Ghostbusters became a generational touchstone partly because it’s gross as hell

For three decades and counting, the original Ghostbusters has seen its reputation as a sci-fi comedy classic steadily burnished. As the unceasing parade of collectibles, cartoons, video games, reboots, and more has demonstrated, the film connected powerfully with a generation of kids and young adults who found in it a wiseass comedic sensibility—and a personification of that attitude in Bill Murray.

Much has been made—and will doubtless continue to be made, rightly so—of the film’s gleefully inspired brio; its loose, anarchic humor; and its antiestablishment tone. The film revels in an acerbic thumbing of the nose at conventions; as many who have discussed the somber decision to turn the new sequel into a nostalgia-focused warm blanket of kid-friendly IP note, the original film would likely puke at such cuddly comfort-food cinema. Its fans certainly have: Click on any random Reddit thread discussing the new film, and you’ll find dozens, if not hundreds, of comments excoriating the idea of treating the irreverent original as some sacred text.

But what the new film (and the 2016 reboot) both seem to misunderstand about the 1984 blockbuster isn’t just its oddball counter-cultural vibe that seemingly stands in opposition to such drippy, safe fun. It’s that the original movie didn’t just try to repel such hokey sentiment—it was repellant, full stop. It was a generational touchstone that intentionally tried to push away older viewers or those expecting mature, adult-oriented comedy from those sharp-minded SNL icons. This was adult humor for kids—or kid humor for adults.

Ghostbusters wasn’t afraid to get revolting

The first Ghostbusters is a gross movie. As in, whatever conversations modern studios and filmmakers have about not wanting to put anything too disturbing into a four-quadrant film for fear of alienating that lucrative kid demographic, the movie makes it feel like the Ghostbusters team did the opposite. The film’s many defenders often neglect to mention how actively it works to push away any easy affections. From the genuinely disgusting sight of ghost feedings to the actively yucky body-horror stuff, the film is the ’80s equivalent of “no squares allowed,” trying to freak out parents and those who would turn up their nose at a film that stops inches from straight-up potty humor.

Take Slimer, a spectral apparition originally described by Dan Ackroyd’s Ray Stantz as a “disgusting blob.” Even by the time of the 1989 sequel, the ghost had been softened into a cuddlier figure, mostly there for a throwaway gag. (By the time of the cartoons, he was practically a puppy dog.) But in the original, Ray’s description is apt: We’re introduced to him wolfing down hotel entrees, tongue dripping saliva, as much food falling off his sides as into his gaping maw. It’s not a pretty sight, and as the team pursues him, his snorts and guttural shrieks maintain a “yuck” vibe.

This is a character meant to be intentionally puerile, the sentient equivalent of a fart joke. And it’s a symbolic representation of the stupid-smart tone walked by the film. You can practically hear the sound of kids developing an almost Pavlovian response: Here was proudly crass juvenilia that seemed tailor-made for them, not for the adults in the room. Yet it was layered into a film whose dialogue still seemed pitched to grown-ups. (“Let’s show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown.”) That’s a potent cocktail for the too-young-to-drive contingent.

Even ectoplasm, the sticky substance that serves as an after-effect of supernatural activity, is more viscous and disgusting in the original. By the time of Ghostbusters II, it was pinkish goo that makes toasters dance in a fun way; but here, it just serves to ramp up the “ick” factor. When Egon (Harold Ramis) asks Venkman (Murray) to grab a sample, he observes, “Somebody blows their nose and you wanna keep it?” It’s not a cute bit of energy to power the Statue Of Liberty; it’s a nasty bit of gunk that Venkman freaks out about when the slightest bit gets on his hand, frantically wiping it off onto every available surface.

Ghostbusters got serious about the gruesome, too

But the repellant elements weren’t just of the silly-gross variety. The film’s body-horror moments are equally nasty, and in a more grim manner. The transformations of Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) and Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) into hellhounds isn’t played for laughs; it looks torturous. And when they’re transformed back at the end, borne out of the crumbling bodies of the beasts, the demonic flesh is literally broken open to reveal the fragile human bodies inside. It’s not quite The Fly, but it’s not just Stay-Puft Marshmallow remains, either.

The movie also not only doesn’t shy away from, but rather leans into some of its more unsettling elements. Chief among these are the film’s sequences of straight-up horror. When Dana is sitting peaceably at home, only for a pair of monstrous arms to rip free from her chair and pin her down, it’s a jump scare as effective as any moment from The Conjuring.

The same goes for the very first ghost the guys meet, near the beginning of the film. Having convinced a skeptical Venkman to accompany them on a ghost hunt at the New York Public Library, the trio stumble into what initially appears to be a mild-mannered old lady of a ghost, reading a book and politely shushing them when Venkman attempts to strike up a conversation. But when Ray pushes it, she transforms into a monstrosity—like Large Marge without the cartoonish Claymation aspect. It’s honestly the stuff of nightmares, so when it pivots hard into a goofball shot of the guys fleeing the building, it’s like the film nudging you in the ribs: See? Awful and awfully silly can go together, and it’s cool.

The moments of overt grossness and horror-movie nastiness are rarely noted, if at all, when people pen encomiums to its loose comic brilliance. Yet those button-pushing elements of the film—the very ones that might’ve seemed childish or unpleasant to an older audience—are essential to understanding why young people connected with it so powerfully. We love it not despite those elements, but because of them; the fusion of adolescent yuks and gross-out gratuitousness operates as a sort of skeleton key to Ghostbusters’ anarchic charms.

Every person on the film’s creative team had fused juvenile mindsets with grown-up laughs before—most notably in Animal House, Stripes, and more—but those were pitched directly at a college-age crowd, comedies that involved sex and drugs and hard-R ratings. This was something both more puerile and more provocative, and that combination was catnip for a young generation who hadn’t seen its like before (or much after, truth be told).

It’s a rich bit of irony that the same generation who fiercely loved the movie’s antiauthoritarian silliness—who made it part of their cultural identity—eventually let it curdle into nostalgia in occasionally awful ways. But you don’t blame a quartet of ghost-hunting goofballs for their fanbase’s sins, any more than you blame an animated scientist and his grandson for the dipshit theatrics of their worst viewers. No, Ghostbusters endures, and maintains its steadfast armada of true believers, because it argued that juvenile nonsense can be just as adult-seeming as any serious drama—and that kids can be in on the joke, in a way that pushes the actual adults to the sidelines. Here are grown men playing to the kids; that’s fucking cool. And sometimes, gross.