Ghostbusters

The movie is about some guys that bust ghosts. What more do you want from us?

Spook Busters

Okay, okay... if you insist on knowing more, we can dig up a little deeper for you. Like for example that one of Aykroyd's main inspirations for the movie was the old horror comedies that he used to watch when he was a kid. Yep, Ghostbusters definitely didn't invent the genre. Tons of famous comedians used to make movies that mixed wacky high-jinx with a monster or two.

Let's see, there was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, in which Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. There was The Ghost Breakers, in which Bob Hope investigates a haunted castle in Cuba. And of course there was Spook Busters, in which the Bowery Boys start an exterminating service and get tied up in a supposedly haunted house.

Wait a sec: Ghost Breakers? Spook Busters? Put those together and you get...

Indeed.

Also, did anybody else notice how the premise of Spook Busters sounds a lot like the premise to Ghostbusters with the whole exterminator/ghostly thing? None of this is an accident. Aykroyd deliberately set out to update the genre that he loved as a kid, so the title of the movie is a nod and homage to all the movies he loved.

Ghost (space) Busters

Apparently, the dudes in the Ghostbusters creative team weren't the only ones who dug the title. They found after they were already deep into filming that there'd been a very short-lived TV show called "The Ghost Busters" back in the 70's in which two guys hunted ghosties with their pet gorilla.

There was threatened legal action, but eventually the studio guys made it go away. After Ghostbusters was a hit, the bizarro world "Ghost Busters" came out with a cartoon version of the old show.

So Ghostbusters titled its cartoon show "The Real Ghostbusters" so nobody would get confused… and probably to point out how lame the other show was.