Poltergeist

(1982)

Dir: Tobe Hooper

“Psycho killer, qu'est que c'est” (Or ‘The Greatest Horror Films Ever Made’)

 

After this film you’ll be calling in Bill Murray and co. to fuck Casper himself up. That’s Poltergeist for you. It’s the ultimate horror for kids. I always found that a little odd, considering the ‘15’ rating it has in this country, thus alienating its key audience surely? The producers can’t have been too happy about that.

The plot revolves around the Freeling family, a typical American household living in apparent bliss in the suburbs of Randomsville USA. When the furniture starts to become more animated than Leslie Ash’s face has ever been, and the television sets begin emitting strange white lights not of the Pornographic variety, it’s obvious that something is up. Guess what? Bingo. A Poltergeist. What follows is some truly crazy nonsense that could really only take place in the eighties. Wardrobes swallow people, freaky toy clowns come to life, and JoBeth Williams is almost raped by the ghost of Robin Van Persie.

Okay, the last one might not exactly be true, especially since this whole film feels like someone asked a group of little kids what scared them the most and then made a film about it. If that survey had been done in Vietnam, we’d have seen Gary Glitter stumbling in at some point asking us if we want to be in his gang. No, Gary, we don’t.

But that’s not to say that Poltergeist isn’t a lot of fun. It is. Tobe Hooper never lets the narrative pause for a second, hitting us with the action from the outset. It’s no surprise that this film was the brainchild of Executive-Producer Steven Spielberg; it feels exactly like what you would expect a horror from The Beard to be: child friendly. Apparently the original idea was for the Freeling’s to be tormented by nasty Aliens for a sort of Sci-Fi Straw Dogs, but Spielberg dropped that idea in favour of a little film called E.T.

Much like something such as Joe Dante’s Gremlins, Poltergeist is still an enjoyable piece of cinema for everyone who actually gets to see it. I just feel like adults watching it won’t experience the chills unless they have a particular fear of clowns or sexually deviant ghosts, and the little sprogs who would get a fun yet terrifying rush out of this, well, in my best posh old lady accent, one would certainly hope they wouldn’t be watching this sort of thing!

***^3/4/*****