According to Hofmann: Scumbags of the silver screen: The Halloween edition
Mark Hofmann
Were the Ghostbuster heroes or unintentional villains? Mark Hofmann breaks it down.
It鈥檚 Halloween weekend and if you just happen to be up late after sampling your child鈥檚 trick-or-treat bag and on a six-hour sugar rush, you can always use that time to watch some movies that fit the mood of the season and seek out all the unintentional movie villains.
If you鈥檙e unfamiliar with unintentional movie villains, they aren鈥檛 blatantly evil like Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger or the candy corn in your kid鈥檚 trick-or-treat bag. However, they still cause havoc to the main character or characters through their actions.
The first unintentional villain is Mayor Vaughn from the movie 鈥淛aws.鈥�
You may think the villain of the movie is the shark, but when you get down to it, the shark is an animal that is hungry and is just doing what鈥檚 in its nature.
The real problem is the shark eating people near a beach of a popular tourist destination. An even bigger problem is the mayor of that town not wanting to close the beach, a.k.a. the smorgasbord of humanity.
I can somewhat see his point as the town relies on tourist dollars to survive, plus, the odds of the shark attack victims being registered voters is low, so what鈥檚 the harm?
What also makes the guy kind of villainous is the scene where people are on the beach, but avoiding the ocean, and then the mayor eggs some guy and his family into going into the water to get others to do the same.
Oh, I see, Mr. Mayor, you don鈥檛 need to risk your hide, but get others to do your dirty work.
He also takes no responsibility when things do go wrong.
For example, he stands around like a plank of wood when the mother of a victim slaps Chief Brody across the face for not closing the beach before her son became a shark snack.
I normally don鈥檛 yell at the TV until it actually starts arguing with me, but that scene makes me do it every time as Brody was the one begging the idiot mayor to close the beach in the first place with the mayor constantly refusing to do so.
While he鈥檚 bad, he鈥檚 nothing compared to Tinkerbell from the original animated 鈥淧eter Pan.鈥�
Yes, I know 鈥淧eter Pan鈥� isn鈥檛 classified as a Halloween movie, but keep in mind that it鈥檚 Disney from the 1950s where kids were tough and could take some disturbing things that would make the pansies of today crawl into a safe space and suck their thumbs 鈥� and I鈥檓 referring to some adults as well as kids.
If you don鈥檛 believe me, stream a Disney movie made earlier than 1985, and it will likely come with a content warning.
Now, back to Tinkerbell, who could have had a starring role in the movie 鈥淔atal Attraction鈥� with her obsession and jealousy over Peter Pan.
For example, Tinkerbell sets her sights on Wendy as Peter brings her to Neverland, and the fatal fairy convinces the Lost Boys that Peter wants them to shoot Wendy.
Peter Pan banishes the little psychopath, and then Captain Hook manipulates her insane jealousy in revealing the location of Peter鈥檚 hideout for an attack.
Sure, she redeems herself at the end of the movie, but, if I were Peter, from that point on, I鈥檇 check to see if Tink swapped her pixie dust for angel dust and fly while wearing a parachute.
Now, this last one actually pains me to write, and I didn鈥檛 want to believe it when I read it online because 鈥淕hostbusters鈥� is one of my favorite movies of all time, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
The Ghostbusters themselves are (to a certain degree) the unintentional movie villains in the original 鈥淕hostbusters鈥�.
The writing was slimed on the wall during the elevator scene when Peter Venkman responded to Ray Stantz鈥檚 concerns that they didn鈥檛 have a successful test of their proton packs.
鈥淲hy worry? Each of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back,鈥� Venkman says.
Yeah, I鈥檇 say that was the red flag that these guys, while their hearts were in the right place, weren鈥檛 exactly on the up and up.
That becomes clear when Walter Peck with the Environmental Protection Agency comes into the picture and questions the Ghostbusters on the potentially dangerous containment unit in the basement, wanting to know exactly what they have down there.
Peck is seen as The Man getting in the way of the Ghostbusters (which he is), and he also causes the containment unit to breach, sending thousands of captured ghosts free on the city.
As slimy (pun intended) of a guy Peck is, he鈥檚 shown to be absolutely correct in his concerns.
However, I do think if the Ghostbusters went through the proper legal channels and regulations when designing and building their equipment, and building their ghost-busting business, the same results would have happened in the movie, and they would have appeared less unethical.
Of course, if they waited for the government red tape to clear, it would have lengthened the movie鈥檚 runtime to roughly 29 hours, so some corners had to be cut.
So if that means some of my most beloved characters have to be seen as scumbags of the silver screen to make one of my favorite movies of all time happen, then so be it.
And if that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, well, at least it wasn鈥檛 candy corn.
According to Hofmann is written by staff reporter Mark Hofmann of Rostraver Township. His books, 鈥淕ood Mourning! A Guide to Biting the Big One 鈥� and Dying, Too鈥� and 鈥淪tupid Brain,鈥� are available on Amazon.com.