“To her, it
simply is another child…to us…it is The Beast.
If you ask critics about the films
from 1982, they will spout how “Gandhi” ran away with Oscars, about how maybe
in retrospect “E.T.” was robbed, “Tootsie” totally deserved its love, and how
well “Blade Runner” holds up. You’ll
hear geeks talk about the birth of Rambo in “First Blood”, the still considered
best Star Trek “Wrath of Kahn”, classics like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” “Tron”,
“The Secret of NIMH”, “The Dark Crystal”, “Creepshow”, “Conan the Barbarian”,
(to hell wit you Krom) “John Carpenter’s The Thing”, and again like the critics
you will hear about “Blade Runner” it’s amazing in everyone’s eyes. And believe it or not the list goes on. Really it does: “The Beastmaster”, Airplane
II: The Sequel”, “Night Shift”, “Annie”, “Porky’s”, “48 Hrs.”, “An Officer and
a Gentleman”, “Rocky III”, ‘Swamp Thing”.
Okay, you get it- “Deathtrap”, “The World According to Garp”, “Diner” …see
what I mean? And there are still more
worth mentioning, honestly it was an awesome year at the movies.
There is one
film though released that year that not only is still a great piece of cinema, my
memory of watching it was with my eyes covered for almost 80% of it but when I
finally had the courage to watch it in its entirety it for sure cemented a portion
of fear in me that will stay buried there, forever I think. It’s the classic collaboration from Tobe Hooper
and Steven Spielberg “Poltergeist”.
Set in every
town USA in familiar suburb the Freeling family deals with every day worries,
lazy construction workers building their pool, dying family birds, scary
lightning storms, and neighbors fighting over satellite supremacy. Then what starts as creepy noises from the
TV, and moving furniture leads to a missing little girl that may have been
taken by spirits within the house. Thus
begins the terrifying journey into the world of ghosts and visions of the evil
that can exist on the other side, and believe me like the poltergeist in the
film, Spielberg and Hooper knows what scares you.
This film
really did a number on me when I was a kid, much like “The Exorcist” not
wanting to watch certain scenes and settling for the horrifying soundtrack was
not the wisest choice, the sounds that came from this movie were equally
disturbing as I later found the visuals to be.
Though unlike the scarring nature of Linda Blair in white contacts and
spinning head “Poltergeist” was a film I revisited, over and over again for
years to come.
The film is
littered with watchable scenes, scary or not.
The afore mentioned satellite scene, mosquitos, the chairs moving from
the floor to the top of a table in one shot, man-eating trees, the face peeling
scene, the emotional climax in the empty room with the light shooting out of
the door. And of course the true ending
of film. It all works and even though it
lost its three Oscars to its big brother “E.T.” it’s audio and visuals and
Jerry Goldsmith score still look and sound great.
It had all
the Spielberg troupes, great visuals, an interesting family dynamic, well
placed humor to break up the tension.
But add to the mix a great script, phenomenal performances by JoBeth
Williams, and Craig T. Nelson, truly scary to gory moments throughout, and a
creepy clown doll like no other, this puts “Poltergeist” at the top of the list
for one of the best horror films of all time.
While many
other films have ripped off this classic, few have been able to match it. It’s withstood the test of time, from when I first
watched it with family and remember my aunt refusing to watch the “clown” scene
insisting that she had clowns in her house and she just couldn’t look at it, to
recently sitting through the whole thing and not once closing my eyes. Though I did watch it in the day time. I’m not crazy.
-Robert L.
Castillo
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