Ghostbusters: who you gonna call?

With a teaser photo from the all-female remake of Ghostbusters out, now is a good time to look back at the original.

A scene from the original Ghostbusters.

Now that a teaser photo from the all-female remake of Ghostbusters has been released, this is a good a time to reacquaint yourself with the guys you gonna call in director Ivan Reitman’s original 1984 box office smash comedy Ghostbusters (Saturday, 9.30pm, Seven).

The enduring inspiration of this tale of a trio of happy-go-lucky parapsychologists who search New York for various spirits to exterminate is in the casting: Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, who co-authored the screenplay, write to their strengths as an enthusiastically clueless nerd and enduringly pragmatic egghead, respectively.

Yet it is Bill Murray, cast after the actor for whom the role of wisecracking Peter Venkman was written, John Belushi, died suddenly, who steals the film in a spaced-out and largely improvised performance for the comic ages.

Speaking of spaced-out, the scorned, little-seen yet engagingly ramshackle 1998 stoner comedy Half Baked (Sunday, 9.30pm, NITV) is remembered, if at all, as the big-screen debut of the talented, eccentric comedian Dave Chappelle. Cheech & Chong it ain’t, but the story of two guys trying to rescue their mate from jail through a fog of pot smoke has its fleeting laughs.

One of the best and most resonant Australian films of the past few years is writer-director Ivan Sen’s 2013 bush thriller Mystery Road (Saturday, 8.30pm, ABC). Aaron Pedersen is memorable as indigenous police detective Jay Swan, who returns to his remote Queensland home town only to become involved in a series of murders that lead him to the racist underbelly of the force on which he works. Sen, who also photographed, edited and scored the film, is said to be working again with Pedersen on a similarly themed project.

Everybody remembers Stubby Kaye as the quintessential Damon Runyon character Nicely-Nicely Johnson in the stage and screen versions of Guys and Dolls, but few know the character first appeared in director Irving Reis’s 1942 adaptation of Runyon’s short story Little Pinks, retitled The Big Street (Monday, 3.30am, 7Two). Played here by the great character actor Eugene Pallette, he appears in support of Henry Fonda as the long-suffering busboy enamoured with cold-hearted invalid nightclub singer Lucille Ball. That’s a Runyon-esque setting right there, and with Barton MacLane and Agnes Moorehead, fresh from the astonishing one-two punch of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, in support, the film sings.

Having played the shock value of his fictional mockumentary characters Borat and Bruno to the hilt, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen took a different tack with the more conventional though no less outrageous 2012 comedy The Dictator (Sunday, 11pm, QLD; 10pm, SA; 10.30pm; WA, 9.55pm, Ten). His clueless African despot roams Manhattan, with fitfully funny results.

Mystery Road (M)

4 stars

Saturday, 8.30pm, ABC

Ghostbusters (PG)

4 stars

Saturday, 9.30pm, Seven

The Big Street (PG)

4 stars

Monday, 3.30am, 7Two