Rating:

Poltergeist is, without a doubt, the best movie in the haunted house genre that there ever was. When ghosts are your primary threat, things tend to be the same: there are bumps in the night, people walk through cold spots, maybe the hallways and rooms in the house seem to rearrange themselves, but that’s about it. Think of movies like The Haunting and the recent version of House on Haunted Hill. Ho hum, am I right? I’m right. It takes a certain special something to make a ghost story particularly compelling and Poltergeist’s got it. I don’t exactly know what that indefinable quality is, but it’s present here where it’s so often absent in other movies.

Well, to be fair, I do know at least part of what makes this movie succeed: Steven Spielberg. The film is technically directed by Tobe Hooper,with Steven Spielberg in the role of executive producer, but Spielberg’s fingerprints are all over it and I mean that in the best way possible. Everything that has made so many of his movies the successful and enduring modern classics that they are is present here. Sometimes it’s just a matter of the way the movie feels, if you can dig that, but whatever magic Spielberg has in him that turns almost everything he touches into gold was injected into this movie in all the right places.

The cast of Poltergeist is wonderfully enjoyable. Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams are exceedingly likeable as the somewhat freewheeling parents in the family. The three kids are actually believable as kids, a none too common trait in movies. Although Oliver Robins as the brother and Dominique Dunne as the older sister are annoying, they’re kid annoying as opposed to actor-kid annoying, which is much more tolerable. And Heather O’Rourke as little Carol Anne is just as cute as a button. I’m serious, she’s absolutely adorable. Nobody hates it when a movie uses child endangerment as a device more than I do, but in this movie it works. She’s just so damn cute. She doesn’t deserve to be sucked into a television and tormented by weird ghosties while having tennis balls thrown at her by a weird midget! And watching the movie now, the knowledge that the talented child actress would be dead before her thirteenth birthday only makes you want to hug her tighter and makes her torment all the more heartbreaking. Rounding out the cast is Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina, the clarivoyant midget with the funny voice and Elton John glasses, so that’s nice.

The other stars are of the movie are the special effects. Enhancing the story without ever getting in the way, the effects in this movie are still dazzling even by today’s standards. The various ghosts and spooks are realistic enough to make you sore afeared, believe you me. In addition, there are people crawling up walls and children being sucked into closets and ghosts walking down stairs and toys flying about rooms and all kinds of eerie activities. There are some skeletons, and you know why they look so real? Because they are! That’s right, actual skeletons come blasting onto the screen and giving you a case of the scared shitlesses.

The film works not just because the scares are genuine but because the cast is so likeable and the movie never loses its sense of humor. Even when the situation is at its direst, there is a sparkle of levity in the dialogue that makes you believe in these characters even more strongly, which in turn only leaves you further susceptible to being scared by the bumps in the night and the attacking trees. Then a midget shows up and starts talking saying weird things and stomping around, and before you know it you’re saying to yourself: “This is the greatest movie in the history of the world.”

So what we have here is a horror movie that doesn’t have any deaths at all and, apart from one mild-to-medium scene, doesn’t even have any gore. It’s rated PG for cryin’ out loud! But you know what! It works. It’s scary and fun and everything a good horror movie should be. I can give you 100 reasons to see it, but instead of taking all that time, let’s just cut to the chase: Don’t let this Halloween season go by without giving Poltergeist a view!

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Halloween: Resurrection
• Eric’s Top Ten Scary Movies
• Halloween (2007)
• Home Alone
• Meditation on a Swear Word