May 22,2015
The reboot of Poltergeist hits theaters on Friday. The reviews for Monster House director Gil Kenan’s latest haunted home movie are less than enthusiastic, with only a 49 percent positive Rotten Tomatoes rating
as of Friday morning. Some of that antipathy might be explained by fond
memories of the original 1982 film, which was directed by Tobe Hooper
(with, rumor has it, assistance from writer/producer Steven Spielberg).
That
film spent a full half-hour building up the audience’s attachment to
the sweet suburban Freeling family before unleashing the furious wrath
of the angry spirits living in the secret graveyard beneath their new
house. Under the influence of the bitter lost souls, trees became
murderous, closets turned into vortexes of death, and television sets
were even more dangerous than usual. Poltergeist would prove to be one of the best horror movies of the ‘80s, thanks to both its story and the terrifying special effects from Industrial Light & Magic.
This being the early 1980s, there were no major computer generated visual effects (those would come two years later),
but that’s probably to this film’s advantage. Early CGI often looks
dated, but the practical effects — those crafted by hand and shot with
camera tricks — in Poltergeist really do hold up for the most part.
We’ve gone ahead and singled out the seven special effects that still scare the crap out of us, even 33 years later.
Branching Out
Call it the anti-Groot: On the first of many awful nights at the Freeling residence, little Star Wars super-fan
and comic book aficionado Robbie (Oliver Robins) is woken up when a
possessed tree busts its arm-like branch through his window. He’s
helpless as the evil tree grows fingers and snatches him right out of
his bed and pulls him straight out of his own bedroom.
Plant Food
It gets worse: The tree didn’t just want to ruin Robbie’s slumber. It tries to eat the
kid by shoving him into the open mouth that suddenly appears in its
trunk. Robbie’s dad Steve (Craig T. Nelson) eventually saves him from
the murderous plant, but we’re guessing the kid will never, ever play in
a treehouse again. And despite his love of comic books, he probably
never became a Guardians of the Galaxy fan.
Light Show
While
Robbie is trying to avoid being turned into fertilizer, his little
sister Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke) struggles against an even scarier
supernatural force: her closet. Out of nowhere, the door opens and a
bright light emits from what seems to be an endless void, which then
begins sucking the little girl out of her bed with the force of a
tornado.
The
scares come courtesy of the excellent special-effects work, but they’re
also psychologically jarring. If kids can’t be safe at home in their
beds, where can they be safe?
Skeletons in the Closet
Later
in the film, with the help of some parapsychologists and a spiritual
medium, the family launches a rescue mission to bring Carol Anne back
from whatever dimension she was brought to by the angry ghosts. Steve is
at the top of a dimension-spanning pulley system, working the rope so
that they can pull their daughter back from the beyond. What he finds,
however, is a lot less cute.
The Miracle of Life
Using
some old-fashioned tools and a few incantations, Diane (JoBeth
Williams), the family matriarch, heads off into the forbidden zone. When
she brings little Carol Anne back to our earthly realm, the pair is
covered in some sort of afterbirth jelly, making it look like they were
pushed out of a giant evil womb. Just look at Carol Anne’s face — the
actors were not pleased to be smeared in that stuff.
The Fears of a Clown
There have been countless evil clown films since Poltergeist,
but personally, I’ll never be inoculated against the terror of those
grinning demons. Throughout the film, Robbie tosses blankets and jackets
on the stuffed clown at bedtime (why he doesn’t just take it out of his
room is a mystery). Near the end, the nasty circus reject proves his
suspicions right with a sneak attack.
The
idea of being choked by a clown doll beneath my own bed is just far too
much to handle, even now. Obviously, this scene really connected,
because the new Poltergeist film has a demented clown on one of its posters. I guess it is more universally scary than a tree.
Total Creeps
Just
when the Freeling family thought they were safe, the evil spirits come
raging back for an all-out rampage — one that begins with this invisible
violation of a resting Diane.
Not
only are the ghosts vengeful and set on making the humans who built on
their graves miserable. They are also perverts. And perversion is never
not creepy, just another reason why this Poltergeist stands the test of time.
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