Reely Bernie Faves: Poltergeist (1982)

I am only 5 years old, running aimlessly around the neighborhood cul de sac like any 5-year-old would do.

“Poltergeist is playing, Poltergeist is playing!” yells “Deedoo,” my next-door neighbor who is one year younger than me.

I have no idea what “Poltergeist” is. Is it a TV show maybe having something to do with Star Wars because Deedoo knows that’s my thing?

I come to find out quickly that it is a movie, and it’s already starting on the big screen (a 50-inch Sony Videoscope projector) inside Deedoo’s house.

It’s the mid-80s, and I’m about to be so terrified that I cry. Deedoo’s mom will tell Deedoo’s butthead older brothers to turn off the movie. They won’t. And, I keep watching through my fingers and tears.

I just have to keep watching through the freaking clown-under-the-bed scene, the tree with the hand branch that grabs that poor boy, and the guy in the glasses who pulls his face apart in front of the bathroom mirror.

I was a marked boy that day. I understood then and for the rest of my life that “horror” was to be uneasy, and the discomfort was exactly the point. It was manufactured fear to be enjoyed or loathed, and enjoying it meant to dwell in the dark parts of life, or worse—the imagination.

Being scared meant growing up a bit, and I was okay with that. Poltergeist (1982) officially initiated me into the horror movie fan club. I am still a proud member today.

After several Horror Night gatherings at my place, Poltergeist still holds up horrifically and nostalgically. My fellow movie-loving friends and family revel in its myth, both on the screen and behind the scenes:

Did they use real skeletons in the infamous muddy pool scene?

Did Steven Spielberg really step back and “produce” Poltergeist while he was preparing E.T. in a nearby neighborhood, or did he take over the camera and push contractual “director” Tobe Hooper to the side for most of the filming?

After two years of following the scholarly analysis and thoroughly documented research of Poltergeist Thoughts, I can now quite comfortably say that Poltergeist was absolutely directed by Tobe Hooper and consistent to Hooper’s artistic vision with sporadic visitations from a producer in Steven Spielberg and his suggestions both considered and scratched.

What’s with the PG rating? I understand I was only five when I first saw this thriller about a family being terrorized by a poltergeist (German for “supernatural being that causes physical disturbances in a house”), but any thriller about a family being terrorized by a poltergeist should probably skim around PG-13 territory!

Lastly, how can anyone live in the house where the movie was shot?

A few years ago, my wife and I visited my best friend and his wife in LA, and we decided to make an excursion to the iconic Simi Valley household where all the madness took place. It looks peaceful now, but there’s no way I would step in there without a good spiritual cleansing first.

According to production designer, Jim Spencer, “Steven (Spielberg) liked the house because it was at the end of the road. It was a two-story, Valley-type mock Tudor and it just fit everything. The neighborhood [was what] we call ‘Spielbergia,’ where E.T. and a couple of his other films were shot. He always wanted to be in normal residential areas.”

“Normal” is the key word for this movie. Poltergeist works seamlessly as a horror trope because it captures a normal family, living in a normal neighborhood, dealing with something most abnormal.

Craig T. Nelson is my dad’s Hollywood doppelganger, and his reactions to the hauntings that plague his family and home are natural, making the movie all too real. We ride this thing out more with him than the other family members, and when he discovers that his house was built on a cemetery where only the gravestones were moved, we’re kinda upset like he is. He’s an all-American, football-loving dad, and the supernatural affliction he has to deal with is a real pain in the ass.

I still find the eroding tree with the hand-shaped branches creepy, the clown under the bed is a memory scar, and the facial flesh pealing is just wrong. In fact, none of these things are “right” in a typical suburban neighborhood.

And, it wasn’t right that Deedoo lured me into a world of horror in our typical suburban neighborhood when I was 5 years old.

But, I couldn’t be any happier because of it.

Reely Bernie Faves:

1. Amadeus (1984)

2. Magnolia (1999)

3. Poltergeist (1982)

4. Pulp Fiction (1994)

5. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

6. The Godfather Part II (1974)

7. Weekend at Bernie’s (1989)

8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

9. Goodfellas (1990)

10. Nosferatu (1922)

11. Pollock (2000)

12. Kicking and Screaming (1995)

13. Jaws (1975)

14. Fargo (1996)

15. Citizen Kane (1941)

16. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

17. The Endless Summer (1966)

18. Back to the Future (1985)

19. Angel Heart (1987)

20. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

21. The Goonies (1985)

22. Trainspotting (1996)

23. King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

24. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

25. Bambi (1942)

26. The Paradise Lost Trilogy (1996-2011)

27. Psycho (1960)

28. Parenthood (1989)

29. Swingers (1996)

30. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

31. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

32. Smoke (1995)

33. Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

34. A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

35. Edward Scissorhands (1990)

36. City of God (2002)

37. 1917 (2019)

38. Black Swan (2010)

39. School of Rock (2003)

40. Mulholland Drive (2001)

41. Groundhog Day (1993)

42. If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

43. The Greatest Showman (2017)

44. National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)

45. The Florida Project (2017)

46. Cinema Paradiso (1988)

47. So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

48. Shadowlands (1993)

49. Steve Jobs (2015)

50. ¡Three Amigos! (1986)