Year Two. Day Fifteen: "The Real Ghostbusters: Xmas Marks the Spot" (1986)

Perhaps suffering slightly from Christmas Carol fatigue, today's installment of my challenge was one I was looking forward to as it seemed to feature a clever take on the old story, I was not wrong.

This episode of the popular cartoon series, features the four Ghostbusters being hurled back in time to Victorian England, and into the pages of Dickens' novel, whereupon they promptly "bust" the ghosts of past, present and future and save Scrooge from his night of self reflection.

Upon returning to the present, the four men realise their mistake: thanks to Scrooge staying forever the miser, all the world now regards Christmas as a "humbug" and it is up to them to return to the past in order to set things right.

This gleefully smart episode has a lot of fun with the source text and happily assumes that its young audience is familiar enough with the tale without having to explain it to them. Scrooge himself and his trio of ghosts are presented in accordance to their descriptions in the book and even some of Ebenezer's dialogue is lifted directly from the page.

This is a brief, spirited adventure that unfortunately allows itself to become rather convoluted towards the end whereby it's unclear if the Ghostbusters themselves were in anyway a help or a hindrance throughout this exploit. That said, it has a neat twist in the closing minutes whereupon it seems that Scrooge wasn't the only one for whom the ghosts were sent to save.

I very much enjoyed that this adaptation acknowledged the massive impact that "A Christmas Carol" had upon the way in which we celebrate Christmas and that without it we may not celebrate it at all. It's a nice touch that many of these loose retellings of the tale are oft to forget.

As fun and as messy as a mince pie covered in brandy cream.

"The Real Ghostbusters: Xmas Marks the Spot." (1986)  3/5