Poltergeist (1982)

They're Here! A typical family in a typical suburban home, Steve and Diane Freeling (Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams) live a good life with their three children. A group of seemingly benign ghosts begin communicating with five-year-old Carol Anne via static on the television. Hilarity ensues as the ghosts play harmless tricks and amuse the mother, including moving the chairs in the kitchen around by themselves, but it quickly turns sinister and Carol Anne disappears. The family desperately tries to find Carol Anne as the house turns on them and they have to call in help. Carol Anne is gone...but they can still here her...in the television.

Trivia: To make the ghosts' movements seem more ethereal when they appeared walking down the stairs on the monitor, the director had the actors walk very slowly backwards up the staircase, then reversed the film in the final cut. The movie on the TV in an early bedroom scene is A Guy Named Joe (1943), a film about a pilot who returns to the world as a ghost. It was later remade by Steven Spielberg into Always (1989). At first the ghosts play harmless tricks and amuse the mother, including the chairs in the kitchen moving around by themselves.

Drew Barrymore was considered for the role of Carol Anne, but 'Steven Spielberg' wanted someone more angelic. It was Barrymore's audition for this role, however, that landed her a part in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). The shot of the chairs that position themselves in the amazing balancing act on the table was all done in one take. As the camera panned along with JoBeth Williams, who was getting some cleaning materials, several crew members quickly set an already organized pyramid of chairs on the table, then took the single chairs away before the camera scrolled back. Both of the terrors that plague Robbie came from Steven Spielberg's own fears as a child, a fear of clowns and a tree outside his window. As an homage to his friend George Lucas, Spielberg populated the children's bedroom with Star Wars toys. He did the same in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

Heather O'Rourke, who played the little girl Carol Anne, and Dominique Dunne, who played the teenage daughter, are buried in the same cemetery: Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Dunne was strangled into brain-death by her boyfriend in 1982, the year of the film's release. Six years later, O'Rourke, at the age of 12, died of intestinal stenosis. This is the basis of the urban legend of the Poltergeist Curse.

It is pretty amazing to think that Steven Speilberg worked on both E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Poltergeist at pretty much the same time (which is why Poltergeist is directed by Tobe Hooper, who directed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Speilberg actually wrote Poltergeist. Watching it now wasn't as scary as when I first saw it, although it still had it's moments. I think what makes it so scary is that it happens to everyday ordinary people. They didn't have to go to a camp in the woods, or a haunted castle or something like that, this was their home. It also goes to show you that you can film a scary movie with out killing anybody or slashing anybody's throat or something gory like that.