Before I sat down to watch Poltergeist the other night, this image was basically the extent of my awareness of the film. Other than some vague understanding of the Hooper/Spielberg guff and a hazy recollection of a tree coming through a window (although the latter may have been a memory of The Matador).
Yes, yes, I know. I'm a cretin. A heathen. I don't deserve to write on a horror site.
All true.
When I worked in a video shop I remember this film and its sequels staring at me for years from their shelf in the horror section. But I was never tempted to watch. Probably because the name Spielberg didn't feature prominently enough. But probably also because I thought it didn't look too scary. After all, in the UK it was only awarded a 15 certificate.
And a couple of moments aside (TOY CLOWN ALERT!) it isn't that scary, at least by modern standards. But that's not the point. Poltergeist is a damn good story above all else and proves horror isn't only about scares.
The narrative charts the speedy decline of the Freeling family from suburban high achievers to homeless and unemployed thanks to the meddling of a group of ghosts which arrive on their doorstep courtesy of a television left on all night. The film is allegedly a Tobe Hooper film but is a million miles from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Instead the film looks and feels like the work of co-writer and executive producer Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg is an auteur, well documented. I often worry that when watching a master's work you get sucked in to the hype and you are biased before you even start watching. Of course Poltergeist is pre-ET Spielberg so he was hardly a master back then, so the experience for audiences in the 80s was free from that effect and it was still judged highly. Watching it over 25 years and many classics after the event though, there was an inherent danger I'd just be sucked in to the influence of his other great works and believe that Poltergiest is part of them simply because it is him.
Yet it's not a Spielberg classic. Decent as it is, and it is very good, it is not one of his great works. There are some very clunky plot holes, few scares and a couple of very thin characters. I could write an essay on why but the principle reason has been well discussed elsewhere. The conflict between Tobe Hooper, who is the recognised director and Spielberg, who was the writer but in reality, probably the actual director must have had some negative effect on the production. If you want to read more about that, and it is fascinating, I'd recommend the excellent accounts at http://www.poltergeist.poltergeistiii.com.
But while it isn't in the Spielberg pantheon, there is no doubt it is a horror genre classic. Sure, the effects, budget and direction help, but there are some genuine seminal genre moments in there. Heather O'Rourke is almost certainly not the first person to have enticed evil from technology (told you I was a cretin) but the iconic image of her hands on the white noise of late night television have inspired many, many more horror moments from The Ring to well, White Noise. Halloween fancy a la mode, Paranormal Activity has borrowed (or if I am being kind, referenced) by the bucket load from Poltergeist, from moving kitchen furniture to even the very nature of filming ghostly happenings.
And while Poltergeist might not scare a modern watcher who has sat through much less censored work, 25 years later, it has its moments through notable set pieces and strong characterisation. The film plays repeatedly on the ideas of childhood fears; storms, closets, monsters under the bed and then augments them by playing on one of the primal fears of adulthood: losing a child. The set pieces, augmented by special effects are tense and, being Spielberg, deftly handled. The tree and clown sequences are classics. The TV and video camera sequences linger in the memory. The final act gets a bit daft, but is punch after punch after punch. There is a glorious moment where the panic stricken mother (Jo-Beth Williams), in the knowledge that her children are in desperate peril (again), struggles helplessly to climb out of a muddy swimming pool full of corpses. It's a wonderful visual metaphor for the struggles of the family throughout the film and it's moments like that which make my inner literature/film student very happy.
Poltergeist develops ideas explored in many of Spielberg's other works around American families in a suburban setting. The family that seemingly has it all is carefully stripped bare to the eventual point where nothing but the family matters. It's a message that is as relevant and powerful today as then.
No surprise then that a remake is on the way?
Watch it because: Spielberg shows with Poltergeist that horror can be big, can be mainstream and can still be intelligent.
MB
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