In a week filled with so much sadness -- the fatal mauling of one of TV's most colorful executives by a white tiger named Ambition, the commencement of open hostilities between critics and a man with his hand indignantly thrust up a racist octogenarian's hindquarters, the initial failure by Fox to profitably exploit the romantic difficulties of the overweight in primetime -- we've been scrambling to find something to bring us a little joy. And today, finally, we've found it.
Behold the trailer for Ghost Busters (1954), the (giddily successful) attempt of one self-described "writer/filmmaker trying to get his big break" to imagine what 1984's Ghostbusters would look like if it had been made 30 years earlier, cast with some the biggest stars of the era: Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, Dean Martin, and Fred MacMurray. It would've been easy enough for "Whoiseyevan" to splice together some clips from the early '80s version with a bunch of scenes from some Hope road comedies and call it a day (honestly, no one's more exhausted by lazy mash-ups than we are; if we have to see Angry Downfall Hitler one more time, we'll leave a bomb underneath our own desk), but this teaser for the imaginary Ghostbusters (1954) has been seamlessly woven together from an impressive list of cinematic scraps, which he lists in the video's description:
Ghostbusters, The Three Stooges, Scared Stiff, Ghost Breakers, Topper Takes a Trip, The Ghost Busters, Abbott and Costello meet the Invisible Man, Star Trek, Ghosts on the Loose, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Spooks Run Wild, Flubber, Son of Flubber, The Caddy, 100 ans d'histoires de Bibendum
Now that we've built it up, have a look at the actual, pretty mind-blowing end product. And after you're done with the trailer, there's even a frame-by-frame deconstruction of how Whoiseyevan fit all these parts together. Enjoy!
Ghost Busters (1954) Trailer [YouTube via The Laughing Squid]