SHOCKTOBER! Ghostbusters Leads Packed Time Warp Drive-In

There is no Dana. There is only Zuul. Sigourney Weaver slays in Ghostbusters.

October is horror movie month, and nobody does it better than the Time Warp Drive-In. The Warp got its start as a special Halloween program, and it proved so popular it expanded into a monthly event. This year they pulled out all the stops with a loaded program of comedy and musical horror from the glory days of the 1980s.

Leading the program is, naturally, Ghostbusters. The 1984 film was originally conceived by Dan Ackroyd as a vehicle for him, John Belushi, and Eddie Murphy as interdimensional “paranormal exterminators.” Ackroyd says he was actually writing dialog for Belushi when he found out his friend had died in March 1982. After Murphy turned down the opportunity, and an extensive re-write with Harold Ramis—conducted while the pair were locked in a fallout shelter—that has become the stuff of Hollywood legend, the film became the highest-grossing comedy of all time. Bill Murray’s performance as a would-be shyster who unexpectedly discovers ghosts are real cemented his status as a superstar, but it was the incredibly catchy, New Wave theme song by Ray Parker, Jr. that drove the masses to the theaters in the summer of ’84. Roll that tape!

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Next up is Little Shop of Horrors, which began life as a shlocky Roger Corman film from 1960, then revamped as an off-broadway musical in the early 80s. Muppet co-mastermind and Yoda himself, Frank Oz, directed Rick Moranis as a geeky flower shop worker who discovers a carnivorous plant from outer space, and makes an unlikely deal with it to woo his crush Audrey, played with squeaky precision by Broadway singer Ellen Greene.

The voice of the alien plant, dubbed Audrey II, is Four Tops frontman Levi Stubbs. Here he is absolutely killing it in the show-stopper “Mean Green Mother From Outer Space”:

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Universal Studios hasn’t had much luck with its classic monster properties in the 21st century. Just look at 2014’s Dracula Untold—or better yet, don’t. Maybe they need to switch directions and remake The Monster Squad. The 1987 monsters vs. teenagers romp didn’t scare up much business back in the day, but it earned a huge following on home video, and it’s got a hell of a lot more life than Tom Cruise’s deeply awful Mummy remake.

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Speaking of bad ideas, remember that adaptation of the board game Battleship? What a fiasco. Well, the 1985 adaptation of the board game Clue is the polar opposite of that. It’s got a stacked cast of Tim Curry, Martin Mull, Susan Sarandon, Christopher Lloyd, and a timeless performance by Madeline Khan, who delivers one of the greatest ad-libs in the history of cinema: