Produced by: Steven Spielberg.
Starring: Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Beatrice Straight, Dominique Dunne (first victim of the Poltergeist curse), Oliver Robins, Heather O’Rouke (second victim of the Poltergeist curse) and Zelda Rubinstein.
Budget: $10.7 Million.
Gross Revenue: $121,706,019.
Release Date: 1982.
Poltergeist is one of those popcorn movies made during a time when everything that Spielberg touched turned to gold. The dude pretty much became a brand name, with producers and directors alike willing to give their first-born for the coveted Steven Spielberg Presents title attachment. Don't be fooled by Tobe Hooper's involvement, this film reeks of Spielberg, which was released a week or so before E.T. and was his attempt at making a haunted house picture.
I watched it a few days ago, having never really seen it before. I knew a lot of what happened in the movie, because I heard it second hand about a million years ago from a friend at school who had hundreds of pirated VHS tapes stacked in the living room of his house. I remember thinking how insanely scary it sounded. You see, back in the day I used to love all that haunted house stuff. I’m actually a bit perplexed as to why I never saw this one a long time ago.
Of course, it’s common knowledge that hype is a dangerous beast: After I told my girlfriend how fucking petrified I was of The Exorcist when I watched it at the tender age of twelve, she was desperate to see it and was appropriately underwhelmed by something as silly as demonic possession. So how does Poltergeist fair now, after being hyped up in my head for so long? Well the visual effects are pretty shitty. I watched with a friend of mine who said “It’s too cartoonish...” as the hand came out of the T.V. to creepily caress Carol-Anne, the girl doomed to be taken into the ghost dimension.
However, the late 70’s/early 80’s were a great time for good quality blockbusters, and Poltergeist is as decent an example as any. The frights are largely genuine and come from a place that is really quite eerie. Scenes play out in the flickering, almost epileptic, light of a television tuned to a dead channel, and seeing the little girl with her head so close to the television is unnerving. The very fact that the source of horror is a television points to the anxiety that many parents probably had when their kids became obsessed with syndicated television shows. It certainly points to the stress that studio executives might have felt about how T.V. could potentially kill the Hollywood blockbuster. Why would you go to the movies for entertainment, when you could watch The Facts of Life at home for free?
But Poltergeist works really well as a film. Unlike those hideous Saw movies, many of the scares are built into the narrative. There is a scene where the father tells the little boy how you can judge if a storm is coming or going based on the amount of time that passes between the sight of lightning and the sound of thunder. Later, the boy will lie in his bed, counting the time between lightning and thunder, only to find that the gap is getting shorter, signifying that bad shit is about to go down. This scene serves two purposes: Convincing us that the father cares about his kids and setting up a later scare. Just little things like this remind us of a day when blockbusters used to give a shit about story. Sure, they weren’t going to change our minds about hot political/social issues, but they were at least convincing and worth the price of a ticket. Now-a-days you’re more likely to get a bunch of random events stringed together by some bullshit high-concept narrative device (Scary events + Security camera footage = Paranormal Activity).
I watched it a few days ago, having never really seen it before. I knew a lot of what happened in the movie, because I heard it second hand about a million years ago from a friend at school who had hundreds of pirated VHS tapes stacked in the living room of his house. I remember thinking how insanely scary it sounded. You see, back in the day I used to love all that haunted house stuff. I’m actually a bit perplexed as to why I never saw this one a long time ago.
Of course, it’s common knowledge that hype is a dangerous beast: After I told my girlfriend how fucking petrified I was of The Exorcist when I watched it at the tender age of twelve, she was desperate to see it and was appropriately underwhelmed by something as silly as demonic possession. So how does Poltergeist fair now, after being hyped up in my head for so long? Well the visual effects are pretty shitty. I watched with a friend of mine who said “It’s too cartoonish...” as the hand came out of the T.V. to creepily caress Carol-Anne, the girl doomed to be taken into the ghost dimension.
However, the late 70’s/early 80’s were a great time for good quality blockbusters, and Poltergeist is as decent an example as any. The frights are largely genuine and come from a place that is really quite eerie. Scenes play out in the flickering, almost epileptic, light of a television tuned to a dead channel, and seeing the little girl with her head so close to the television is unnerving. The very fact that the source of horror is a television points to the anxiety that many parents probably had when their kids became obsessed with syndicated television shows. It certainly points to the stress that studio executives might have felt about how T.V. could potentially kill the Hollywood blockbuster. Why would you go to the movies for entertainment, when you could watch The Facts of Life at home for free?
But Poltergeist works really well as a film. Unlike those hideous Saw movies, many of the scares are built into the narrative. There is a scene where the father tells the little boy how you can judge if a storm is coming or going based on the amount of time that passes between the sight of lightning and the sound of thunder. Later, the boy will lie in his bed, counting the time between lightning and thunder, only to find that the gap is getting shorter, signifying that bad shit is about to go down. This scene serves two purposes: Convincing us that the father cares about his kids and setting up a later scare. Just little things like this remind us of a day when blockbusters used to give a shit about story. Sure, they weren’t going to change our minds about hot political/social issues, but they were at least convincing and worth the price of a ticket. Now-a-days you’re more likely to get a bunch of random events stringed together by some bullshit high-concept narrative device (Scary events + Security camera footage = Paranormal Activity).
The addition of the character Tangina Barrons played flawlessly by Zelda Rubinstein, really breathes life into what could possibly be an extended universe for this franchise. She steps in much like Max von Sydow in The Exorcist and you can just tell that she has seen a lot of crazy paranormal shit in her life. That she is practically a midget only adds to the authority she commands in the house. When she tells the father to be angry at Carol-Anne, because it’s the only way that she will be able to leave the ghost dimension, you believe her.
I’m sure that the days of the wholesome, family friendly horror movie are dead. The horror movie is now so niche in its narrow appeal for gross-outs and/or seat-jump frights that a movie like Poltergeist would probably get laughed at if it were released today. However, for those out there that want to get scared without having to see someone wading through someone else's internal organs, ‘Poltergeist’ is still a winner.
Three stars:
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