Plot
The Ghostbusters are hired as consultants on a horror film called "Horror House" and drive out to the set. Winston is glad it is not real work for once. Ray is excited to finally visit MJN Studios, but Winston reveals the shoot is being done at an actual haunted house for authenticity. Outside, Egon's P.K.E. Meter picks up readings, which Peter waves off. They walk in on a scene already in progress and meet actor Gil Hamstrung, director Feeny Muscleberg, and producer Artie Grendel. More than a dozen ghosts watch the shoot from the attic. Their leader, Joe, grabs the shooting script and reads it over in disappointment. Grendel announces he is cutting unnecessary expenses and fires the Ghostbusters.
The ghosts then attack the set. While the Ghostbusters run to Ecto-1 for their Proton Packs, Grendel, smitten with the ghosts, films them. The team returns and traps most of the ghosts, but Grendel quietly helps the three top ghosts evade capture.
A month later, "Horror House" premieres. The Ghostbusters arrive at the theater, paid by Grendel to appear for publicity, and the crowd files out raving about the picture. The team runs into Gil and Feeny, both also fired from the movie. Feeny is suspicious: the special effects alone should have taken more than a month. Grendel whisks the Ghostbusters away in his car, leaving Gil and Feeny behind.
At MJN Studios, the Ghostbusters are caught in a net. Grendel has hired the three ghosts to help him make movies, and in return he is helping them make their own, "The End of the Ghostbusters." Ray recalls that the prison-cell set was used for "The Pirate of Zinda," starring Douglas Flynn. The team is marched onto an Old West set and told to run while the ghosts, now armed with the Proton Packs, give chase. They run through a graveyard set, a mock-up of the RMS Lusitania (a British ocean liner sunk during World War One), and a cityscape, where Peter happily stomps through the miniature city before fleeing the proton blasts. During the chase, when Winston asks Egon what happens if a proton beam hits them, Egon replies: "Our individual atoms go on separate vacations!" The chase ends at a dead end, the same wall where Clark Tracy's character was killed off in "Gangsters on Broadway."
Gil and Feeny show up in a helicopter, but the ghosts blast it down and capture the pair. Joe offers to release them if the Ghostbusters surrender. Ray gets the ghosts to promise, but once the team is tied up the ghosts plan to destroy everyone anyway. During the sequence, Grendel mentions an Ouija board as part of the execution spectacle. Ray reaches for Egon's P.K.E. Meter and reverses its polarity, sending out a distress signal that summons the ghosts of three MJN Studios movie stars. Because they played heroes, the star ghosts side with the Ghostbusters. After the villainous ghosts are captured, Ray and Winston split off to catch Grendel, and the movie-star ghosts ride off into the sunset.
Characters of note
This episode features several one-off characters central to the plot.
Artie Grendel is the episode's antagonist: a film producer willing to make a deal with actual ghosts to get authentic footage. His scheme is to produce a picture literally starring the Ghostbusters as victims. He is arrested at the end of the episode when Ray and Winston break away to apprehend him.
Joe leads the Horror House Ghosts, a group of over a dozen specters haunting the original location shoot. Joe is presented as something of a frustrated creative: he picks up the shooting script and reads it with obvious disappointment. He negotiates the arrangement with Grendel, trading authentic filmmaking for Grendel's promise to help them produce their own anti-Ghostbusters feature.
The MJN Studios Movie Star Ghosts are three spirits of classic film actors whose careers were built on heroic roles. Ray deduces, correctly, that the ghosts of heroes would behave heroically in death. He reverses the polarity of the P.K.E. Meter to emit a distress signal that draws them out, and they side with the Ghostbusters, helping capture Joe and the other villain ghosts before riding off into the sunset.
Gil Hamstrung is an actor on the original "Horror House" shoot who is fired alongside director Feeny Muscleberg when Grendel cuts costs. Both are suspicious of how quickly the film completed without them. They ultimately attempt a helicopter rescue before being captured themselves.
MJN Studios
The episode is the only screen appearance of MJN Studios, a New York motion picture production facility. Its back lot held standing sets from earlier studio productions, including "The Pirate of Zinda" and "Gangsters on Broadway," and the ghosts of actors connected to those films lingered there. The studio later turns up as an in-joke in IDW Publishing's Ghostbusters comics, where an advertisement for MJN Studios appears on a taxi.
Production
The episode was recorded on November 12, 1986.1 On the call sheet and SAG report it is listed as "Lights, Camera, Haunting."1 One of the chase-set gags, a character named Hopalong Rogers, is a nod to fictional cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy and to actor Jimmy Rogers, who played juvenile leads in that film series.1
In his introduction to the episode on The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection, writer Marc Scott Zicree recalled visiting the MGM Studios back lot before it was torn down, which helped inspire the story.
Neither Janine nor Slimer appears in this episode.
Animation errors
Two continuity errors are visible in the episode. At the end, the particle thrower hoses are shown disconnected from the Proton Packs, yet the team is still able to fire them. Additionally, only three Ghost Actors escape capture and arm themselves with Proton Packs during the chase sequence, but when the MJN Studios Movie Star Ghosts return the equipment, four packs are shown.
Air order
In broadcast order, "Lights! Camera! Haunting!" followed The Devil in the Deep and preceded Egon on the Rampage. In the box set's DVD ordering it falls between Egon on the Rampage and The Bird of Kildarby.
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
