6 min read
"The True Face of a Monster" is the third episode of Extreme Ghostbusters, first aired September 3, 1997 (production number 107). It was written by Bob Skir and Marty Isenberg and directed by Rafael Rosado, with animation by Koko Enterprise Company, Ltd. A rabbinical student secretly animates a Golem to drive off vandals who have been defacing his synagogue, but the clay creature grows too powerful for him to control.
Join the community
Free accounts post in the forum, upload to the gallery, edit the wiki, and follow your favorite franchises. No credit card. No catch.
After vandals throw eggs and spray paint anti-Semitic graffiti on the Beth Shalom Synagogue in Brooklyn, a hulking clay monster grabs them and drags them away. The next day, Kylie Griffin and Eduardo Rivera are called to Memorial Hospital, where Dr. Dennis Alcaraz cannot identify the strange clay encasing two patients brought in by police. Alcaraz says he called the Extreme Ghostbusters without consulting his chief of staff because the affliction was beyond the scope of medicine. Kylie finds the substance is full of ectoplasmic residue and takes a sample.
Meanwhile, Garrett Miller and Roland Jackson pass a pickup basketball game, and Garrett is recruited to win a bet by an old acquaintance, Spencer, from his Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. Roland notices the cold reception from Spencer's friends and later complains to Kylie that the crew is racist; she suggests he may be reading too much into it. Back at the firehouse, Egon Spengler reports that the clay has proto-organic properties and is growing. A news report by Nancy Morrison about a synagogue covered in clay sends the team to Beth Shalom, where Rabbi Moskowitz turns them away.
Returning that night for a sample, the team is attacked by the clay monster. Their proton streams pass straight through it. Chaim, the rabbi's student, hints that priceless ancient scrolls recently arrived from Prague. Kylie visits the Jewish Cultural Center, where librarian Sarah Saperstein identifies the creature as a Golem, a figure created in times of strife to protect a community but prone to going out of control, and notes that it can be undone by ending the hatred that called it forth. Egon and Kylie confirm the entity is a Golem animated by a scroll placed in its mouth.
Spencer's crew breaks into the synagogue to finish their vandalism. Garrett, who has been spending time with them, tries to stop them and is shoved from his wheelchair. The Golem activates, encasing one of the vandals and threatening the others. Chaim admits he created the Golem to protect the synagogue. The proton streams still fail, and the Golem chases Spencer and Trey into the RSDO Ironworks. Garrett gets the idea to fire on the smelting vats, and the team buries the Golem under falling metal rods until it shatters. Kylie pulls the scroll from its mouth, and the creature disintegrates, freeing everyone it had trapped. The police arrest Spencer and Trey. Rabbi Moskowitz tears up the scroll, saying some things were never meant for humanity and that hate cannot be fought with hate, and the community joins together to clean up the synagogue.
The Golem of this episode is drawn directly from Jewish folklore: during times of extreme strife, a clay statue was created to defend a community from persecution, brought to life by inserting an ancient scroll (bearing the creator's written instructions) into its mouth. As the Golem grows larger, it becomes more aggressive until it is entirely uncontrollable. The entity in this episode originated from a scroll that arrived at Beth Shalom from Prague, a detail that may reference Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the 16th-century chief rabbi of Prague who allegedly created a Golem to protect the Prague ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks.
After their first encounter, the Extreme Ghostbusters classify the creature as an ectoplasmic proto-organic entity. Further lab analysis at the firehouse refines this to an ecto-based hybrid, reflecting that the Golem is not purely ectoplasmic in nature. Physically, it can morph its body to flow through iron bars, cocooning victims in clay as punishment, and regenerate by drawing earth and clay from its surroundings. Standard proton streams prove completely ineffective; recalibrating the equipment also fails. The Golem is only stopped when Kylie removes the scroll from its mouth, at which point it de-animates and all victims are freed.
The Golem's design for this episode was created by Fil Barlow. An alternative design was proposed by Everett Peck and Richard Raynis but was considered unsuitable, and Barlow's original design was used.
The regular voice cast includes Tara Charendoff (later credited as Tara Strong), Maurice LaMarche, Jason Marsden, Pat Musick, Alfonso Ribeiro, Rino Romano and Billy West. Guest voices include Michael Corbett, Hal Gould, Mikey Kelly, Loren Lester, Megan Mullally and Roger Rose.
A first draft of the script was completed on January 20, 1997.1 Several details changed between that draft and the aired episode. In the cold opening, the two vandals were named Gunther and Carl in the draft; in the finished episode one was renamed Kevin.2 The scene where Garrett and Roland first appear was scripted to take place on Sixth Avenue.3 Garrett's guess at the culprit was originally a poltergeist, banshee or werewolf, changed in the episode to a haunting, possession or demon desiccation.4 The parachute stunt with Spencer's crew was first written as a jump from the Brooklyn Bridge rather than off a roof.5
The Golem's creature design was handled by Fil Barlow. An alternate design pitched by Everett Peck and Richard Raynis was rejected in favor of Barlow's original.
This is the only Extreme Ghostbusters episode built around the subject of racism and religious intolerance. The Golem is also one of the few mythic beings in the series that is not a ghost and is never captured in a Ghost Trap; it is stopped by removing the scroll from its body rather than being trapped.
Garrett and Roland are enrolled in the same Comparative Sociology course. Garrett's nickname among Spencer's crew is "G-Man." Garrett and Spencer both grew up in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood.
When Eduardo breaks into the synagogue, Kylie quips that they are after a clay sample, not the Hope Diamond. Eduardo nicknames the Golem after the clay characters Gumby and Mr. Bill as well as Play-Doh. Kylie later calls the creature "Sandman," a nod to the rogue Sandman the original Ghostbusters once faced.
A PDF of the first-draft script is hosted at Spook Central.6
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
Marty Isenberg and Bob Skir, Extreme Ghostbusters, "The True Face of a Monster," first draft, January 20, 1997 (script title page). ↩
Marty Isenberg and Bob Skir, Extreme Ghostbusters, "The True Face of a Monster," first draft, January 20, 1997 (script cast list and p. 1). ↩
Marty Isenberg and Bob Skir, Extreme Ghostbusters, "The True Face of a Monster," first draft, January 20, 1997 (script p. 4). ↩
Marty Isenberg and Bob Skir, Extreme Ghostbusters, "The True Face of a Monster," first draft, January 20, 1997 (script p. 18). ↩
Marty Isenberg and Bob Skir, Extreme Ghostbusters, "The True Face of a Monster," first draft, January 20, 1997 (script p. 20). ↩
Spook Central, "Extreme Ghostbusters scripts," first-draft PDF of "True Face of a Monster," spookcentral.tk. ↩