14Ghostbusters (1984)

“I thought to marry the old ’30s ghost comedies with the real vernacular, and the technical language of real ghost hunting, like Hans Holzer’s work, and [William G. Roll], and the Maimonides Dream Lab,” Dan Aykroyd told Howard Stern recently. Ghostbusters, co-written with co-star Harold Ramis, became the most talked-about film of 1984, grossing into the hundreds of millions of dollars. That blockbuster success, not to mention the heavy Canadian influence (via Ramis and director Ivan Reitman), coupled with the heavy Saturday Night Live influence (via Aykroyd and Bill Murray), gave Ghostbusters the panache of a generational takeover – big-budget sci-fi horror tamed by a post-modern sort of deadpan humor. “It really is a perfect comedy,” Judd Apatow told Vanity Fair “It was all those people at the height of their powers; they had mastered their craft . . . [and] made the [film] we dreamed they’d make.”