and CGI, could make them look more realistic.This time it’s Paul Rudd’s Gary and Celeste O’Connor’s Lucky who are possessed and become the terror dogs. Sigourney Weaver has created many iconic characters during her acting career, but inGhostbusters, she helped make one of the scariest by accident.
Ghostbustersis currently available to watch on Prime Video in the U.S.
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Ghostbusters
Three parapsychologists forced out of their university funding set up shop as a unique ghost removal service in New York City, attracting frightened yet skeptical customers.
