| Poltergeist Released: 1982 MPAA Rating: PG Genre: Ghost/Haunting Nuts and Bolts: Strange ghostly things begin occurring at the Yuppie home of the Freelings. But although the eerie antics seem harmless at first, the fur starts to fly when the spirits pull five year old Carol Anne Freeling into the television set! Can Diane and Steven Freeling get their daughter back without changing the channel? When children become absorbed into your boob tube, don’t call the TV repairman. Call Tangina the psychic! Summary: This movie centers on the Freeling family. Steve and Diane Freeling are two former hippies that turned to the dark side of the Force and evolved into yuppies. Steve (Craig T Nelson) is a responsible construction developer who is responsible for building the Cuesta Verde Estates that the Freelings now live in. Steve’s got mucho bank leaving his wife Diane (JoBeth Williams) with fuck-all better to do than to sit around in her daisy-dukes smoking pot and taking care of the kids. They have three children. The oldest is Dana, a sixteen-year-old high school student who would rather spend her time talking to boyfriends on the telephone than hanging out with the Freaky Freelings. Then there is Robbie. Robbie has a bizarre fear of this really big dead oak tree that sits outside his bedroom window. The youngest is Carol Anne. Let’s just say that Carol Anne has some issues to work out. The story begins late at night. Carol Anne awakens to the sound of the television channel signing off. (Yes, back in the day TV channels did NOT run twenty-four hours.) She plods downstairs to find her pop in the living room asleep in front of the static-churning boob tube. Carol Anne (freak that she is) starts talking to the thing. It appears that some invisible voice has something to say to the blonde-haired five-year-old. The next day, the Freelings pretty much do what Freelings do. Steve tries to enjoy a beer-guzzling Simpsons-style football game in his living room and winds up getting into a remote control war with his neighbor across the street. Apparently the two homes share a television circuit and each one can change the television channel of the other. But this is only the BEGINNING of Steve’s television problems. Meanwhile, Robbie tries to overcome his phobia and climb the big old oak tree. While he’s dangling about like Tarzan, Carol Anne’s pet canary dies. Mom is ready to flush the little yellow corpse down the toilet but Carol Anne wants to have a fucking funeral for the thing. They bury the bird in the backyard. (Don’t worry; his cigar-box coffin gets dug up by a bulldozer later on in the film.) In order to cheer her heart-broken daughter up, Diane buys her two goldfish, which she names Tweety-1 and Tweety-2. That evening, a big-ass storm blows over town and the kids are scared shitless. (Robbie and Carol Ann share a bedroom. The Freelings would probably have enough money to give each of their kids individual rooms, but they probably needed the dough to buy more weed.) Steve tries to comfort them, but ultimately they end up going to sleep in their parents’ room. Once again, the TV pops on waking Carol Anne. She goes to talk to the thing and a big ephemeral hand reaches out at her. All at once the bed begins to shake and the rest of the family is woken up by what they believe is an earthquake. Carol Anne remains sitting in front of the television. Craning her head back she sings out the words, “They’re here.” The following morning, the Freelings frantically work their way through breakfast while trying to figure out just what the fuck happened the night before. While all this is going on, Steve has construction workers digging the foundation for a swimming pool in the backyard. (This becomes important later.) Dana leaves for school and that’s when Robbie notices that his silverware is bent at odd angles. He pays it little mind however, and promptly leaves for school as well. Once again, Carol Anne zones out in front of the television. At that point, the family dog (whose name I can’t seem to figure out) begins going apeshit in the bedroom. Diane goes in there to calm the dog down. She can’t figure out what’s driving the pooch so nuts. Returning to the kitchen she finds that the chairs have been pulled away from the table. Blaming the incident on Carol Anne she sets to returning them to their proper positions. She turns around to put stuff away and when she turns back she sees that all of the chairs are stacked pyramid style on top of the kitchen table. This happened almost instantly and there is no way that Carol Anne could have executed such a feat. Hours later, Steven returns home from work. Diane is excited as hell and tells him about all the strange goings-on that have been occurring. She demonstrates the phenomena of the moving chairs and even Carol Anne finds herself sliding across the linoleum as if pushed by some unseen hand. While Diane thinks that the whole thing is a hoot, Steve begins to get concerned. After all, chairs just aren’t supposed to behave that way now are they? Late that evening is when the REAL fun starts. Another storm comes in; this one even more violent than the first. The old oak tree smashes its branches through the upstairs bedroom window pulling Robbie into its grasp. Surreal winds tear through the room whipping all of Carol Anne’s toys into a cyclone of debris. Steve, Diane and Dana race outside to try and save Robbie. They manage to pull him from the tree’s grasp just as a large black twister spills forth over their property. A dimensional vortex opens up and the tree is pulled inside of its vacuum. Everything seems to return back to normal except for one small detail. Carol Anne is MISSING! Their first thought is that she may have fallen into the pool foundation. Steve dives into the muddy mess in an effort to try and find her. Robbie however goes back into the house where he hears his sister’s voice coming over the television waves. The bitch is stuck INSIDE the television! No one can see her at all, but her voice comes in loud and clear over the woofers. The rest of the family come back into the house and begin changing channels in a vain attempt to extradite their daughter from this most peculiar situation. Making zero effort through conventional means, Steve decides to call upon the services of a team of parapsychologists. (Hell, the first thing I would’ve done was to check and see if the warranty on my television was still good.) Now we meet the three Ghostbuster wannabes. First we have Doctor Lesh (Whose name should really be Doctor Lush considering all of the whiskey she drinks). Then there is Marty, who seems to have no purpose whatsoever. And lastly we have Ryan. Ryan is the master of all the equipment and pretty much represents the Igan of the group. Now while all three of these clowns are esteemed professionals, NONE of them have ever seen shit like this. Steve shows them around the house, which is filled with levitating toys that spin around laughing at people. The group then spends some time talking some metaphysical gobblety-shit and they even manage to catch a bit of the Carol Anne Freeling Power Hour on channel 3. They drone on about some big esoteric light source and tell Carol Anne not to go into the light. They have no idea how to get her little ass out and the Ghostbusters pretty much just crash out at the Freeling’s place for the night. As the hours move on, Marty decides to take a break from Ghostbusting and get some grub out of the fridge. (Emphasis on the word grub. You’ll see why in a second.) He shoves a leftover chicken leg into his mouth and pulls out a T-bone, which he plans on cooking up. (Freeloading sonofabitch ain’t he?) Without removing the drumstick from his maw, he slaps the messy steak onto the countertop where it begins to slide across the surface of its own accord. To make matters worse, Marty feels a strange tingly sensation in his mouth. Spitting out the drumstick he finds that it is teeming with white wriggling MAGGOTS! Yum. Freaking out, he races into the bathroom where he begins spitting maggot chunks into the sink. He then looks at his own reflection in the mirror. Little by little, small bloody chunks of flesh begin sloughing off of his face into the sink. His hands draw upwards and he begins ripping his own face apart. A few second later, Marty shakes his head and realizes that the entire affair has all been one massive hallucination. However, this significantly freaks him out and the little pussy decides to go home. Bah! A REAL man would have stayed! Hell, they’re only maggots. They’re good for you. High in protein. Ah well. As the evening progresses, Ryan records this really strange glowing specter descending down the living room staircase. As the group watches the recording, they see the ephemeral images of dozens of ghosts walking throughout the house. The following day, Steve decides to go back to work. He talks with his boss mister Teague who wants to offer him a promotion. Teague tells him how the developers want to begin Phase 5 of the construction project, which would involve relocating the graves from a nearby cemetery. Steve isn’t crazy about the idea and he considers such an act sacrilegious. We discover at this point, that Freeling’s OWN subdivision sits atop a former graveyard. Teague explains that all of the graves were relocated a mile down the road. Realizing that the three parapsychologists they hired are about as useless as Steven Hawking in a soccer tournament, the Freelings decide to enlist the services of the ultra-wacky and slightly eccentric Tangina Barrens. Tangina is a little pudding of a woman with a high-pitched nasally voice that is so grating it is guaranteed to induce cardiac arrest. Tangina explains that Carol Anne has an exceptionally strong life force and it is this energy that the other spirits cling to. By slurping off her life energy it reminds them of the vitality they had when they were still alive. She goes on to say that most ghosts don’t realize that they are dead and that is part and parcel the reason why they never think to enter that big-ass glowing white light that everyone raves about. She also mentions that there is an evil entity on the other side that wants to consume Carol Anne’s life force for itself. (Yeah, whatever.) Anyway, the group embarks upon a plan to get Carol Anne out from the interdimensional limbo. This crackpot scheme is so contrived that I could swear that Wile E Coyote thought it up. They find out that Carol Ann’s upstairs closet represents one of the many ‘hearts’ contained within this household. As such, opening the door to the closet is the same as opening the door to the netherworld. They further discover that the Interstate-Astral Realm off-ramp is located in the downstairs living room. First they conduct a few tests with some marked tennis balls. They chuck a tennis ball into the closet to find that it actually exits the rift downstairs. They try it again with tennis ball #2. Different ball, same results. Now they decide to chuck one end of a rope through the rift. Diane fastens the other end around her waist and enters the glowing portal. After many intense minutes of loud noises and bellyaching, Diane drops down from the rift into the living room Miracle upon miracles, Carol Ann is with her. Tangina feels pretty good about herself and proudly announces, “This house is clean.” But the fun ain’t over just yet. The very next night, those zany ghosts haunt the Scoobies one last time. Robbie’s toy clown doll springs to life and attacks him from under his bed. The kid goes berserk and begins to literally tear the stuffing from it. Diane gets the shock of her life as well as a strange skeletal creature emerges from the ether to attack her in her bedroom. Not only is the ghost trying to ravenously tear Diane’s clothes off, but it wants to KILL her as well! What a bastard. Diane screams like Axle Rose after a concert and races downstairs. It’s rainy and muddy out and she slips, skidding her ass into the mud filled pool-pit. At this point, all of the ghosts decide to be like Oingo Boingo and have a ‘dead man’s party’. Corpses begin rising from the murky depths of the earth attacking Diane. Stout wooden coffins erupt through the floorboards of the home meting out their dead. Everyone is yelling and screaming. Lights are flickering everywhere and winds are howling through each and every room. Finally deciding to say “Fuck the dumb shit!” Steve and Diane run upstairs to collect Robbie and Carol Anne. (Dana is elsewhere.) When they burst into the upstairs bedroom, they gasp in horror as they see before them…a giant bloodthirsty disembodied TWAT! I don’t really know what the fuck this thing is supposed to be, but I guess if I saw a vagina that looked like it belonged to the 50-foot woman sitting in my room, I’d probably be a little put off as well. Gathering together, the family races back downstairs and out the front door. Just as they are leaving Steve runs into his boss Mister Teague. Totally losing his mind at this point, Steve shouts at Teague exclaiming that when the developers relocated the cemetery they never moved any of the bodies. Only the headstones were removed. The Freeling’s hop into their piece-o-shit station wagon and take off. Great arcing fireballs launch forward from the rupturing house. Many on looking neighbors are incinerated including Teague. The house eventually collapses and is swallowed by the big giant twat. (Heh. Sounds like a supporting character from Third Rock From the Sun doesn’t it?) The Freelings drive down I-74 until they come to a Holliday Inn. They rent a room for the night and Steven takes special precautions to ensure their safety. He removes the television from the room and places it outside. Acting/Dialogue: Everyone does a pretty decent job in this flick. Craig T Nelson is always fun to watch no matter what role he’s cast in. Although he has some pretty good moments in this installment, his best stuff is yet to come. Craig Nelson fans may want to check him out in Poltergeist II: The Other Side. JoBeth Williams is a hoot. She brings a varied blend of flavors to her role and she is likely the most well rounded character in this entire movie. Tangina Barrens is an interesting character as well. She may be about as annoying as a canker sore, but she has some of the best dialogue out of everyone. Special attention should be given to the late Heather O’Rourke who played Carol Anne. Now while I realize that the six-year-old actress spent 80% of her overall screen time off-camera, she is probably one of the best child actors of her generation. None of her dialogue ever comes off as being forced or sounding rehearsed. It’s a shame that she was taken from us at such a young age. Gore: There is really only one extreme bit of gore to be found in Poltergeist. But boy, is it a doozy. Parapsychologist Marty’s hallucination is sure to tantalize devout gore-hounds when we see him ripping bloody pieces of fat off his face. As the character cycles through the entire phase, we see more and more of his face coming off and dropping into the sink with a loud sickly splat. This is some seriously sick looking shit! I’m surprised to see such material in a Spielberg film. To be honest, I’m really shocked that this movie was able to maintain a PG rating with this scene included. Guilty Pleasures: We get to see JoBeth Williams spin around the ceiling in her under-roos while a horny little ghost tries to take her top off. But alas my friends, there are no hooters to be found. The Good: Producer Steven Spielberg and director Tobe Hooper know the key ingredients when cooking up an effective fright-film. And that is: You have to make your main characters approachable, and distinctly likeable. This is a quality that a lot of other horror directors seem to miss out on. I don’t think that there is a viewer alive who doesn’t get a kick out of watching the Freelings in action. We find ourselves laughing at Steve Freeling’s male posturing during the ultra-machismo ‘remote control’ war with neighbor Ben Tuthill. JoBeth Williams is attractive and vivacious as they ultra-zany Diane. And even the manliest of men will coo when they see adorable little Carol Ann weeping over the body of her dead pet Tweety. The only one I didn’t really care for was Dana, but she has a relatively short amount of screen time, so it doesn’t really matter. This is a film that doesn’t really muck about with subtlety. Unlike Spielberg’s extremely tedious efforts in Close Encounters, this film is pretty much in your face from the get-go. The audience is drawn in at approximately the same rate of speed that Carol Anne is slurped into the TV. Like a roller coaster, we are slammed into a maelstrom of action only occasionally slowing down to catch our breaths before being whipped around again by another dazzling display of lights, music and hocus-pocus. What makes this film such a luminary for its genre is not its ability to scare us, but rather its impressive visual effects. The team of Spielberg and Hooper try to balance out the FX with equal portions of animated images as well as the more gruesome ‘boo’ moments. Now while the strobe-light wraith aspects were considered to be the heart-stoppers of the time period, I was actually more impressed by the zombie bodies. To this day, the swimming pool scene remains one of my favorite horror movie moments. Poltergeist is full of many small singular scenes of titillation. I’ve already addressed the ‘War of the Remotes’ and of course the scene with maggot-boy. Come to think of it, any movie where a character gnaws on some fat juicy maggots is pretty much A-OK in my book. I also liked seeing Craig T Nelson trying to expose Tangina as a fraud. At one point, he attempts to mentally communicate with her via telepathy. Craig has no such ability, but Tangina manages to hear him loud and clear anyway. I’ve also always liked the scene where Nelson yells at Teague. It’s definitely one of the more gripping moments of the movie and gives a little support to the back-story behind the haunting. The clown-doll scene was ALMOST cool. Clowns are just evil wicked nasty things by nature. I don’t know why this is the case, but it is. The clown attacking Robbie COULD have been one of the creepier moments in the film, but unfortunately it is just too damn short. Why is it Spielberg and Hooper devoted fifteen minutes to the stupid ass man-eating tree and only three minutes with the killer clown? These guys really mis-placed their priorities with that one. Another amusing scene occurs shortly after Diane starts playing musical chairs. Steve has just come home to find his wife acting more excited than Janet Reno at a biker rally. She frantically scurries about in an effort to show him the ghosts’ bizarre antics. Carol Ann has become duly unimpressed by this point and lets out an exaggerated yawn while complaining about how she is hungry. Poltergeist succeeds in crafting some fairly interesting camera angles and a unique perspective on ghosts in general. When watching this movie, it’s easy to see where M Knight Shyamalan derived his inspiration for the Sixth Sense. There’s a scene in the Sixth Scene where we see Cole Seer and his mother Lynn in the kitchen of their apartment. The kitchen looks normal and nothing is awry. In one continuous tracking shot, we slowly follow Lynn into the laundry room where she flops her breasts around. Without cutting or breaking away, we slowly pan back towards the kitchen to find all of the cupboards and drawers fully open. The fact that this is all done in one continuous shot is what makes the scene so provocative. This was borrowed liberally from a virtually identical scene in Poltergeist (But from a reverse angle). Diane enters the breakfast nook and pushes a few chairs in. She criticizes Carol Anne who is off-screen at the moment. The steady-cam pans to the right where we follow Diane into the kitchen. She putzes about with the fridge before returning to the breakfast nook to find all of the chairs steepled on top of the kitchen table. I attribute this camera work to Tobe Hooper who used similar signature work on his cult classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I think that if Spielberg had enforced more intriguing shots such as this, then this movie probably would have held more appeal for me. The Bad: I know I should hand in my Horror Movie Fan Club membership card for even saying this, but I’m really not that big a fan of this film. What should have been a blazing-hot spook-fest actually came off as rather tepid instead. This is a movie that suffers from a very common phenomenon. Spielberg allowed the special effects to take control of the film. As you are drawn into the light, you begin to see that the direction here is really little more than a psychological study in mismanagement. The production staff can’t seem to decide whether they want this movie to be scary or simply exciting. Now while I may forgive lesser directors for such things, I expect better from the guy who brought us Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters and E.T. Now while the lighting and sound work are all admirably produced, it ceases to be impressive by the time we reach the climax of the film. By the time we see Carol Ann’s slimy ass come spilling out of the rift, we sit back and prey that this is where the whole thing is going to end. This moment in the film is also right about the point where the audience begins to get nauseous from the over-use of strobe lights. The biggest disappointment in the movie stems from the fact that it is largely incomprehensible. The characters scream over each other’s voices challenging Carol Ann to go “Into the Light!” And then they warn her off saying, “Don’t go into the light! The light is bad!” Only to reverse themselves fifteen minutes later when they scream, “No, fuck what I said earlier! The Light is good! Go check out the light!” By this point, neither the characters nor the audience has any fucking clue just what purpose the damn light serves. I’ve seen the film about twelve times already and I’m still confused. Then there are the ghosts themselves. We learn in the last five minutes or so that these are the restless dead whose bodies lie beneath the Freeling house. What is so important about these corpses that they feel the need to get their dander up? If someone built a house on top of the spot where YOU were buried, would you get all bent out of shape? Of course not! Ya know why? Because you would be DEAD at the time! You wouldn’t even know about it! Hell, Tangina herself commented on the fact that the spirits don’t even realize that they are dead! And speaking of the frumpy little Muppet, why did Tangina just quit after getting Carol Ann out? She knew damn well that there were still ghosts in the house. Getting the kid out didn’t exorcize the spirits. She either bald-faced lied when she said “This house is clean” or she’s just an arrogant little fishmonger who doesn’t really know the difference between Gozer the Gozerian and Casper the friendly fucking ghost! What a hack. And why did the ghosts want Carol Ann anyway? This one still remains a mystery. And don’t hand me that horseshit about the girl having this great glowing life force energy. Save the tree-hugging hippie crap for Peter Fonda. And what’s up with the evil fucking entity? Tangina refers to his dark specter as the ‘beast’ but as we have already discovered, she’s about as effective as screen doors on a submarine. This thing apparently wants to gobble up all of Carol Ann’s feel-good love-love energy all for himself. What would that succeed in doing? And why was he so drawn to this house to begin with. Surely there are better places to find good mystical ju-ju. Sunnydale for instance. Was the entity responsible for birthing the big giant uterus or was it the other way around? Too many questions; not enough answers. If you’re the type of person who has never before seen a movie about ghosts, then Poltergeist isn’t a bad place to start. But in the end, it appears that only twelve year olds will be truly bedazzled by this two-dimensional light show. If you’re the type of guy who has seen a few horror flicks in his day, then you will likely walk away from this film unimpressed. Now Poltergeist is a movie, which is probably deserving of a much higher rating than I am ultimately going to give it, but in my eyes, it does not succeed in being a film that has aged gracefully over time. Great Lines: “You moved the headstones, but you never moved the bodies!” -Steve yelling at Teague. “They’re Heeeeere.” --Carol Anne announcing the arrival of the ‘TV People’. “Hey mom, after Tweety rots, can we dig him up so we can see the bones?” --The ever-sensitive Robbie speaking at Tweety’s funeral. “This house is clean.” --Tangina, after helping to rescue Carol Anne from the other world. Overall Rating: 5 out of 10 severed heads. |
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