THE VATHEK – a trio of otherworldly, Hellraiser type demons. The character list on the final draft of the episode’s script, penned by producer and returning Real Ghostbusters writer Duane Capizzi, makes it plain: “Deadliners” was the fifth episode of Extreme Ghostbusters’ one and only season, first airing on September 5 th, 1997. Bone-stealing demons that leave victims barely alive and looking like deflated balloons.Īnd an entire episode based explicitly on Hellraiser. A return of the child abductor surrogate, this time two of them, in an episode that had to be toned down significantly from its first draft. Cannibal clowns that spread like an infection. And whereas The Real Ghostbusters relied on a lot of misunderstood spirits that took something more compassionate than a proton stream to evict, Extreme Ghostbusters was almost wall-to-wall poltergeists. The ghosts looked like broken carnival mirror reflections of those from the original series, almost more alien than supernatural (a Men in Black animated series in almost the exact same style would debut a month later). Instead, Extreme Ghostbusters showed a washed-out world where night seemed to last 23 hours a day and the edges weren’t softer so much as worn down. Gone was the toyetic, crayon-friendly palette and angular, anime-inspired style of The Real Ghostbusters.
From tip-to-tail, Extreme Ghostbusters would be darker, even in the most literal ways. When some of the same producers decided to make a follow-up in the mid-90s, with the far-too-cheery working title Super Ghostbusters, they found a cartoon landscape much more accepting of adult themes. However dark it got, the show always ended with the heroes dancing down the street in their bright, color-coded jumpsuits. Before Slimer was promoted to above-the-title talent, the Real Ghostbusters visited various forms of hell, dealt with repressed trauma from a closet-traveling boogeyman and battled a trenchcoated allegory for child abduction. Extreme Ghostbusters wasn’t completely blameless – the grunge-caked cover of the theme song does it no favors and the advertising just had to call it XGB – but its oh-so-edgy adjective really referred to the show’s hellbent dedication to scaring the bejesus out of its core demographic.Īs it stood, Extreme was already a sequel to The Real Ghostbusters, a series that mixed in more than a little nightmare fuel with Saturday Morning fun until the Family-Friendly Police of 1980s cartoons forced the creative team to cut it out. The younger, decidedly hipper team never went after the troubled spirit of a BMX biker or unnecessarily wore sunglasses. Unlike so many sports drinks and snack foods in the late-90s, Extreme Ghostbusters earned its extremity.
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