Haunted Homes: Poltergeist
Poltergeist - 1982. Dir. Tobe Hooper, story Steven Spielberg. Starring JoBeth Williams (Diane Freeling), Craig T. Nelson (Steve Freeling), Beatrice Straight (Dr. Lesh), Zelda Rubinstein (Tangina), Heather O’Rourke (Carol Anne Freeling), Dominique Dunne (Dana Freeling), Oliver Robins (Robbie Freeling)
This film defined most of my childhood love for horror films, and also left me severely scarred, largely thanks to my two older sisters. But first! The movie!
Poltergeist tells the story of the rot of the American Dream, of the false wonder of suburbia, of the dangers of capitalism. It is also the story of a family living in a new suburban development that finds out their house contains a portal to the spirit realm. The spirits also discover this and kidnap the youngest child in the family, Carol Anne. The family turns to paranormal investigators and a medium in order to save Carol Anne and clear their house of these spirits. It doesn’t go well.
I am the youngest of three siblings. I was born around the time that VHS became a widespread and attainable thing. I think that after having spent most of the seventies raising my sisters and not being able to go out and see horror films my parents enjoyed the fact that with the arrival of the 80s and VHS, they were able to catch up on movies they missed out on, now that my sisters were old enough. I mean I wasn’t old enough to watch these movies but it didn’t stop me. After I continuously would sneak down the stairs and watch the horror films from the corner of the doorway my parents gave up and allowed me to sit in with the family and watch films like Poltergeist, Night of the Living Dead and old television shows like the Outer Limits and Twilight Zone. Of course if I got too scared I could always hide behind the couch. Downside to this is that our stereo system was behind the couch as well and had a glass door that would let me watch warped reflections of the scariest parts of movies.
I have a very vivid memory of watching this particular film. The scariest part for me was when the brother, Robbie Freeling, was attacked by the clown doll. Actually, anytime the clown doll showed up on the screen I was terrified as it was a terrifying toy that should never have been given to a child to begin with. This fear was further cemented into my mind when I went to bed after watching this film my two sisters snuck into my room and placed a stuffed clown we had on the foot of my bed, then shook the bed to wake me up. They got into trouble. I got a rather long distrust towards clowns of all types. I also mention this story because, yes, my family also had a freakishly weird clown. Who was giving out scary, large, stuffed clowns to families in the 70s and 80s?
Despite all of that I love this movie. I love this movie partly because of that weird memory I have and how I love my sisters, because in retrospect that was a hilarious prank. I also love this because Poltergeist is a banger of a movie.
I know there are more than a fair share of essays and articles written on this film about who exactly directed the film. Was it Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Tobe Hooper, the director listed or was it Stephen Spielberg, listed as producer and developer of the story? The gist of the issue boils down to Spielberg was working on E.T. (wooo! Best ride at Universal Studios! Yes, it’s still there. No they have not changed anything) and not being allowed to direct two films at the same time, so he gave the job to Tobe Hooper who most recently directed the Stephen King mini-series Salem’s Lot for television. I’m not going to do a deep dive into this as it’s largely a mess of a topic to get into. But I can see how people would get this idea. At this point Spielberg had Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) under his belt and was seen as a golden child of directing in Hollywood. He supposedly visited the set of Poltergeist regularly and would throw out ideas for the film and make decisions on the film, with Hooper letting this go on. I can understand Hooper letting Spielberg make decisions as it would make things far more bumpier to challenge him. That all said it made a weird sort of collaboration of a film. It has the skin of a Spielberg film, it’s adventurous, it has very Americana imagery throughout. It also has so many small bits that just feel slightly off from center that I have to imagine are due to Hooper’s direction. The scene with Diane and Steve in their bedroom smoking pot and just having such a lovely time together, the steak erupting scene and the face scene that soon follows the steak, whatever the hell is going on off screen with the eldest daughter Dana. All that feels a bit off from what we have seen from Spielberg in his films up to this point, or really after this. Duel and Jaws always felt unsafe to me. Well the first half of Jaws. There’s a danger to these two films that kind of dissipates into scary wonder in his other films. Even Jurassic Park felt a bit squeaky clean despite all the violence in the film. Poltergeist has a surprising sprinkling of grime throughout it.
A lot of this film has a very cynical view on the state of the American Dream. The film takes place in an ever expanding suburban development. The sprawling community, Cuesta Verde (Green Slope), is a large development of houses that, from the outside, all look identical. A fact that is brought up when Steve (Craig T. Nelson), the number one realtor for the development, is showing a couple a new house. The camera cuts from his kitchen to an identical, but barren, kitchen of a different house. The potential homeowners remark that it must be easy to get lost around here since every house looks the same and Steve comments that the interiors have a lot of options for individuality, in fact his neighbor has a jacuzzi in his bedroom connected to an aqueduct that runs through his house and ends in the pool in his backyard. I hope this is his neighbor who he has remote control fights with at the start of the film. The same neighbor he and his wife ask about ghosts who can stare at them like they are insane and yet still utter the words “I don’t think anyone in my family has ever been bitten by a mosquito” while the Freelings are getting eaten alive by bugs outside his door. I like the idea that he has this roman style water feature going through his house.
The opening of the film has a long aerial shot of the neighborhood with almost pastoral music until the camera picks up a person riding on a bike through the streets. There the music switches to a jaunty playful tune you’d expect in a Spielberg film (see almost all the music tied to the sailing bits in Jaws). When we see this bike rider it’s not a child or a teen on a bike coming home from school. No it is a balding, slightly overweight, middle aged man carrying a large amount of beer in one hand. Why is he riding his bike? Maybe he had a DUI so he couldn’t drive a car at the time? Who knows? We get very little info on this guy other than the local kids feel it is perfectly fine to cause him to crash his bike with their remote controlled cars. Beer cans crack open and spray everywhere and this guy quickly enters the Freeling house spraying the beer over a large group of men yelling at a football game (one has a gambling problem!). It’s not what you’d expect from a clean cut, manufactured suburban neighborhood. It’s far more realistic than what has been shown in films up until this point. We see so many odd perversions to the assumed properness of suburbia. Pool contractors sexually harassing the daughter of the home owners that are employing them, reaching through open windows to help themselves to the family’s breakfast; the parents smoking more than one joint in the evening as one reads about child psychology and the other reads about Reagan; the developers moving only the headstones of a cemetery and not the bodies when they decided to build over a cemetery.
Poltergeist differs from other films covered in this Haunted Home series (Amityville, the Conjurings, ect) in that there is no seeking a religious member to solve the haunting. The family goes to a university and hires the paranormal researchers there to help them. The Freelings only ask for help because by this point in the film the ghosts have kidnapped Carol Anne. All the haunting bits up to that point were seen as whimsical. Diane and Caroline having just a wonderful time in the kitchen getting pushed across the floor by ghosts. Chairs being stacked as no sane person would stack. Their dog, E. Buzz, rushing to show a ghost his favorite toy. I mean even the dog isn’t freaked out! Normally dogs in these films are the only ones who pick up that ghosts are around and up to no good. The family takes a very scientific view towards the ghostly happens and they acknowledge how weird this whole situation is (for example look at how quickly Harry the dog from The Amityville Horror located the heart of the hauntings in the house compared to the rest of the family). When Steve says he doesn’t want anyone in the kitchen until he can get an expert to come look at it, Diane retorts that she checked the yellow pages and there’s no listing for ghosts (which is true, it’s at least two more years until the Ghostbusters start offering their services). The paranormal researchers consist of a psychologist whois simply fascinated by the paranormal. She is such a nice and empathetic side character that is just lovely to see. She is assisted by a videographer who fully believes and a photographer who is just so annoyingly ready to claim everything is a hoax. You don’t feel bad that he is the one the ghosts torment in the house to the point that he doesn’t return after the first night of investigating.
Side note. This character, Mark, is just a horrible person. The first thing they see is a bedroom where literally everything not nailed down is floating around the room and having a whale of a time floating around, it’s obvious that this isn’t normal or faked. Then when Diane uses the TV static to speak with Carol Anne he starts claiming it might be a CB Radio somewhere and runs off to check if she is hiding upstairs in another room. More to the point, on that first night of investigation he goes into the kitchen to make something to eat. Ok, I get that, ghost hunting makes one hungry, I’m sure he will just make a sandwich or something. Oh he decided on a chicken drumstick. That’s fine… oh wait… he also grabs a steak. This dude decided to take a very delicious looking steak out of the fridge of a stranger’s house and fry it up on the stove at like midnight. You know he was just going to leave the pan and dishes out as well. The ghosts know this as well and possess the steak. The steak does a creepy slither and then erupts into a meat fountain. The ghosts pull a Lost Boys and make him think there’s now maggots on the steak AND the drumstick he has had in his mouth this whole time. And then the infamous face peeling scene takes place. Whole sequence is disturbing and also justified.
A few days after the first investigation Dr. Lesh returns to the Freelings with Tangina, a very southern medium played by the amazing Zelda Rubinstein. Tangina is both a horrible person and also the most wonderful injection of camp this film didn’t know it needed. With Tangina’s help they manage to save Carol Anne and she claims the house is now “Clean.” She does this in the most fabulous way straight to the camera, after brushing aside a stray hair.
On yet another personal note, many people point to the “Head towards the light Carol Anne” (something she doesn’t say, Diane does), and “This house is clean” as the most memorable lines. For me the interchange between Diane and Tangina in front of the vortex in Carol Anne’s closet is the best. Tangina makes to go into the vortex to pull Carol Anne out herself and Diane says, “No she would never go to you” as Tangina is a stranger and Carol Anne knows about stranger danger. Tangina tries to argue saying that Diane’s never done this before which Diane, correctly points out that Tangina also has never done this. Without missing a beat and very matter of fact Tangina says, “You’re right… You go.” I love it.
The Freelings not having such a great family bonding experience.
Anywho, Tangina cleaned nothing and things get worse and we get some scary puppets, half decomposed bodies rising from a half made pool, an amazing imploding house effect, and some to the most over the top acting bits (“You moved the headstones but you didn’t move the bodies you sonofabitch!”). Oh and you also get the evil clown bit. That bit will always not be cool with me for obvious childhood reasons (see above).
Over all this is a lovely horror film. It’s slightly off, you feel like it should be a bit tame and clean but then has some of the most gnarly special effects moments. The family is great. Not fully squeaky clean but you can tell both parents love their kids and the kids get along as well as siblings can. When Tangina has Steve yell at Carol Anne you can see he hates this as he never yells at the kids and would absolutely never hit one. Diane is torn to pieces when she has to tell Carol Anne to head towards the light, knowing that doing so will lead her close to death. Carol Anne is adorable and has a great sense of self in this (Heather O’Rourke was an amazing child actor and it’s a tragedy that she didn’t live long enough to grow up). Rob, the son, has some of the most gut punching reactions when he gets scared. It might be that I have a child and if I heard my child yelling in fear like they got Oliver Robins to, I would just collapse into fear and utter heartbreak. And then there’s Dana, the eldest daughter.
Dana isn’t in the film much. She spends most of her time at a friend’s house because she can not deal with the haunting at the house. Which is understandable. All these haunted homes films have a child that is largely overlooked by the film. The two boys in Amityville, the older of the two sons in Conjuring 2, one of the girls in Conjuring 1, there’s always a child that really doesn’t have much of a story with the ghosts. But Dana HAS a story going on in the background and I find it fascinating. The first time we see her after the opening credits Dana is wearing a bathrobe with a pin that says “Question Authority.” When the contractors cat call at her she gives a very animated “F-you” to them, rolling up her sleeves and giving a full bras d’honneur, then flipping them off and finishing with biting her thumb at them. All the ways of saying fuck you. Her mom sees this and loves it. We then see less and less of her throughout the film. But we get glimmers as to what she gets up to. She stays up late on the phone talking to friends, but also is looking at a magazine that she feels she needs to cover quickly so her dad doesn’t see it. She is on an intense diet and doesn’t even want one single waffle. She has fond memories of the Holiday Inn the family is planning on staying at on the last night (which catches her mom off guard but is quickly forgotten due to plot). When everything is going down at the house on the last night she is off with “Brian.” She turns up just as everyone is running out of the house and getting into the stationwagon to flee the imploding house. Rationally she spends a long time yelling “What is going on!” Her date (Brian?) drives off in his muscle car and we see, for an instant, a very obvious hickey on her neck. Dana is living her best and probably most reckless life outside of the view of the camera. I am 100% for this and am constantly fascinated with this story building they are doing just off screen and I have to think that this is something Hooper and Dominique Dunne worked on together to form.
There is a lot with this film. It is filled with symbolism and cultural criticism that you could write several essays on just this one film. It also is a weird offbeat haunted house film, when you look at it with other films. It’s also a film that has a firm place in my heart, though every time I go to watch it I forget that it’s not as tame as I think it is going to be. It has some legitimate scares in it. One of the best gross out scenes. It has so much tender heart break that they actually take the time to focus on it. The family is really knocked around. It also has the creepiest clown scene in film.
Who ever let these clown dolls into people’s homes should have been arrested.
