Poltergeist: Review By Dan

Before I delve into the movie, I need to ask you all something. Do you believe in something beyond our world? Do you find it possible that in the doldrums of our daily activities, we could be passing by or experiencing phenomena that could be so minuscule that we write it off as nothing? Or to ask an even more outrageous question, has anyone here experienced anything near the caliber of this film? Granted, this is Hollywood, we're not likely to see entire graves come open and coffins fling themselves at us in our own homes, but I will say that some of it is entirely possible, because ladies and gentleman, yours truly has experienced a bit of the ol' haunting/poltergeist himself..

While not as dramatic as Poltergeist, there have been 5 instances of where I have experienced a supernatural phenomena. The first and second being when I used to do catering with my stepfather. We had one client who lived in a bona fide Civil War home, complete with intact slave quarters building on the side of it. As I returned to the van to grab more supplies to bring into the house, and came back into the kitchen, the chairs at the kitchen table, similar to the scene in Poltergeist, were in all different corners of the room suddenly, some even upside down. There was nobody home save my stepfather and I, and he was out by the van. When you'd walk into a room, the lights would turn off, and when you walked out, they would turn back on (although the groundskeeper claimed that was just faulty wiring or something). The 2nd time in this same house, I was bringing out food to the outside garage refrigerator, and I felt someone staring at me, so I turned around, and sure enough I saw someone inside the slave quarters looking straight at me. One blink later, and he was gone, but I know what I saw.

For the other 3 instances, the first occurred while on patrol in this college campus (I work armed security). The building had 15 floors, and when I reached the 11th floor, I heard a woman screaming as if someone was killing her. I hurriedly checked all the offices to find that nobody, absolutely nobody was there, nor any scent of blood or signs of foul play. After that, I skipped that freakin' floor on future patrols. The last 2 involved my ex's mother's house. In one room you lose all the warmth from your body as you enter it, regardless of how hot it may be outside. The story behind the house, before her mother owned it, was that a crotchety old hag lived there and ran a foster home. But in this home there are secret closets behind closets. Inside one of them is fingernail scratchings on the walls, and writings with things like "kill me". It was rumored that she used to abuse the children that came there and lock them in these closets. I went into the one with fingernail scratchings, and let me tell you, I have never felt suffocation or claustrophobia such as when I entered that little space, it was a terrifying feeling, I had to get out immediately.

So there you have it, my experiences with the unexplainable. I felt it fitting to share with you all since this is a movie about just such experiences. Hope you enjoyed that bit o' history about ol' Supes.

From Tobe Hooper, the director of the infamous, original Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1 (and 3), and producer Steven Spielberg, Poltergeist was scary not for what you did visually see in the film, but for what you didn't. The idea that something like the malevolent forces at work in the film could exist, and you couldn't do anything about it save hiring someone like Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein, R.I.P.), was a scary thought. Although the theme seems cliche and overplayed these days (house/hotel being haunted due to being built over a graveyard or burial ground, ala The Shining and this film), in 1982, when the film was released, it was still fresh and people ate it up during the golden years of horror movies.

Meet Steve (Craig T. Nelson, voice of Bob Parr in The Incredibles) and Diane (JoBeth Williams) Freeling. Easy going, pot smoking California parents to 3 children. As they go about their daily lives, their youngest, Carol Anne, has a strange infatuation with the television when it is on a scrambled channel. It is discovered early on that seemingly benign spirits are communicating with her through the television. As they continue to communicate with her, their harmless nature becomes less Casper the friendly ghost-ish, and more like Casper's evil brothers, culminating first with inhabiting a tree outside Carol Anne's room that looks eerily human like with its features when examined closely. As the tree comes to life and literally tries to eat her easily frightened brother, it is all a diversion to kidnap Carol Anne into the world of the dead, with their closet being the gateway (what is it with closets and ghosts?). Instead of the family informing the police, they get in touch with a more realistic ghostbuster group of people, who eventually enlist the aid of Tangina, a psychic with experience on things that go bump in the night.

Why I consider this film, like The Exorcist, Amityville Horror II, and Halloween, as one of the titans of horror, is for the escalating tension that it masterfully builds. What begins as seemingly innocent, slowly but surely spirals into deadly dangerous with the spirits in the Freeling's home. Not only that, but the characters are irreversibly changed by the film's conclusion. They don't just walk away and go "Oh well, that was scary, but meh". The father is not as careless and easy going (looking entirely disheveled, defeated, and unshaved after Carol Ann is abducted), the mother has grey streaks in her hair and finds it nigh impossible to relax, and Carol's brother, well, he was a chicken to begin with, and even more so by the end (that damn clown..). The only weak aspect in terms of the characters might have been the older daughter. She seemed a bit useless and had she been cut out of the film, nobody would have noticed.

Some may find the special effects laughable in comparison with more recent ghost flicks (i.e. 13 Ghosts, while not being the greatest movie, was a spooktacular treat to watch in theaters when it was released), but they weren't any worse than the Ghost Busters movies in comparison. The obviously CGI'd, cartoony ghost trails that attack the family did get a bit of a chuckle out of me for how hokey they looked, but there was solid practical effects, too, such as the coffins that unearth themselves and fling corpses at people, or when a character literally peels his face off in an illusion (that one still gets under my skin, *shudders*). So for '82, they were spectacular, I'm sure, and still relatively fun today. A lot of it felt reminiscent of the Evil Dead trilogy's style, if you've seen those, you know the type I'm talkin' bout.

So keep this in mind, ladies and gents, if your son or daughter tells you "they're heeeerreee", and they have that creepy unreadable face children make sometimes, it might be time to call your local real estate agent and get the f*ck out of Dodge :P

This review brought to you by the one and only Supes, have a scary day!