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Warner Home Video / 1982 / 114 Minutes / PG / Street Date: October 9, 2007
Suburbanites Steve (Craig T. Nelson) and Diane (JoBeth Williams) unexpectedly experience paranormal activity in their home. What starts off as minor excitement quickly turns into some nasty encounters that eventually result in a traumatic loss, forcing the Freelings to bring parapsychologists into their home for desperately needed help. This classic horror film was co-produced and co-written by Steven Spielberg, directed by Tobe Hooper with a luminous score by Jerry Goldsmith and features Oscar Nominated Visual Effects by Richard Edlund, Michael Wood and Bruce Nicholson.
Ten years ago, when I first got excited about the DVD format and discovered that Poltergeist was one of the early released DVDs, I searched for DVD reviews of the film. DVDFile.com was one of the few sites to review it with some intelligent writing, and thus began my affiliation with this website first as a user. Peter M. Bracke did a solid review back in 1998 (click here to read it), and since then they just can’t get rid of me.
When I was a kid, my best friend, Steve, said that we had to see Poltergeist. The title sounded like a game show to me; I didn’t have a clue what it was about. It was playing only at a grand old theater called The National in downtown Eugene, Oregon (which has since turned into an athletic club, which I frequent like an addict). Downtown Eugene was a notoriously depressed, drug-filled place at the time, not to mention the country was in a serious recession in `82, so my father demanded to escort us little kids to the door of the theater. After getting used to the smell of rotten popcorn, the film utterly swept me away and I left flabbergasted. For many, their life changed with Star Wars. Go ahead and laugh, because for me it was Poltergeist.
My parents were going through a chaotic divorce at the time, memories from which still haunt me. So I guess to see this hopeful, flawed and funny Americanized Freeling family valiantly pull together against complex evil forces trying to tear them apart hit me in the heart; I wished my family could have held it together, too. So on an unconscious level, Steven Speilberg played me like a song.
While it seems that Tobe Hooper is the noted director, gossip has all but grown out of control that he was just a proxy for writer and producer Steven Spielberg. However, much of the gossip seems to be somewhat warranted based on interviews with the actors, including a recently recorded telephone interview with JoBeth Williams. But whoever directed this film hit the jackpot blending style, comedy, fine actors, California suburbia, mysterious spirituality and increasingly aggressive phenomena which are sacrilegiously accounted for at the film’s end.
Jaws’ score may go down in film history as the most memorable music score or maybe 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Jerry Goldsmith’s attentive and cathartic score for Poltergeist is unmatched as far as I’m concerned. I’ll admit that the Star Wars’ illustrious score is more titanic and grand, but Poltergeist remains my favorite as it carefully and liberally tailors every orchestrated melody to the moments of threat, tenderness, horror, mystery, wonder and ferocity with cinematic spirit.
The easy-going first 30 minutes does take a while to set up the film, but the payoff is sensational and worth it. If this is the first time you see the film or you are revisiting it after years gone by, this is one to crank up the home theater, dim the lights, shut off the cell phones, sit back and soak it up. Make it an event.
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