You got it right George. In the days before 24 hour cable, the 3 major networks ended each broadcast day like at 1:30 am with the national anthem in the U.S.
I remember that, and I'm not from US. A slow flying flag and the national anthem, followed by nature shots and then white noise. At least our anthem is quite soothing, not like USA's.
where I come from we just had a test image (a circle with some different lines in a pattern and the TV's basic colors) and an annoying howling tone that could wake up cthulhu... there was no warning... the day's programs ended and bam it was on and it was on all night until the late morning when the day's programs started up again...
"You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn't you!? You left the bodies and you only moved the headstones!" Is one of my favorite horror movie lines.
My sister is a Little Person and the "she's a medium"/"she's definitely a small" exchange had me dying. LOL. Already sent to my sister and she loves it.
Played by the late, great Zelda Rubenstein (native of my birthplace of Pittsburgh, PA). You could say that if her character in this movie committed a crime and ran from the law, she could be described as a small medium at large. (Sorry, I normally detest puns, but I couldn't resist in this case.)
I immediately was reminded of a comedy skit on the old, corny, Dean Martin TV show. At a cocktail party of some sort, the characters are mingling and a cliche "mystic-from-the-east" looking gentleman introduces himself to a buxom blonde airhead-type woman, and says, "I am a Medium", to which she cheerily replies, "Oh, I'm a Large."
I remember the days of passing out in front of the TV and hearing the national anthem playing. That was the cue to wake up, turn off the TV, and go to bed. That signified the end of the broadcast day on TV, usually around 2am. The broadcast day resumed around 6am.
The actress who played the medium Tangina Barrons was Zelda Rubinstein. She had a degree in bacteriology and worked as a lab tech until aged 45, when she decided to try acting. "Poltergeist" was her first major film role. Chidlren of the 80s know her for this and as the organist in "16 Candles," Given her degree, she took a very active and early role in the promotion of AIDS awareness, having lost a friend to it. Given the stigma around in the 80s, she may have likely lost work because of her activism.
Disgusting. Another thing we have to thank Reagan for. They ignored that disease until it was spread far and wide, because it was "for the gays" (viruses choose their hosts based on morality, doncha know).
The tagline for the sequel was: "They're baaaack!" And, unfortunately, the actresses that played Carol Anne and Dana died young and under very tragic circumstances.
Fun fact: the bodies at the end were real; they didn't tell the actors till after filming was over. They were not happy. Also, don't know if you caught it, but Steven said that Carol Anne was born in the house. So that explains why the ghosts wanted her. Life was created in front of them, most likely making them really jealous.
Ah, the 80s, when movies featuring actual human corpses and someone tearing their own face off were marketed as family films! The thing with Spielberg movies - even the ones he produces rather than directs - is that he always keeps things at a human level. No matter what crazy things are going on, he never lets us lose connection with the characters. It’s something that most other “big budget” directors forget to do, and why his films were so successful at connecting with audiences. Of course, there was a lot of controversy over who actually directed this movie! It that’s a whole different story…
The controversy has always come from a place of extreme biases and limitedness of purview. The studio simply took advantage of Hooper and Spielberg's close partnership and mutual respect to steamroll over Hooper during the marketing phase. No one who insists Spielberg directed has any solid evidence for Spielberg's predominance, when in fact this was a unique experiment rushed headlong into by two men who developed the entire film from scratch like best friends from before anyone else was involved. That said, Hooper's input was able to be roundly ignored because people on set were simply not interested in him and, I'd venture, were jealous of how much of Spielberg's right ear he had when he wanted to change things up and reinterpret the material - which, if comparisons from script/storyboard to screen suggest correctly, he did, and pissed off a lot of department heads in the process. Hooper put his all into the film, though, and every actor you can ask says Hooper was their sole director, one who simply wanted Spielberg's ideas in order to positively and constructively work forward from.
So tragic the way both of the actresses that played the daughters died so very young IRL (Dominique Dunne was strangled, later being declared brain dead in 1982 the year of the films release and little Heather O'Rourke died aged 12 in 1988 of a cardiac arrest), both are interned in the same cemetery too. Sad times. RIP ladies.
When you think about it JoBeth Williams is just about the few '80s Mom from a horror movie that wasn't a total waste of space and actually did something to help her child. Also, shat makes this such a great film is the way this cast captures a genuine family feel. Everyone feels real, the relationships are so passionately played, from the goofy moments to the fear and the love. It's a master class, tucked away in a horror movie.
I was born the year Poltergeist was made, saw it in 1985.... JoBeth made a a fan of older women :D I always wanted older girls because of JoBeth. And also Valerie Perrine of course.
Not sure if already mentioned but, the tree taking Robbie was a distraction. It was used to preoccupy everyone else so the poltergeist could get Carol Anne.
@@billparrish4385Ah, yes, Romulus... You'll find the predominant colour to be grey. The buildings, the clothes, the people. Did you know that the Romulan heart itself is grey? It's true. And altogether appropriate for such an unimaginative race...
Character driven scenes enhances the scares and raises the stakes. So many smaller moments with the suburban scenes, disagreements with the neighbors, the teen daughter rolling her eyes at everything, the parents bantering with one another.. and the mom becoming Rambo when her babies are in danger make this an awesome horror movie.
I saw this in the theater when it came out with 7 of my best friends. We were all high school seniors except for one. He was home on leave from basic training. What we didn't know is that he had seen the film with some of his buddies in the corps. The scene where the mom was in the bathtub was super intense. My friend, knowing nothing happened, let out a blood curdling scream at the top of his lungs. Everyone in the theater jumped our of their seats, everyone's popcorn flew 4' in the air, and we all got a great laugh.
No real profanity, no nudity, no character deaths, not much in the way of violence toward any character... so PG rated. So what if it's scary enough to terrify an entire generation of kids who got sent to the theater for a "family" movie, right? This one is an absolute classic. So glad you got to see it.
And to think it's by the same director as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This is why Tobe Hooper will always remain one of my favorite directors. Yeah, he always stuck with horror, but even within the umbrella of horror, he had such great range and adaptability. No two movies were the same. Even within the same franchise, Texas Chainsaw 1 & 2 were wildly different in tone and execution.
One of the things I like best about this film is that it plays on every irrational fear of children. The shadows from the tree at night, clowns, headless dolls, fear of the dark, things under the bed. It's all here, imperceptibly and gradually heightening the anxiety - building anticipation. I love it! And yes, there are two sequels. Not as good IMHO, but 🤷♀️
Yes, there is a rotating set in Hollywood that is specifically used for scenes where characters crawl on the walls/ceiling. It was used in this movie, The Fly, The Exorcist 3, and many others. It's rarely used these days though, as such scenes are now done with CGI.
🦇I used to run the Movie Projectors in '82 and ran this one in an old theater. We had a bad storm one evening, severe Thunder Storms that scared the Bats that lived in the rafters behind the screen. A very loud clap of thunder occurred which drove them out in to the theater, half way through this movie. With the Bats illuminated by the projector, flying around over the audience (and their shadows on the screen...) You could have heard the screams from two counties over! 🦇 lol
This movie made the best decision I've ever seen for a ghost movie. It gave the family an obvious, immediate, clear reason to not leave their obviously terrifying haunted house. Their kid is still in there. Also, you mentioned this movie inspiring some of Sixth Sense, which I would totally believe. Interestingly, I'd buy that some of THIS movie is also inspired by an old Twilight Zone episode, called Little Girl Lost
Well, they were already aware that the house is haunted before their daughter ever got lost. Then when they got her back, some of them decided to stay there for a while despite all the trauma b/c they thought the house was "clean". Some other reactors actually got annoyed by that decision.
20:17 When he said "we've done it before" regarding the cemetery relocation, that has happened in real life. Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven; those are only the headstones. The bodies are still buried under the New Haven green. The whole area is the original cemetery. :O
How does that work, anyway? I've never even seen a ground-set house that didn't have a basement. I'm sure there were plenty in the past, but by the time of this movie I'm sure basements would be standard in new developments.
@JakkFrost1 As far as houses without basements, a lot of houses in certain states don't have basements for obvious reasons. Florida, for example. They don't have basements because a lot of land underneath is too soft (swampland or marsh) and would frequently flood.
I always loved the bit where it cuts back to Robbie going full apeshit on the clown while screaming like a madman. They set it up like the clown is going to be his nemesis or something but he's like "Nah, I'm done being scared".
Also the realistic approach (if you can call it that). If my assailant is soft, badly sewn together and stuffed with fluff, he'd have to literally push his arms down my throat to be a threat, scary as he might be.
Want to really have your mind blown? The first time (that I know of) where they did the rotating room as a physical effect was 1951 for a Fred Astaire dance number in a musical... Great reaction as always!
This is one of THE BEST 'scary' movies ever. And yes - the couple dynamic they portrayed was so awesome; so different from a lot of the more modern couples that don't seem to even like each other, much less want to get stoned and fool around. It's scary and amazing and incredible...love it!
There's a rumour that Spielberg was the real director of Poltergeist. This isn't true. Toby Hooper worked closely with Spielberg but made most of the choices. Spielberg said he learned a lot from watching Hooper's free welding style, unorthodox casting and blocking and how to really scare the audience. Hooper said he learned how to make a polished studio picture from Spielberg.
So glad you guys like it so much. Poltergeist is one of my favorite movies. Such a wonderful family dynamic against this supernatural backdrop. And it always breaks my heart when I see little Heather O' Rourke on screen. She was just so adorable. I still remember reading in the newspaper she had passed at the age of 12. So sad. 😞
I love how many things y'all mention early on that would freak you out, that are things actually hit on later in the movie. (The closet, the tree outside the window etc.) That's just perfect!
Bill Murray’s “he slimed me” gag in Ghostbusters was a reference to the “ectoplasm” on them during the bathtub scene. Poltergeist has fallen out of the zeitgeist since, so a lot of people miss that detail these days.
@@robertyeah2259The concept existed before, but the representation of the pink slime was pretty much the same. It was clear when the movie came out that they were making a joke about the pink slime from Poltergeist. Direct parody of recent movies was pretty common then and now. The thing is that Ghostbusters has outlived the movies that it was parodying.
The movie the parents are watching while getting stoned is called "A Guy Named Joe" starring Spencer Tracey from 1943 (remade in the '80s with Richard Dreyfus called "Always"), it's a ghost story.
This movie was inspired by a Twilight Zone episode. It was called “Little Girl Lost”, season 3, episode 26. It aired in March 1962. Spielberg was a huge fan of the series and he also directed segments of the 1983 Twilight Zone movie series which I HIGHLY recommend. It’s an anthology movie that is inspired by classic TV episodes. The last story is my favorite. Twilight Zone The Movie also has a very tragic on set accident that claim the lives of actor Vic Marrow and 2 child actors. They died n a very horrific way and it was all caught on camera. It can be viewed on YT in some documentaries but it’s very graphic.
There are more Twilight Zone episodes that might have inspired later movies, like e.g. "Twenty-Two" and "Final Destination". Or "People Are Alike All Over" ad Star Trek's "The Cage". Sometimes they made a whole movie out of oe, like "Button, Button" and "The Box" The Twlight Zone and the sister show Outer Limits cannot be appreciated more for their impact on SF, Horror and Mystery stories that came after.
And Twilight Zone was inspired by British horror anthology films like Dead of Night (1945), Three Cases of Murder (1955), and some other ones too. The evil talking doll featured in several horror films was first seen in Dead of Night (1945).
@@rabidfollower True, but that's just the TV side of it. Many of the best episodes were written by the great Richard Matheson and his brilliant tales have nothing to do with British horror lol.
@@timcardona9962 Everything has to do with everything, buddy, because true originality is rare. See "Dead of Night" (1945) and you'll notice undeniable resemblance to Twilight Zone. If you are the second person to do the same thing, you are borrowing the idea of someone else who did it first, whether you like to admit it or not.
8:48 - They're heere was a line everyone knew after that movie. The X-Files referenced it in a ghost episode (Scully teases Mulder with a They're heere), he was not as amused as her...
Yeah, before the invention of infomercials, the broadcast networks would shut down after the late night shows. They would usually do one last weather report and play the national anthem with some kind of patriotic sizzle reel. For a lot of movies/TV you can usually just look at "Star Spangled Banner playing" as "it's about 01:30".
I still remember being up as a little kid and having cable. I'd have to switch whatever major network I was over to one of the few running all night programming (like Nick at Night)
Many probably don't remember the movie premiered June 4, 1982. On November 4, 1982 Dominique Dunne portrayed the eldest daughter in the movie. She passed away after being strangled by her ex boyfriend a few days earlier. She was only 22 You might know her brother Griffin Dunne from "American Werewolf in London" and "After Hours". Though he has had many other roles on tv and film.
It's a coincidence. He was ramping up his producing career and he had started developing this film with Tobe Hooper, a sort of "naturalistic" ghost story. About nine months later, he comes up with the idea for "E.T." with Melissa Matheson and decides that's the film he wants to make next.
The guy who played Craig T. Nelson's boss is James Karen. You REALLY need to check out Return of the Living Dead, which is probably the greatest comedy horror film ever made. James Karen's performance is absolutely hilarious!
When JoBeth Williams’ character, Diane Freeling, falls in the pool that is being put in and the skeletons start popping up out of the water they used real skeletons. And I heard they didn’t tell her ahead of time so some of her fear is real. So messed up.
Lol, this again. They were sourced from a medical supply store, and back in the day they used real skeletons like you would see in hospitals. People weren't as squeamish back then.
People would be surprised how many films used real skeletons back then, no joke it was sometimes cheaper to get a real one then fabricate one, not saying it isn't messed up, it is, but its crazy how people constantly point a finger at this movie only saying it's bad, there is sooooooo much more
@@robertjacques4117 For sure, I read a few years back that Apocalypse Now had corpses they bought off a guy who did this kind of thing for films. They thought he was fabricating them somewhere, but it turns out he was just a good 'ole fashioned grave robber and the corpses were real. LOL
In "the old days" TV broadcasts in the US would end around midnight. They'd play The Star Spangled Banner and then screens would go to white static (like you see on the movie poster).
"I hope we get to see what's on the other side" (Poltergeist 2 has entered the chat) George: "Move to an apartment" (Poltergeist 3 has entered the chat)
Yeah, and that other side part was the most criticized about that one. The third did better with the mirror effects, but not the overall story … It's one of those things where just bcause you can do it, does not mean you should do it … Also, H.R.Giger worked on a creature design for the second movie, which kept him from working on "Aliens". (Yes, the guy that designed the Xenomorph for the first one, but he did not make the Queen.)
The rotating room has been done a number of times. I think the first was Fred Astaire dancing in the movie Royal Wedding, the Lionel Richy did it in the music video for "Dancing on the Ceiling"
It always amuses me when someone makes a comment along the lines of, it's from 82, how bad can it be? Then they proceed to get the bejesus scared out of them by the practical effects! I love it! Reminds me of their reactions from watching JAWS and The Thing.
1. The National Anthem was coming from the TV to explain the white noise screen. It was the end of the broadcast day. The over the air TV station played a patriotic scene and played the anthem before turning off the transmitter. 2. Remote controls worked on ultra sonic tuning fork sound. One for on/off volume another fork for cycling around the channel dial. You could change the channel by walking through the room with a pocket full of change. Vacuuming would give the TV an epileptic fit. Those neighbors seemed a bit far apart to be controlling each others TV. But it wasn't out of the question. 3. The mom is played by Rita Wilson (a.k.a. Mrs. Tom Hanks). Interesting that Tom's soccer ball in Castaway was named Wilson ain't it?
"Its 1982 so it must be all practical" .. . not really. Before cgi there were Other kind of OPTICAL effects. Like the the image in THIS movie at 8:32 is an example. But THOSE techniques ARE dated now, and not used anymore.
I think the construction guys probably work with the Dad since he’s the main sales guy for the entire subdivision etc and know the family pretty well , that’s how I took it anyway, probably a little to comfortable but harmless, thanks
Original remote controls used near ultrasound and ultrasound instead of IR. Grandma had a Zenith cabinet TV and anytime you pressed a button the dog would take off out of the room. I could hear some of the sounds if I held it up to my ear as a kid. Anyway I don’t think you had to have line of sight for channels to change.
"Now Steven, I want you to remember way back when you used to have an open mind" Comedic genius, set up by the previous evening where he was on the bed smoking weed and reading the Reagan book.
I must be getting old, to remeber when TV channels signed off at the end of the night with the national anthem. That was a rotating set, but you'll notice there are small cuts when she transfers from one surface to the next one, I dont think it was rotating during the scene. If you want to see a truly impressive rotating room scene, watch Fred Astaire's dance scene from "Royal Wedding".
Yeah, I'm not watching it all again except through reactions like this. This looks 100% more real then Paranormal Activity, which they tried to bill as real and where you could actually see the wires that are pulling the sheets.
I feel like one of Spielberg's biggest influences on this movie is the pacing. When you look at his monster movies (Jaws, Jurassic Park, et..) they move along at such a fast clip, more like action movies. A non Spielberg movie that really captures this effect is Attack the Block. Movies that use the scary/horror aspects as a thrill, rather than to inspire terror.
Poltergeist is known as one of Hollywood's most cursed films. The "Poltergeist curse" is based on actual events supposedly that originated from the deaths of four cast members from the original film and its two sequels. The deaths occurred after the film wrapped, and none of them happened during filming. The deaths include: Two young cast members who died in the six years between the releases of the first and third films Lou Perryman, who played Pugsley in the original film, was murdered in his own home with an ax in 2009 12-year-old Heather O'Rourke, who died from an undetected bowel obstruction Other behind-the-scenes troubles include: Mysterious malfunctions The questionable use of human remains.. The deaths have been linked to the use of real-life skeletons in the swimming pool scene that bookends the film.
This is one of my favorite movies because of how Spielberg depicts the family. Totally normal and 100% believable. Very few movies of ANY genre has managed this. Bring out the scary stuff and it becomes more real. Also the "ghostbusters" are real world. None of them have actually seen anything and they deal in rumors, hearsay and speculations.
Those "ghost hunter" shows, they go into a "haunted" place with video camera. EVERY TIME, they say "WOW, DID YOU SEE THAT?!" and the camera is ALWAYS looking somewhere else, "missing the action."
The little boy would've been more of a one-liner machine if they had followed Spielberg's script. Spielberg's precocious youngsters are definitely a thing (see the boys in Jaws and 1941) but the kids are somewhat anodyne here, I'd say by design.
I was 10 when I caught this on HBO. I had a ventriloquist dummy in my room. It was quickly relocated to the guest room. I used to work at a mom / pop tv station in the late 90's. At about 2am, the station "Signed Off" for the night with a video of the National Anthem followed by a message saying "We now conclude our broadcast day" and then the screen went to color bars with a tone signal non-stop. At 6am, the video played again but said "We now begin our broadcast day", went to a 5 second station ID clip and then the 6am show started. By signing off, technicians could do repairs on the transmitter and other things during the down time...
The scene where the hall seemingly elongates is what is known as a "dolly zoom effect." It was used to great effect in _Jaws_ . I think it's has something to do with physically moving the camera backwards on the dolly, while zooming in through the lens.
Quite possibly my favorite horror movie and it still stands up today. 80s ghost effects (this, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters) look so perfect for me, the medium went backward after that - now they either have too-good CG or just a normal person. The remake is totally superfluous.
Right!?? I love what are known as ILM Clouds and spirit effects. They just look so etheriel. I remember watching a little behind the scenes and spielberg was describing to the ilm guys how the spirits should look and move, something to the effect of it should look like smoke, rings and tendrils blowing when the spirits are sucked back up the stairs and into the bedroom. So lovely.
Funniest line I have ever heard you say: "She's like a medium or something. SHE'S DEFINITELY A SMALL". That's the first time I have laughed out loud at something you said. Well played.
Romulan Warrior Nuns.... wow. Keep 'em coming Simone! and if you want to see a "prequel" to The Mist, there is The Fog (1980), by John Carpenter, just before he made The Thing. And there were 2 sequels to this. Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Anne, died after making Poltergeist 3 at the age of 12 from a congenital condition.
This is the first scary movie I can remember, don't remember much except the relief of seeing the credits and knowing the movie was over, thnk I was around 4 at the time. Real young.
Growing up, I loved this movie, but now as an adult and a mom, I get emotionally worked up/ cry a lot, because I can identify with Jo Beth’s character and the agony she’s going through at the possibility of losing her children. It gets me in the feels every time.
@@WoahLookAtThatFreaki think you just cracked the code on the whole human race, but you’re a little late to the party lol. Most empathy (especially from people who talk about being empathetic a lot) is obligatory, or a performance.
Revolving sets have been used pretty much since the birth of cinema. A trick 'borrowed' from extravagant 1800's stage shows/sets. Some great examples in the old "Buster Keaton" films.
The skeletons in the pool were REAL. Budget problems? But like cadavers used by universities. And THAT clown is the only clown that scares me. Ever since seeing this in the theater.
The sequel is really good too and adds a few layers of backstory to it. Definitely recommend it. I saw this movie when I was around 10 and I had nightmares for a solid month. Now I'm almost completely immune to scary movies aside from jump scares lol
I remember reading the issue of Cracked magazine (or maybe it was Mad Magazine?) that included a spoof of Poltergeist. It ended the same way - with the family checking into a hotel. But it was the Bates Motel, run by Norman Bates.
4:40 I am old enough to remember early remote controls in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They didn't use infrared light, which has been the most common from the mid-1980s until now, but instead they used ultrasound - sound at or above 20 kHz. When I was five years old, I remember being able to actually hear the signals for some of the buttons. It was uncomfortably loud and piercing, so I guess two neighbours with the same brand television set could definitely annoy each other like that if they left the porch doors or windows open.
One of my all time faves from legendary summer of 1982. It's Spielberg and Hooper making a haunted house movie but setting it in modern recognizable suburbs and bringing to it the Spielbergian sense of wonder as well as the scares via state of the art visual fx from ILM at their peak. Plus the cast are note perfect with JoBeth Williams' Diane being my fave movie mom ever. Oh and Jerry Goldsmith's brilliant score. Stone cold classic.
The adorable little actress tragically passed away of an illness at like 10 years old right around the time the 3rd movie came out. I remember as a kid there where all these rumors about the movie sets being haunted.
"Hello? Realtor? You didn't TELL ME when I was BUYING this HOUSE that it was built on an Indian burial ground!!! ... No, you didn't! ... Well, that's not how I remember it! *click* He says he warned us five or six times." - H. Simpson, Bad Dream House
I wish you all could have had the experience of seeing this at the theatre. The large screen, atmosphere, lighting reflecting about and the jump scares in the crowd was something else.
In the '50's as a kid on the Oklahoma prairie our antenna, on a 50-foot pole, only got two Tulsa stations - sort of. At midnight one of them did the poem HIGH FLIGHT by John Magee, Jr. He was an American volunteer to the Canadian Air Force pre-war, and was killed training in December 1941. The little girl was Heather O'Rourke, who was also in the two sequels. She died in 1988 at age 12, and the third movie was released after she'd passed. She'd had many complications - giardiasis, Crohn's, heart problems, and finally passed due to congenital stenosis of the intestine and sepsis.
My favorite moment in this movie is when Carol Ann is in her mom's arms in the tub and says in sweetest way "Hi daddy!" as she wakes up. My heart melts everytime.💗😭
back in the day I was bored and sat shaking my key chain (i was a latchkey kid).. and all of a sudden it turned off the TV... old TVs and remote controls were strange... at one time I had a TV where the remote control had a cable from the controller to the TV...
Alright, kids. Old school TV remotes didn’t use infrared light or radio signals. Some used tuning forks, and the button you pressed just struck the tuning fork inside, making a sound too high-pitched for most people to hear, but that the TV could pick up. And dogs too, some of whom hated the things. And sometimes other things would naturally make ultrasounds that’d randomly interfere with TVs, like jingling keys.
I'd completely forgotten but, yes. By dropping a coin(s) into a ceramic dish near my uncle's old TV, the high-pitched "clang" noise (the ultrasonic portion anyway) would sometimes be picked up by the TV and change the channel.
The rotating house reminded me of an old song called Dancing on the Ceiling by Fred Astaire. I would check it out if anyone hasn't seen it. It's from an old movie, and Fred dances on the floor, then the right wall, then the ceiling, then the left wall, then finally the ground again. All in one take. It's so fun.
Royal Wedding is the movie, and "You're All the World to Me" is the song he danced to. It's one of the first uses in a movie of the stationary cam with the rotating set. Dancing on the Ceiling was what the number was popularly called. Lionel Richie's hit "Dancing on the Ceiling" had nothing to do with rotating sets, and had everything to do with mirrors above a bed. lol.
I love the pacing of this movie: it lulls you into thinking it's gonna have a nice gradual buildup of spookiness, and then BAM suddenly it just goes pedal-to-the-metal with trees swallowing kids and closets becoming vortexes!
Saw this in 83 on VHS. I was only 8 and have hated clowns and creepy looking trees ever since. 😅 Clearly back then people rented movies, but many also needed to rent VCR's, because they were still fairly expensive in the early 80's. Being 1 of 6 kids we couldn't afford much growing up. So in 1988 it was a big deal when my Dad bought our first VCR. A (used) pop-up style VCR from a place called Encore video in Richmond BC It's strange how some random memories are so clear. I even remember that we rented the movies "Harry and the Hendersons and E.T that same day.
The thing with the mom and the walls and the ceiling is also something done in one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. They did use a special type of rotating set. I believe there's footage of how it was done in the making of stuff in the nightmare on elm street boxed set.
As far as the National Anthem of the USA, there is a wonderful moment that you can find on TH-cam. A hockey game was being played in Canada and before the game a singer was going to perform the anthems of both the USA and Canada. As she sang the USA anthem, her mic went out and the Canadian crowd immediately joined in and finished the anthem for her. It just gave me the feels to see the Canadians do that. Canadians are so cool😊
Yes, there is an even more terrifying sequel. If you can find the book to this, the movie was only maybe 1/3 of the book there is so much more to the story as far as the second movie it answers a lot of questions left from the first one.
One of the best haunted house films ever - beyond iconic - Directed by Tobe Hooper (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE fame) and yep Spielberg exec. prod. and had a very hands-on producing job - (seme have suggested he directed this film ; you can see his influences). I saw this when I was a kid w/my famiiy and it was like a roller coaster ride - so many jolts & scares. Not dated at all (all practical f/x and yes George the scene w/Diane on the ceiling was an inverted set that rotated with the camera) Fun fact: Marty's face-ripping moment has the actual hands of Spielberg who wasn't plead w/the way the actor was doing it so he crouched out of frame and did it himself ! I also recommend THE CHANGELING w/George C. Scott and THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE starring Roddy McDowall.
Don't believe the Spielberg directing rumors... they were planted by the studio way back *before* the film was even released. Before it was even a week into shooting. That should tell ya something. Spielberg's influence is certainly felt in the writing, but Hooper's job was to pick up Spielberg's prompts and ideas and run off with them... which, if textual evidence suggests correctly, he did. The degree of improvisation and reinterpretations between script/screen, storyboard/screen is very illuminating.
You got it right George. In the days before 24 hour cable, the 3 major networks ended each broadcast day like at 1:30 am with the national anthem in the U.S.
I remember that, and I'm not from US. A slow flying flag and the national anthem, followed by nature shots and then white noise. At least our anthem is quite soothing, not like USA's.
And I swear they used to play it a little louder as a way of saying "turn off the TV and go to bed!" And I wonder why that song gives me anxiety.
Yeah. Having insomnia back in the day was brutal.
where I come from we just had a test image (a circle with some different lines in a pattern and the TV's basic colors) and an annoying howling tone that could wake up cthulhu...
there was no warning... the day's programs ended and bam it was on and it was on all night until the late morning when the day's programs started up again...
Then either static or a black screen
The tv was still on, but the screen was black
"You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn't you!? You left the bodies and you only moved the headstones!" Is one of my favorite horror movie lines.
Craig T Nelson is incredible (pardon the pun lmao)
@@migiplayz91I will not pardon that pun, that pun was epic. how dare you. 🤣
@@migiplayz91 No. No, I will not ignore that pun. I’m gonna focus on it. Shine a light on it and celebrate puns.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You'd have to have a corrupt local government to get away with that, it'd be noticed when they laid out the plumbing system for the area.
Seriously. I saw this in the theater, and that line is burned into my brain.
"It's from 1982, how scary could it be?" "The special effects will be bad."
LOL
I've heard reactors say the same thing about The Thing.
It's like, just wait, you'll see.
My sister is a Little Person and the "she's a medium"/"she's definitely a small" exchange had me dying. LOL. Already sent to my sister and she loves it.
Played by the late, great Zelda Rubenstein (native of my birthplace of Pittsburgh, PA). You could say that if her character in this movie committed a crime and ran from the law, she could be described as a small medium at large. (Sorry, I normally detest puns, but I couldn't resist in this case.)
I immediately was reminded of a comedy skit on the old, corny, Dean Martin TV show. At a cocktail party of some sort, the characters are mingling and a cliche "mystic-from-the-east" looking gentleman introduces himself to a buxom blonde airhead-type woman, and says, "I am a Medium", to which she cheerily replies, "Oh, I'm a Large."
@@mournblade1066 This is such a perfect Ted Lasso/Coach Beard interaction.
Still laughing. That was amazing.
Clearly, she was a small medium.
I remember the days of passing out in front of the TV and hearing the national anthem playing. That was the cue to wake up, turn off the TV, and go to bed. That signified the end of the broadcast day on TV, usually around 2am. The broadcast day resumed around 6am.
Hey just out of curiosity your comment says 8 days ago and they posted this reaction 2 hours ago
@@paullandis5524 Released early for people on Patreon.
@@paullandis5524 they are an patreon...
@@paullandis5524 See this question a lot lately, on all kinds of channels. Channel members get videos a day earlier than the rest of us.
@@paullandis5524 yeah, channel members get to see these vids before we do
The actress who played the medium Tangina Barrons was Zelda Rubinstein. She had a degree in bacteriology and worked as a lab tech until aged 45, when she decided to try acting. "Poltergeist" was her first major film role. Chidlren of the 80s know her for this and as the organist in "16 Candles," Given her degree, she took a very active and early role in the promotion of AIDS awareness, having lost a friend to it. Given the stigma around in the 80s, she may have likely lost work because of her activism.
She was also in Teen Witch. “Top that!” (If you know the meme, well, you know)
Disgusting. Another thing we have to thank Reagan for. They ignored that disease until it was spread far and wide, because it was "for the gays" (viruses choose their hosts based on morality, doncha know).
She was also in a TV show that ran for
4 years starting in 1992 called Picket Fences.
I liked her on Picket Fences too.
Ronnie Reagan refused to do anything about the AIDS crisis because he thought it was "that gay disease." SMH
The tagline for the sequel was: "They're baaaack!" And, unfortunately, the actresses that played Carol Anne and Dana died young and under very tragic circumstances.
😥
I think a worker also died? They called it the Poltergeist curse.
Also the Indian guy in the second one died suddenly.
@@memnarch129not so unexpected. He was even hired because of how his illness made him look.
@@arisucheddar3097 you are thinking of the Villian in the 2nd film. I'm talking about the native American character/actor.
Simone: "Ooh, she's like a Medium or something"
George: "She's definitely a small"
Dammit, that one made me laugh too hard!
😂😂😂
She doesn't appreciate you enough.
Fun fact: the bodies at the end were real; they didn't tell the actors till after filming was over. They were not happy. Also, don't know if you caught it, but Steven said that Carol Anne was born in the house. So that explains why the ghosts wanted her. Life was created in front of them, most likely making them really jealous.
That may be the reason for the poltereist curse.
@@Michael-of6zf exactly
I'd argue that's not fun at all 🤣
@@Michael-of6zf Yeah, but it's not like they just went to a cemetery and started digging up bodies. They got them from a medical supply company.
Part had real skeletons too... and part 2 had weird edits also the story line didn't match up to the events...
My favourite line ever. “She’s a medium.” “No, she’s definitely small.”
Ah, the 80s, when movies featuring actual human corpses and someone tearing their own face off were marketed as family films!
The thing with Spielberg movies - even the ones he produces rather than directs - is that he always keeps things at a human level. No matter what crazy things are going on, he never lets us lose connection with the characters. It’s something that most other “big budget” directors forget to do, and why his films were so successful at connecting with audiences.
Of course, there was a lot of controversy over who actually directed this movie! It that’s a whole different story…
I don't think this movie was marketed as a family film. Just like Jaws & Airplane, it was PG but marketed as its own thing.
The controversy has always come from a place of extreme biases and limitedness of purview. The studio simply took advantage of Hooper and Spielberg's close partnership and mutual respect to steamroll over Hooper during the marketing phase. No one who insists Spielberg directed has any solid evidence for Spielberg's predominance, when in fact this was a unique experiment rushed headlong into by two men who developed the entire film from scratch like best friends from before anyone else was involved. That said, Hooper's input was able to be roundly ignored because people on set were simply not interested in him and, I'd venture, were jealous of how much of Spielberg's right ear he had when he wanted to change things up and reinterpret the material - which, if comparisons from script/storyboard to screen suggest correctly, he did, and pissed off a lot of department heads in the process. Hooper put his all into the film, though, and every actor you can ask says Hooper was their sole director, one who simply wanted Spielberg's ideas in order to positively and constructively work forward from.
So tragic the way both of the actresses that played the daughters died so very young IRL (Dominique Dunne was strangled, later being declared brain dead in 1982 the year of the films release and little Heather O'Rourke died aged 12 in 1988 of a cardiac arrest), both are interned in the same cemetery too. Sad times. RIP ladies.
Heather O' Rourke actually died from her appendix bursting.
Final cause of death is cited as cardiac arrest on IMDB and other outlets, either way she was tragically young. @@spirittammyk
Yes which resulted in cardiac arrest@@spirittammyk
She died from sepsis. As far as I heard from the interview with her mother... no heart related issue with her death.
Thanks for clearing that up :)@@denisealexander5441
When you think about it JoBeth Williams is just about the few '80s Mom from a horror movie that wasn't a total waste of space and actually did something to help her child.
Also, shat makes this such a great film is the way this cast captures a genuine family feel. Everyone feels real, the relationships are so passionately played, from the goofy moments to the fear and the love. It's a master class, tucked away in a horror movie.
I was born the year Poltergeist was made, saw it in 1985....
JoBeth made a a fan of older women :D
I always wanted older girls because of JoBeth.
And also Valerie Perrine of course.
If those 80s movies told us anything: Never get between a mother and child. ("Get away from her, you b*tch!", anyone?)
Gremlins mom.
@@arisucheddar3097 YES! Mrs. Peltzer was a badass
80s moms were no joke. Never cross them.
Not sure if already mentioned but, the tree taking Robbie was a distraction. It was used to preoccupy everyone else so the poltergeist could get Carol Anne.
"Romulan Warrior Nuns" 😆 Simone is such a huge, fantastic nerd 😆
@@billparrish4385 The Order of Qolat Milat
Hell, sounds like a movie I'd happily watch. Probably be better than the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies too. 😉
@@Flibster It’s literally a thing in ‘Picard’ S1 ;)
@@billparrish4385Ah, yes, Romulus... You'll find the predominant colour to be grey. The buildings, the clothes, the people. Did you know that the Romulan heart itself is grey? It's true. And altogether appropriate for such an unimaginative race...
@@mark_p300 thank you, Garak... back to sewing, now.
Character driven scenes enhances the scares and raises the stakes. So many smaller moments with the suburban scenes, disagreements with the neighbors, the teen daughter rolling her eyes at everything, the parents bantering with one another.. and the mom becoming Rambo when her babies are in danger make this an awesome horror movie.
I saw this in the theater when it came out with 7 of my best friends. We were all high school seniors except for one. He was home on leave from basic training. What we didn't know is that he had seen the film with some of his buddies in the corps. The scene where the mom was in the bathtub was super intense. My friend, knowing nothing happened, let out a blood curdling scream at the top of his lungs. Everyone in the theater jumped our of their seats, everyone's popcorn flew 4' in the air, and we all got a great laugh.
No real profanity, no nudity, no character deaths, not much in the way of violence toward any character... so PG rated. So what if it's scary enough to terrify an entire generation of kids who got sent to the theater for a "family" movie, right?
This one is an absolute classic. So glad you got to see it.
And to think it's by the same director as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This is why Tobe Hooper will always remain one of my favorite directors. Yeah, he always stuck with horror, but even within the umbrella of horror, he had such great range and adaptability. No two movies were the same. Even within the same franchise, Texas Chainsaw 1 & 2 were wildly different in tone and execution.
It was one of the two movies that triggered the PG-13 rating. The other was Gremlins. Movies that drew a lot of children and then traumatized them.
@@bobsandler4563 I think that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was also involved in that.
@@bobsandler4563”traumatized” 😂
@@bobsandler4563 The two movies you're referring to were both from 1984: Gremlins & Temple of Doom.
Poltergeist did something zany: It made you actually care about the family and gave them personalities so you want them to make it.
One of the things I like best about this film is that it plays on every irrational fear of children. The shadows from the tree at night, clowns, headless dolls, fear of the dark, things under the bed. It's all here, imperceptibly and gradually heightening the anxiety - building anticipation. I love it! And yes, there are two sequels. Not as good IMHO, but 🤷♀️
Fans of The Twilight Zone will also get the reference when Carol Ann has her play telephone and says, "Daddy, it's for you."
Yes, there is a rotating set in Hollywood that is specifically used for scenes where characters crawl on the walls/ceiling. It was used in this movie, The Fly, The Exorcist 3, and many others. It's rarely used these days though, as such scenes are now done with CGI.
Nightmare on Elm Street
Fred Astaire danced on the ceiling in 1951's Royal Wedding. And Lionel Richie's video Dancing On The Ceiling in the 80's.
"Oh, she's a medium or something..." "No, she's a small" LOL, you walked right into that one Simone :)
🦇I used to run the Movie Projectors in '82 and ran this one in an old theater. We had a bad storm one evening, severe Thunder Storms that scared the Bats that lived in the rafters behind the screen. A very loud clap of thunder occurred which drove them out in to the theater, half way through this movie. With the Bats illuminated by the projector, flying around over the audience (and their shadows on the screen...) You could have heard the screams from two counties over! 🦇 lol
That sounds so cool lol 🦇
That’s fantastic!
the audience being pelted by guano!!!
So, that showing drove the moviegoers batty...
This movie made the best decision I've ever seen for a ghost movie. It gave the family an obvious, immediate, clear reason to not leave their obviously terrifying haunted house. Their kid is still in there.
Also, you mentioned this movie inspiring some of Sixth Sense, which I would totally believe. Interestingly, I'd buy that some of THIS movie is also inspired by an old Twilight Zone episode, called Little Girl Lost
Well, they were already aware that the house is haunted before their daughter ever got lost. Then when they got her back, some of them decided to stay there for a while despite all the trauma b/c they thought the house was "clean". Some other reactors actually got annoyed by that decision.
20:17 When he said "we've done it before" regarding the cemetery relocation, that has happened in real life. Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven; those are only the headstones. The bodies are still buried under the New Haven green. The whole area is the original cemetery. :O
How does that work, anyway? I've never even seen a ground-set house that didn't have a basement. I'm sure there were plenty in the past, but by the time of this movie I'm sure basements would be standard in new developments.
@JakkFrost1 As far as houses without basements, a lot of houses in certain states don't have basements for obvious reasons. Florida, for example. They don't have basements because a lot of land underneath is too soft (swampland or marsh) and would frequently flood.
@@Martin_L478 are those ground-set though? Aren't they usually at least slightly raised off the ground, with a crawlspace underneath?
@JakkFrost1 Some houses, I'm sure. I'm not an architect, so honestly, I don't know.
“ Oh, she’s like a medium or something?” “ I think she’s definitely a small” …… best reaction line you’ve ever had! So funny!
I always loved the bit where it cuts back to Robbie going full apeshit on the clown while screaming like a madman. They set it up like the clown is going to be his nemesis or something but he's like "Nah, I'm done being scared".
Also the realistic approach (if you can call it that). If my assailant is soft, badly sewn together and stuffed with fluff, he'd have to literally push his arms down my throat to be a threat, scary as he might be.
Back in the 70's '80s TVs would sign off at around 1:00 2am in the morning. They would always play the national anthem and then they would go to snow.
You beat me to it hashshsh
Want to really have your mind blown? The first time (that I know of) where they did the rotating room as a physical effect was 1951 for a Fred Astaire dance number in a musical...
Great reaction as always!
This is one of THE BEST 'scary' movies ever. And yes - the couple dynamic they portrayed was so awesome; so different from a lot of the more modern couples that don't seem to even like each other, much less want to get stoned and fool around.
It's scary and amazing and incredible...love it!
There's a rumour that Spielberg was the real director of Poltergeist. This isn't true. Toby Hooper worked closely with Spielberg but made most of the choices. Spielberg said he learned a lot from watching Hooper's free welding style, unorthodox casting and blocking and how to really scare the audience. Hooper said he learned how to make a polished studio picture from Spielberg.
It's definitely debatable. I've always seen it as a 50/50 collab
So glad you guys like it so much. Poltergeist is one of my favorite movies. Such a wonderful family dynamic against this supernatural backdrop. And it always breaks my heart when I see little Heather O' Rourke on screen. She was just so adorable. I still remember reading in the newspaper she had passed at the age of 12. So sad. 😞
I love how many things y'all mention early on that would freak you out, that are things actually hit on later in the movie. (The closet, the tree outside the window etc.) That's just perfect!
Most people know Craig T. Nelson from Coach. I guess those of us over 40 anyways.
Bill Murray’s “he slimed me” gag in Ghostbusters was a reference to the “ectoplasm” on them during the bathtub scene. Poltergeist has fallen out of the zeitgeist since, so a lot of people miss that detail these days.
@@robertyeah2259The concept existed before, but the representation of the pink slime was pretty much the same. It was clear when the movie came out that they were making a joke about the pink slime from Poltergeist. Direct parody of recent movies was pretty common then and now. The thing is that Ghostbusters has outlived the movies that it was parodying.
PolterGeist Never left the ZeitGeist cuz the Geist is powerful...
The movie the parents are watching while getting stoned is called "A Guy Named Joe" starring Spencer Tracey from 1943 (remade in the '80s with Richard Dreyfus called "Always"), it's a ghost story.
This movie was inspired by a Twilight Zone episode. It was called “Little Girl Lost”, season 3, episode 26. It aired in March 1962. Spielberg was a huge fan of the series and he also directed segments of the 1983 Twilight Zone movie series which I HIGHLY recommend. It’s an anthology movie that is inspired by classic TV episodes. The last story is my favorite. Twilight Zone The Movie also has a very tragic on set accident that claim the lives of actor Vic Marrow and 2 child actors. They died n a very horrific way and it was all caught on camera. It can be viewed on YT in some documentaries but it’s very graphic.
There are more Twilight Zone episodes that might have inspired later movies, like e.g. "Twenty-Two" and "Final Destination". Or "People Are Alike All Over" ad Star Trek's "The Cage".
Sometimes they made a whole movie out of oe, like "Button, Button" and "The Box"
The Twlight Zone and the sister show Outer Limits cannot be appreciated more for their impact on SF, Horror and Mystery stories that came after.
And Twilight Zone was inspired by British horror anthology films like Dead of Night (1945), Three Cases of Murder (1955), and some other ones too. The evil talking doll featured in several horror films was first seen in Dead of Night (1945).
@@rabidfollower True, but that's just the TV side of it. Many of the best episodes were written by the great Richard Matheson and his brilliant tales have nothing to do with British horror lol.
@@timcardona9962 Everything has to do with everything, buddy, because true originality is rare. See "Dead of Night" (1945) and you'll notice undeniable resemblance to Twilight Zone. If you are the second person to do the same thing, you are borrowing the idea of someone else who did it first, whether you like to admit it or not.
@@Cau_No The Outer Limits show was better, more Science Fiction stories and better writing and acting.
The first sequel is absolutely worth a watch. The family dynamic and characters feel consistent. The scares are good.
The bad guy in the sequel is hard to forget!
@@juanausensi499 Definitely, one of the creepiest villain, for sure.
@@W4rr4X Yes, unfortunately the reason he was so creepy is that he was literally dying from stomach cancer.
@@juanausensi499 That preacher guy scared the crap out of me as a kid.
@@twiedenfeld Yeah knew about that, if I'm not mistaken, he died not long after the movie was shot.
"She must be a Medium"..."She's definitely a Small." This is why you are the best reaction duo on TH-cam!
8:48 - They're heere was a line everyone knew after that movie. The X-Files referenced it in a ghost episode (Scully teases Mulder with a They're heere), he was not as amused as her...
Yeah, before the invention of infomercials, the broadcast networks would shut down after the late night shows. They would usually do one last weather report and play the national anthem with some kind of patriotic sizzle reel.
For a lot of movies/TV you can usually just look at "Star Spangled Banner playing" as "it's about 01:30".
I still remember being up as a little kid and having cable. I'd have to switch whatever major network I was over to one of the few running all night programming (like Nick at Night)
Many probably don't remember the movie premiered June 4, 1982.
On November 4, 1982 Dominique Dunne portrayed the eldest daughter in the movie. She passed away after being strangled by her ex boyfriend a few days earlier. She was only 22
You might know her brother Griffin Dunne from "American Werewolf in London" and "After Hours". Though he has had many other roles on tv and film.
still cracking up over
George: she's definitely a small
Simone: Jesus George
“They’re here…” was a thing for, like, 10 years after this came out.
Also..
“Go to the light, Carol Anne!”
@@Uatu-the-Watcher It's still a thing. The most used tag line in movie history
@@TonyTheLoneRiderSmith “Don’t call me Shirley” is a big one.
Always found it interesting how Spielberg riffs on American Suburbia in two films that year: ET and Poltergeist and I don't think that's a coincidence
It's a coincidence. He was ramping up his producing career and he had started developing this film with Tobe Hooper, a sort of "naturalistic" ghost story. About nine months later, he comes up with the idea for "E.T." with Melissa Matheson and decides that's the film he wants to make next.
The guy who played Craig T. Nelson's boss is James Karen. You REALLY need to check out Return of the Living Dead, which is probably the greatest comedy horror film ever made. James Karen's performance is absolutely hilarious!
I know him best as the pitchman for the Pathmark Supermarket (now Stop N Shop) commercials.
"IT WORKED IN THE MOVIES!"
@@stevem7192 You mean the movie lied?!?
When JoBeth Williams’ character, Diane Freeling, falls in the pool that is being put in and the skeletons start popping up out of the water they used real skeletons. And I heard they didn’t tell her ahead of time so some of her fear is real. So messed up.
Lol, this again. They were sourced from a medical supply store, and back in the day they used real skeletons like you would see in hospitals.
People weren't as squeamish back then.
You're correct on this part. They wanted her real reactions to the skeletons popping up. This still occurs in current movies.
People would be surprised how many films used real skeletons back then, no joke it was sometimes cheaper to get a real one then fabricate one, not saying it isn't messed up, it is, but its crazy how people constantly point a finger at this movie only saying it's bad, there is sooooooo much more
@@robertjacques4117 For sure, I read a few years back that Apocalypse Now had corpses they bought off a guy who did this kind of thing for films. They thought he was fabricating them somewhere, but it turns out he was just a good 'ole fashioned grave robber and the corpses were real. LOL
Tobe Hooper has a predilection for that kind of thing.
In "the old days" TV broadcasts in the US would end around midnight. They'd play The Star Spangled Banner and then screens would go to white static (like you see on the movie poster).
"I hope we get to see what's on the other side"
(Poltergeist 2 has entered the chat)
George: "Move to an apartment"
(Poltergeist 3 has entered the chat)
Yeah, and that other side part was the most criticized about that one. The third did better with the mirror effects, but not the overall story …
It's one of those things where just bcause you can do it, does not mean you should do it …
Also, H.R.Giger worked on a creature design for the second movie, which kept him from working on "Aliens".
(Yes, the guy that designed the Xenomorph for the first one, but he did not make the Queen.)
The rotating room has been done a number of times. I think the first was Fred Astaire dancing in the movie Royal Wedding, the Lionel Richy did it in the music video for "Dancing on the Ceiling"
It always amuses me when someone makes a comment along the lines of, it's from 82, how bad can it be? Then they proceed to get the bejesus scared out of them by the practical effects! I love it! Reminds me of their reactions from watching JAWS and The Thing.
1. The National Anthem was coming from the TV to explain the white noise screen. It was the end of the broadcast day. The over the air TV station played a patriotic scene and played the anthem before turning off the transmitter.
2. Remote controls worked on ultra sonic tuning fork sound. One for on/off volume another fork for cycling around the channel dial. You could change the channel by walking through the room with a pocket full of change. Vacuuming would give the TV an epileptic fit. Those neighbors seemed a bit far apart to be controlling each others TV. But it wasn't out of the question.
3. The mom is played by Rita Wilson (a.k.a. Mrs. Tom Hanks). Interesting that Tom's soccer ball in Castaway was named Wilson ain't it?
"Its 1982 so it must be all practical" .. . not really. Before cgi there were Other kind of OPTICAL effects. Like the the image in THIS movie at 8:32 is an example. But THOSE techniques ARE dated now, and not used anymore.
I think the construction guys probably work with the Dad since he’s the main sales guy for the entire subdivision etc and know the family pretty well , that’s how I took it anyway, probably a little to comfortable but harmless, thanks
Original remote controls used near ultrasound and ultrasound instead of IR. Grandma had a Zenith cabinet TV and anytime you pressed a button the dog would take off out of the room. I could hear some of the sounds if I held it up to my ear as a kid. Anyway I don’t think you had to have line of sight for channels to change.
"Now Steven, I want you to remember way back when you used to have an open mind"
Comedic genius, set up by the previous evening where he was on the bed smoking weed and reading the Reagan book.
One of my all-time favorite movies since I was a kid. It's crazy what happened to the cast while filming and after.
I must be getting old, to remeber when TV channels signed off at the end of the night with the national anthem.
That was a rotating set, but you'll notice there are small cuts when she transfers from one surface to the next one, I dont think it was rotating during the scene. If you want to see a truly impressive rotating room scene, watch Fred Astaire's dance scene from "Royal Wedding".
_Poltergeist_ is sensationally scary. To me it is one of the scariest movies ever made. And it looks as great today as it did forty years ago.
Yeah, I'm not watching it all again except through reactions like this. This looks 100% more real then Paranormal Activity, which they tried to bill as real and where you could actually see the wires that are pulling the sheets.
Funny that you mention apartments, we like to refer to that as foreshadowing.
I feel like one of Spielberg's biggest influences on this movie is the pacing. When you look at his monster movies (Jaws, Jurassic Park, et..) they move along at such a fast clip, more like action movies. A non Spielberg movie that really captures this effect is Attack the Block. Movies that use the scary/horror aspects as a thrill, rather than to inspire terror.
Poltergeist is known as one of Hollywood's most cursed films. The "Poltergeist curse" is based on actual events supposedly that originated from the deaths of four cast members from the original film and its two sequels. The deaths occurred after the film wrapped, and none of them happened during filming.
The deaths include:
Two young cast members who died in the six years between the releases of the first and third films
Lou Perryman, who played Pugsley in the original film, was murdered in his own home with an ax in 2009
12-year-old Heather O'Rourke, who died from an undetected bowel obstruction
Other behind-the-scenes troubles include:
Mysterious malfunctions
The questionable use of human remains..
The deaths have been linked to the use of real-life skeletons in the swimming pool scene that bookends the film.
The corpses used were the kind used in medical labs, why aren’t medical students cursed?
Probably cause the curse isn’t real.
This is one of my favorite movies because of how Spielberg depicts the family. Totally normal and 100% believable. Very few movies of ANY genre has managed this. Bring out the scary stuff and it becomes more real.
Also the "ghostbusters" are real world. None of them have actually seen anything and they deal in rumors, hearsay and speculations.
Those "ghost hunter" shows, they go into a "haunted" place with video camera. EVERY TIME, they say "WOW, DID YOU SEE THAT?!" and the camera is ALWAYS looking somewhere else, "missing the action."
The little boy would've been more of a one-liner machine if they had followed Spielberg's script. Spielberg's precocious youngsters are definitely a thing (see the boys in Jaws and 1941) but the kids are somewhat anodyne here, I'd say by design.
I was 10 when I caught this on HBO. I had a ventriloquist dummy in my room. It was quickly relocated to the guest room. I used to work at a mom / pop tv station in the late 90's. At about 2am, the station "Signed Off" for the night with a video of the National Anthem followed by a message saying "We now conclude our broadcast day" and then the screen went to color bars with a tone signal non-stop. At 6am, the video played again but said "We now begin our broadcast day", went to a 5 second station ID clip and then the 6am show started. By signing off, technicians could do repairs on the transmitter and other things during the down time...
The scene where the hall seemingly elongates is what is known as a "dolly zoom effect." It was used to great effect in _Jaws_ . I think it's has something to do with physically moving the camera backwards on the dolly, while zooming in through the lens.
Hitchcock used it. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he pioneered it.
right and i believe Hitchcock might have been the 1st to do that in Vertigo with the lookin up or down in the staircase scene
"I don't even need this avocado!"
And yet, she didn't put it down. :)
Quite possibly my favorite horror movie and it still stands up today. 80s ghost effects (this, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters) look so perfect for me, the medium went backward after that - now they either have too-good CG or just a normal person. The remake is totally superfluous.
Right!?? I love what are known as ILM Clouds and spirit effects. They just look so etheriel. I remember watching a little behind the scenes and spielberg was describing to the ilm guys how the spirits should look and move, something to the effect of it should look like smoke, rings and tendrils blowing when the spirits are sucked back up the stairs and into the bedroom. So lovely.
Funniest line I have ever heard you say: "She's like a medium or something. SHE'S DEFINITELY A SMALL".
That's the first time I have laughed out loud at something you said. Well played.
Romulan Warrior Nuns.... wow. Keep 'em coming Simone!
and if you want to see a "prequel" to The Mist, there is The Fog (1980), by John Carpenter, just before he made The Thing.
And there were 2 sequels to this. Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Anne, died after making Poltergeist 3 at the age of 12 from a congenital condition.
This is the first scary movie I can remember, don't remember much except the relief of seeing the credits and knowing the movie was over, thnk I was around 4 at the time. Real young.
"Move to an apartment, it'll spread out the haunting." Try telling that to Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters
30:06 It's a rotating set with a fixed camera
Growing up, I loved this movie, but now as an adult and a mom, I get emotionally worked up/ cry a lot, because I can identify with Jo Beth’s character and the agony she’s going through at the possibility of losing her children. It gets me in the feels every time.
it's cool how movies hit different as a parent. I used to think The Shining was kinda boring until I became a father and now it's horrific to watch
It's wild how some people need to have kids in order to understand.
@@sproductionsinc Lol I know right. It's like people don't feel empathy unless they relate to it, personally.
@@WoahLookAtThatFreaki think you just cracked the code on the whole human race, but you’re a little late to the party lol.
Most empathy (especially from people who talk about being empathetic a lot) is obligatory, or a performance.
Revolving sets have been used pretty much since the birth of cinema. A trick 'borrowed' from extravagant 1800's stage shows/sets. Some great examples in the old "Buster Keaton" films.
The skeletons in the pool were REAL.
Budget problems? But like cadavers used by universities.
And THAT clown is the only clown that scares me. Ever since seeing this in the theater.
Static was all you used to see when the TV station signed off. No infomercials.
The sequel is really good too and adds a few layers of backstory to it. Definitely recommend it. I saw this movie when I was around 10 and I had nightmares for a solid month. Now I'm almost completely immune to scary movies aside from jump scares lol
I remember reading the issue of Cracked magazine (or maybe it was Mad Magazine?) that included a spoof of Poltergeist. It ended the same way - with the family checking into a hotel.
But it was the Bates Motel, run by Norman Bates.
Here comes all the trivia of how everyone got super haunted in real life after the movie
4:40 I am old enough to remember early remote controls in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They didn't use infrared light, which has been the most common from the mid-1980s until now, but instead they used ultrasound - sound at or above 20 kHz. When I was five years old, I remember being able to actually hear the signals for some of the buttons. It was uncomfortably loud and piercing, so I guess two neighbours with the same brand television set could definitely annoy each other like that if they left the porch doors or windows open.
Craig T Nelson also had a great sit-com in the late 80s/early 90s called Coach. Really good cast, and a fun show.
Also in the book the ending took the TV joke a little further by having it rolling away down the walkway.
One of my all time faves from legendary summer of 1982. It's Spielberg and Hooper making a haunted house movie but setting it in modern recognizable suburbs and bringing to it the Spielbergian sense of wonder as well as the scares via state of the art visual fx from ILM at their peak. Plus the cast are note perfect with JoBeth Williams' Diane being my fave movie mom ever. Oh and Jerry Goldsmith's brilliant score. Stone cold classic.
We had that old style TV at work and if you turned the dial really slow you could pick up cell phone conversations .. maybe late 90s.
The adorable little actress tragically passed away of an illness at like 10 years old right around the time the 3rd movie came out. I remember as a kid there where all these rumors about the movie sets being haunted.
The girl who played the older sister was strangled by her ex-boyfriend. Very sad what happened to both girls
"Hello? Realtor? You didn't TELL ME when I was BUYING this HOUSE that it was built on an Indian burial ground!!! ... No, you didn't! ... Well, that's not how I remember it! *click* He says he warned us five or six times." - H. Simpson, Bad Dream House
I wish you all could have had the experience of seeing this at the theatre. The large screen, atmosphere, lighting reflecting about and the jump scares in the crowd was something else.
In the '50's as a kid on the Oklahoma prairie our antenna, on a 50-foot pole, only got two Tulsa stations - sort of. At midnight one of them did the poem HIGH FLIGHT by John Magee, Jr. He was an American volunteer to the Canadian Air Force pre-war, and was killed training in December 1941. The little girl was Heather O'Rourke, who was also in the two sequels. She died in 1988 at age 12, and the third movie was released after she'd passed. She'd had many complications - giardiasis, Crohn's, heart problems, and finally passed due to congenital stenosis of the intestine and sepsis.
My favorite moment in this movie is when Carol Ann is in her mom's arms in the tub and says in sweetest way "Hi daddy!" as she wakes up. My heart melts everytime.💗😭
back in the day I was bored and sat shaking my key chain (i was a latchkey kid)..
and all of a sudden it turned off the TV...
old TVs and remote controls were strange... at one time I had a TV where the remote control had a cable from the controller to the TV...
Alright, kids. Old school TV remotes didn’t use infrared light or radio signals. Some used tuning forks, and the button you pressed just struck the tuning fork inside, making a sound too high-pitched for most people to hear, but that the TV could pick up. And dogs too, some of whom hated the things. And sometimes other things would naturally make ultrasounds that’d randomly interfere with TVs, like jingling keys.
I'd completely forgotten but, yes. By dropping a coin(s) into a ceramic dish near my uncle's old TV, the high-pitched "clang" noise (the ultrasonic portion anyway) would sometimes be picked up by the TV and change the channel.
The rotating house reminded me of an old song called Dancing on the Ceiling by Fred Astaire. I would check it out if anyone hasn't seen it. It's from an old movie, and Fred dances on the floor, then the right wall, then the ceiling, then the left wall, then finally the ground again. All in one take. It's so fun.
Royal Wedding is the movie, and "You're All the World to Me" is the song he danced to. It's one of the first uses in a movie of the stationary cam with the rotating set. Dancing on the Ceiling was what the number was popularly called. Lionel Richie's hit "Dancing on the Ceiling" had nothing to do with rotating sets, and had everything to do with mirrors above a bed. lol.
I love the pacing of this movie: it lulls you into thinking it's gonna have a nice gradual buildup of spookiness, and then BAM suddenly it just goes pedal-to-the-metal with trees swallowing kids and closets becoming vortexes!
Saw this in 83 on VHS.
I was only 8 and have hated clowns and creepy looking trees ever since. 😅
Clearly back then people rented movies, but many also needed to rent VCR's, because they were still fairly expensive in the early 80's.
Being 1 of 6 kids we couldn't afford much growing up.
So in 1988 it was a big deal when my Dad bought our first VCR. A (used) pop-up style VCR from a place called Encore video in Richmond BC
It's strange how some random memories are so clear.
I even remember that we rented the movies "Harry and the Hendersons and E.T that
same day.
Oh hell yes! Also, I would totally be down for a TNG series with you guys!
The thing with the mom and the walls and the ceiling is also something done in one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. They did use a special type of rotating set. I believe there's footage of how it was done in the making of stuff in the nightmare on elm street boxed set.
As far as the National Anthem of the USA, there is a wonderful moment that you can find on TH-cam. A hockey game was being played in Canada and before the game a singer was going to perform the anthems of both the USA and Canada. As she sang the USA anthem, her mic went out and the Canadian crowd immediately joined in and finished the anthem for her. It just gave me the feels to see the Canadians do that. Canadians are so cool😊
LOL "KICK IT IN THE FACE?"
"the ghost?"
"IN IT'S INCORPOREAL FACE!"
Yes, there is an even more terrifying sequel. If you can find the book to this, the movie was only maybe 1/3 of the book there is so much more to the story as far as the second movie it answers a lot of questions left from the first one.
Omg yes! The novel is tons of awesome
One of the best haunted house films ever - beyond iconic - Directed by Tobe Hooper (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE fame) and yep Spielberg exec. prod. and had a very hands-on producing job - (seme have suggested he directed this film ; you can see his influences). I saw this when I was a kid w/my famiiy and it was like a roller coaster ride - so many jolts & scares. Not dated at all (all practical f/x and yes George the scene w/Diane on the ceiling was an inverted set that rotated with the camera) Fun fact: Marty's face-ripping moment has the actual hands of Spielberg who wasn't plead w/the way the actor was doing it so he crouched out of frame and did it himself ! I also recommend THE CHANGELING w/George C. Scott and THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE starring Roddy McDowall.
Don't believe the Spielberg directing rumors... they were planted by the studio way back *before* the film was even released. Before it was even a week into shooting. That should tell ya something. Spielberg's influence is certainly felt in the writing, but Hooper's job was to pick up Spielberg's prompts and ideas and run off with them... which, if textual evidence suggests correctly, he did. The degree of improvisation and reinterpretations between script/screen, storyboard/screen is very illuminating.