They're Here....

Traumatized at the mere age of seven during a slumber party in my own basement, the ghostly hand reached out from inside the static television and invaded the house with beastly spirits. Not my TV, the TV in the best horror movie of all time: Poltergeist.

For a few weeks now I have been dying to watch this film again, and last night my wish came true thanks to Netflix. My roommates and I gathered in our cold living room in front of our 90's television and popped in the DVD (which, by the way, has no previews or menu but goes write into the roaring MGM Lion - so old school). One of my roommates was as familiar with the film as I am, and the other two had never seen it, so I warned them that they were about to be pretty freaked out.

As the credits came rolling on the screen, we were delighted to be reminded that we were watching one of Steven Spielberg's first cult classics. We were distracted throughout the first half of the film, trying to figure out what fucked up town the film took place in (obviously it was filmed in California, but there was something entirely Midwestern about the setting). Also incredibly distracting: the disturbing little girl with white-blond hair - but if she wasn't disturbing the film would have much less horrific value. After re-watching this 15 years later, I noticed some things that I think I missed the first time around. For example, the parents get high in their bedroom on the first night of the thunderstorm. Also, the teenage daughter is reading porn in her room, and she later has a hickey on her neck.

I definitely jumped in my chair and screamed a little at several moments throughout the film:
1) When the hand comes out of the TV set and goes into the walls of the house
2) When the gnarly tree busts through the window and attacks the little boy
3) When Carol Anne gets sucked into her closet along with the rest of her toys and furniture.
4) When my roommate came back from the bathroom, opening the door to the living room quite abruptly.
5) When the guy sees the maggot meat and peals off his own face.
6) When the mom is doing laundry and she tries to open the door to the scary room and the people behind the door scream at her.
7) When the clown tries to suffocate the little boy.
8) When my other roommate came home from work, opening the door to the living room quite abruptly.
9) When the mom falls into the muddy pool and the skeletons start floating to the top
10) When the graves start popping out of the ground everywhere in the house.

I know the CGI is kind of old school and the little old lady's high-pitched voice makes you laugh, but god damn Steven Spielberg knows how to freak people out. There really is something masochistic about watching movies that you know are going to scare the shit out of you, which makes Spielberg a sadist.

Did you know that both the actors playing the little girl and the teenage girl die in real life? The same year the film was released, the teenage girl is murdered by her abusive psycho boyfriend in her own front yard. And during a filming break in Poltergeist III, the little girl dies of some freak disease that was never properly diagnosed. And the little boy never really got any work after Part II. It's a curse, I tell you! (At least Craig T. Nelson's career didn't suffer because he went on to receive rolls in such great films as Troop Beverly Hills, If These Walls Could Talk, The Incredibles, and The Family Stone. Oh yeah, and that TV hit "Coach" that my parents used to watch.)

I can't wait to get Parts II and III in the mail!