Poltergeist (1982)

I saw Poltergeist for the first time at a drive-in movie theatre in Matamoras, PA. It was summertime. Everyone should see a movie at a drive-in during the summer. Anyway, Poltergeist scared the shit out of me. I’ve seen it about a million times since then, so now it’s about as scary as a rerun of Cheers.

Die Handlung: The Freelings are a typical American family. Mrs. Freeling wears mom jeans. Mr. Freeling reads biographies of Ronald Reagan. Their kids have a shit-ton of Star Wars toys scattered all over their bedroom. They even have a dog, a scene-stealing golden retriever. They live in a nice development. All the houses look the same, but that’s fine because it was the 80’s and now it’s a rule that people should have all the uniqueness bled out of them.

However, all is not as it seems. At night Mom and Dad smoke dope. We witness brief glimpses of Dad’s DONALD DUCK FETISH. Thankfully, we don’t get to witness their depraved sex lives, but that combined with the fact that they walk around their own house half-naked and don’t wear suits and dresses at the dinner table leads me to suspect that they’re COMMIE DEGENERATES.

Just kidding. Since it was the 80’s, they’re obviously SATAN WORSHIPPERS.

The weirdness commences at 2:37 a.m. when the TV signs off. That’s right, kids, TV stations used to sign off for the night. This was when we had seven channels on our TVs. And you know what? WE LIKED IT. Just kidding. It sucked.

The weird shit bursts into the Freelings’ lives like a bomb. Moving furniture. Man-eating trees. Creepy clowns. I will give our suburb dwellers this. The ghosts strike fast, before the Freelings have time to react. Before you know it, their youngest daughter is trapped inside the TV.

A bunch of science types come from the local university to help get Carol Anne (their daughter) out of the aforementioned TV. Actually, she isn’t in the television. It’s sort of complicated and the movie doesn’t really explain it. I refer you to the novelization of Poltergeist, which fills in a bunch of plot holes. I don’t recall any of what I read, mind you, but I’m pretty sure the novelization does fill in the backstory.

That’s about as much of the plot as I want to give away. Poltergeist is a great movie. It made me vaguely proud to be an American, because the filmmakers definitely aren’t satirizing Reagan-era America. There’s no way they’d do that. Why are we talking subtext shit anyway? This is a great horror movie! Tobe Hooper didn’t make many movies, but the ones he made were insanely influential.

Wait a second! Did I say Tobe Hooper and not Steve Spielberg? Yes, that’s right. Tobe Hooper directed Poltergeist. I can see why people would think this is a Stephen Spielberg movie, though. The scene where the guy decides to cook a steak is Tobe Hooper, but the scene afterward, which shows us the EXPRESSIONS OF PURE WONDER on everyone’s faces as the ghosts parade down the stairs, is pure Spielberg. To me, those expressions sort of make them look like cows at the slaughterhouse, but YMMV. Maybe Spielberg directed that scene. Or maybe he told Tobe Hooper: Tobe, what this movie needs is MORE PURE WONDER. I dunno.

Anyway, go see Poltergeist. Ideally, you should be fourteen years old and watch it in a drive-in, but nothing in life is perfect. If you can’t do that, you should see it anyway!