Monday, December 3, 2012

Flashback Corner--Poltergeist


“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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