Editorials
When “The Extreme Ghostbusters” Met Pinhead and His Cenobites
Unlike so many sports drinks and snack foods in the late-90s, Extreme Ghostbusters earned its extremity. The younger, decidedly hipper team never went after the troubled spirit of a BMX biker or unnecessarily wore sunglasses. Extreme Ghostbusters wasn’t completely blameless – the grunge-caked cover of the theme song does it no favors and the advertising just had to call it XGB – but its oh-so-edgy adjective really referred to the show’s hellbent dedication to scaring the bejesus out of its core demographic.
As it stood, Extreme was already a sequel to The Real Ghostbusters, a series that mixed in more than a little nightmare fuel with Saturday Morning fun until the Family-Friendly Police of 1980s cartoons forced the creative team to cut it out. Before Slimer was promoted to above-the-title talent, the Real Ghostbusters visited various forms of hell, dealt with repressed trauma from a closet-traveling boogeyman and battled a trenchcoated allegory for child abduction. However dark it got, the show always ended with the heroes dancing down the street in their bright, color-coded jumpsuits.
When some of the same producers decided to make a follow-up in the mid-90s, with the far-too-cheery working title Super Ghostbusters, they found a cartoon landscape much more accepting of adult themes. From tip-to-tail, Extreme Ghostbusters would be darker, even in the most literal ways. Gone was the toyetic, crayon-friendly palette and angular, anime-inspired style of The Real Ghostbusters. Instead, Extreme Ghostbusters showed a washed-out world where night seemed to last 23 hours a day and the edges weren’t softer so much as worn down.
The ghosts looked like broken carnival mirror reflections of those from the original series, almost more alien than supernatural (a Men in Black animated series in almost the exact same style would debut a month later). And whereas The Real Ghostbusters relied on a lot of misunderstood spirits that took something more compassionate than a proton stream to evict, Extreme Ghostbusters was almost wall-to-wall poltergeists. Cannibal clowns that spread like an infection. A return of the child abductor surrogate, this time two of them, in an episode that had to be toned down significantly from its first draft. Bone-stealing demons that leave victims barely alive and looking like deflated balloons.
And an entire episode based explicitly on Hellraiser.
“Deadliners” was the fifth episode of Extreme Ghostbusters’ one and only season, first airing on September 5th, 1997. The character list on the final draft of the episode’s script, penned by producer and returning Real Ghostbusters writer Duane Capizzi, makes it plain:
THE VATHEK – a trio of otherworldly, Hellraiser type demons.
With names like “Crainiac” and “Gristle,” these monsters were as close to Cenobites as a cartoon would allow. Dead skin peeled and pulled taut over the red meat underneath. The leader wears a buzzsaw down the center of his skull. Another has no skull at all, but a pile of gurgling flesh folds, an empty sleeve from which a smaller, pulpy nightmare occasionally emerges to scream. Stitched mouths. Surgical drills for hands. Hollowed out eye sockets. On a show frequently and fatally misplaced in a timeslot aimed at preschoolers.
And who’s responsible for these grotesque parodies of human biology?
H.P. Kline, a reclusive horror writer.
While the episode mentions Stephen King and softens the Lovecraft reference by renaming him J.N. Kline, it paints the fictional author most like another famous horror writer. Much like the rhyming R.L. Stine, Kline made a name for himself with a series of adolescent-aimed scary stories to tell in the dark that happen to start with the letter “G.” The only differences are that Kline’s series is “Gore,” the monsters are always the Vathek, and they just so happen to be real.
When reports come in that J.N. Kline has gone missing and locals have started disappearing around his remote, New England home, the Ghostbusters answer the call.
The monsters only borrow Hellraiser’s designs, eschewing the sexual sadomasochism for a motive kids could better understand and subsequently repress – the ritual carving and reconfiguration of human flesh. The Vathek consider skin nothing more than modeling clay and wax about “infinite aesthetic possibility” romantically and emotionlessly, somehow at the same time. The resulting plastic surgery successes are just as disturbing as their creators, if not even more so.
By the time the Ghostbusters find out Kline didn’t create the Vathek so much as make an ill-defined book deal with them, the episode hews closer to Lovecraft and another Lovecraft-inspired work, John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, where another author is imprisoned by his fictionalized, if not quite fictional works. As expected, the Ghostbusters eventually defeat the Vathek, conveniently restoring all their butchered experiments to normal (a common, if understandable cop-out for the show).
At the time, syndicated cartoons ran for 65 episodes almost by default; five episodes a week for 13 weeks, allowing stations to easily program a quarter. Extreme Ghostbusters only saw 40 before it was cancelled. If the timeslot killed the show, a few years of erratically scheduled timeslots buried it. Home video did no further favors – six episodes reached VHS and 13 hit DVD, but only in Europe. Extreme Ghostbusters never quite got enough credit, especially compared to its beloved predecessor. At a time when neither was the norm, Extreme followed a diverse cast of characters into stories that toed the line between scary and terrifying for its adolescent audience.
Fortunately, the series is now streaming in its entirety on Hulu, so the curious and the Clive Barker fans can enjoy Extreme Ghostbusters a whole lot easier than ever before.
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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