In the summer of 1982, Steven Spielberg released two films in consecutive weeks, Poltergeist and ET the Extra Terrestrial, which now look like mirror images of each other. Both speak of suburban enclaves visited by supernatural phenomena, one disturbing and the other a close encounter of the third kind, and both are ultimately statements from the American family’s storybooks, which becomes more strong with the crisis. The suburbs of California were a playground for Spielberg, who grew up there, and these films were like new subdivisions in his personal colonization of Hollywood.
The nature of Spielberg’s involvement in Poltergeist has been in dispute from the outset. He is recognized as the co-producer and co-writer of the film, which is based on its original story, but the director is the late Tobe Hooper, who was a major creative force or a spectator on his own set, depending on whoever. be asked. At the very least, the two had a unique collaboration that resulted in a clearly Spielbergian horror film, albeit with a bit of the malevolence of Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the spring crashes of his previous film, the underrated 1981 slasher The Funhouse. . It’s as if Spielberg wanted to scare the audience away while he kept his hairy badge, and Hooper served him in part as an alibi.
He also claimed, after Jaws, that PG-rated horror films had a potential for summer success, although 40 years later, it is remarkable how few have tried to mimic their success. (Spielberg’s 1999 abysmal remake of The Haunting from DreamWorks Pictures seems to have killed the idea forever.) Although The Amityville Horror had been a hit in 1979, the slasher trend was in full bloom in 1982. which allowed Poltergeist to participate. a lone vindication of the haunted house movie, a subgenre that has always required more punching and crunching than active bleeding. Even when ghosts get hurt in the final act, it feels as healthy as a Halloween walk.
In the brilliant opening sequence, Poltergeist strikes from the heart of every suburban home: the television. While the man of the house, Steven Freeling (Craig T Nelson) sleeps in his recliner, a TV channel closes the night with The Star-Spangled Banner and the ghostly statics that will carry her until the next morning. The family dog is looking for the remains above, which is an elegant way to introduce the other characters: Steven Diane’s wife (JoBeth Williams) and their three children: Dana (Dominique Dunne), 16, Robbie (8 years). Oliver Robins) and finally Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke), a nice six-year-old girl who wakes up and goes to the living room. Static speaks to her as the family watches her. She calls her new friends “the people of television.”
The image of Carol Anne sitting cross-legged against the snowy TV, announcing “They’re here” in her ominous singing voice, was such a powerful hook that it served as a poster and motto. But at Poltergeist, it’s part of an effective strategy to return to a horror movie through Spielberg’s wonder, because it’s not immediately clear that “they” aren’t the close friends of Close Encounters or ET. A dead canary and a folded deck are signs of trouble, but when Diane discovers that the kitchen chairs can move on their own, she is delighted. It can be a fantastic party trick.
However, when Carol Anne is absorbed in the bedroom closet, the film shifts and the Freelys are willing to try anything to rescue her from the walls of the house, where her voice can still be heard in distance. Does she walk toward the light or away from the light? Three parapsychologists from the local university are lost, but they get help from Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein), a spiritual medium who assures Diane that her daughter is alive and at home. At this point, Carol Anne’s bedroom is a zero-gravity spectrum zone and a strange spectral birth canal has opened up between her closet and the living room ceiling. The mother will have to give birth again to her child, who is only covered in ectoplasm instead of amniotic fluid.
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Williams is the tail that unites Poltergeist: funny, sexy and assertive, with Diane much more active than her husband to put herself in danger. (A one-bedroom scene where she is rolling a portion while he reads a biography of Ronald Reagan is a short story in itself.) When Tangina tells him, “I could do absolutely nothing without your faith in this world and your love for children “, Williams. shows maternal conviction to support it. She and Dee Wallace’s single mother in ET are cut from the same cloth. Your children can always count on them.
At the time, Poltergeist was a premium showcase for Industrial Light & Magic, the house of effects founded by George Lucas that sheds everything here, from subtle white fillets to full-screen spectra that suggest 3D without red cellophane and blue. glasses. Spielberg and Hooper complement the visual effects with the old-fashioned analogy of a creepy clown doll, a leafless malevolent tree, and coffins full of skeletons emerging from the ground. Poltergeist was conceived as a scaring machine in the first place, and updates the classic enchanted house movie without losing its appeal to the general public.
The revelation that the Freeling house and neighborhood were built on top of the dead (only the headstones were moved, not the bodies) suggests a darker message about American expansion, with families swallowing up land that never went to be able to claim. This is also in sync with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which also talks about strangers being punished for invading hostile terrain. Spielberg has often been optimistic about the magic and possibility of suburban life, but Poltergeist considers it from the other side of the lens.