Okay, so I’m not really a fall/winter kind of guy, and if you’ve read some of the recent articles, you can probably guess why. I get a little down during the months when the sun seems to go into perpetual hiding. However, I. LOVE. HALLOWEEN!!! There, it’s out. I’ve tried to stem that relationship for my wife’s sake for some time, but I love watching classic scary movies, eating way more candy than my cholesterol suggests I should,and most of all, I love that the entire holiday revolves around temporarily becoming something we’re not. What’s not to love? I’m so super excited that I get to review some sweet scary films for the next few weeks because I love scary movies.
Now I have another confession to make, I haven’t found a lot of horror films that I can really enjoy. You’ve got to give me the best, the best, the best, the best, the best films or else I just snooze through them (sorry, couldn’t help it). My love for horror movies runs so deep that I spent the majority of my youth dissecting them, and learning what goes into making them. Eventually, it got to the point where I unlocked the underlying formula, and after that happened, it was like playing DOOM on god mode. I could accurately predict plot developments, character archetypes, and jump moments well in advance. They just weren’t scary anymore. It’s gotten especially bad more recently with the discovery and advent of infrasound. For those who don’t have a degree in audio engineering, infrasound is any frequency that the human ear is physiologically incapable of hearing audibly. This can be either above our range, or below Typically when it comes up in conversation,people are referring to those sounds below the 20 hertz range, which, while inaudible to the human ear, can actually do some pretty wacky things to our bodies anyway. First, and most disturbing, those subsonic frequencies can make our internal organs vibrate. However, psychologically, they can make us agitated, fill us with dread, and creep us the crap out. Once movie directors caught on to this, they started using it as a prominent element in horror films.That’s a STUPID idea. Sure it makes the theater experience more terrifying, but once I’m at home, your movie just vomited out all it’s teeth and I’m left with a crappy movie with no plot, bad acting, and zero horror. It’s a blight to all horror films everywhere. *Whew!*
That’s my really round about way of saying, if I’m praising a horror film, it’s probably not a very recent film. I trend towards the classics. I love the films that have to stand on their own merits because things like CGI and infrasound hadn’t been developed. I really appreciate when a director takes time to get me absorbed in the story and the characters as well as the action because I feel like then I’m having an all around experience, and that the movie isn’t just relying on one gimmicky thing. That’s not to say that I haven’t seen some really good horror movies that have come out in recent years, it’s just that finding the good ones is like wading through the house of a thousand corpses. Most of them stink. Let me also note that I have a rather long list of scary movies that I really enjoy so narrowing all of them down to a handful that I could cover throughout the month was really hard. But, that just means that there will be more to review next year! With all of that out of the way, let’s jump in and look at a spooooky movie!
Poltergeist is by far, one of my favorite horror films of all time. It was released in 1982, but it still holds up even today. For those who’ve never seen it, the movie revolves around the Freeling family. They live, presumably, somewhere in southern California in a new fangled subdivision that Steve Freeling’s, the dad’s, construction company has been building for a few years. Pretty early on, we find out that the Freelings are putting in a swimming pool, and it’s not very long after that that creepy things start happening around the homestead. The youngest daughter, Carol Anne, starts having conversations with an unseen gaggle of entities via the TV. Furniture starts inexplicably moving, things start going bump in the night, and the family up to this point is able to just shrug it off. However, it doesn’t take very long for stuff to get real. There’s a mysterious storm, a tree tries to eat Robbie, the son and middle child, and Carol Anne gets sucked into purgatory through the closet. There’s a joke there somewhere, but for the life of me, I can’t seem to put my finger on one.
Anyway, presumably, a short time after all of this happens, Steve contacts some paranormal investigators. They come in like 80s Ghosthunters and set up to make observations overnight. They attempt to contact Carol Anne on the ‘other side’ and tell her that she should, in fact, not enter the light that leads into the afterlife. One of the guys gets bitten on the stomach, and the same guy seems a steak inch across a countertop. Then while he’s washing his hands, he’s given a hallucination where he sees his skin rip from his skull. Seriously guys, this guy gets dumped on This movie takes quite a bit of time to show how the supernatural things are affecting the family and their lives. The oldest daughter goes to live with her boyfriend’s family. This isn’t explicitly stated, but based on the size of the hickey on her neck when she returns, it’s a pretty safe bet. The son is sent.... Somewhere. I’m not sure it’s ever actually mentioned. And Steve ends up looking like rotten crap warmed over. In the meantime, the paranormal investigator guy that gets dumped on leaves the investigation for reasons. This prompts the group to bring in a new person, the most memorable character of the entire film, Tangina. I’m sure you know her even if you don’t recognize the name. She’s the short woman with the huge glasses. Anyway, she saunters on the scene like she thinks that she’s some kind of bad ass, and she takes over the operation.
Through her, we learn that there are a whole ton of restless spirits just chilling in purgatory around the house, and they’ve been feeding off of Carol Anne’s life force. So they concoct a plan to get Carol Anne back, and trick the restless spirits into crossing over. Oh yeah, I guess I should mention that the reason all of this is happening, as we find out, is that the contracting company that’s been building the subdivision built that particular portion of the thing on an ancient Native American burial ground. They moved all of the head stones, but the left all of the bodies. Oops… So where were we? Oh yeah, Carol Anne’s mom, Diane, ties a rope around her waist, enters the purgatory thing thing through the closet, (Insert joke here.) and saves Carol Anne, but only after we get a fabulous sequence of a creepy giant skull trying to eat Steve. The day appears to be saved! YAY! But then they spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince us that everything is as it used to be, which of course just means that it’s not. The night that they’re supposed to leave, the closet tries to eat the whole family. Steve is off getting things squared away so that he can tell his bosses to suck it, Diane is taking a bath, and then the kids start wailing. Steve gets home just in time to see strobe lights going off in all of the windows and he rushes in to save everyone, barely because it’s supposed to be suspenseful. They pile in the car and pull out of the garage just in time for the oldest daughter, Diana to return with her ginormous hickey. She piles in and they start to peel rubber just as the whatever that was terrorizing the house sucks the whole structure into a supernatural void! The whole house just implodes on itself! It’s pretty spectacular. But they peel off, and check into a Holiday Inn, and that’s it. Oh, there’s one last gag where Steve puts the TV outside the room, and that’s it.
Sarcasm aside, this is a really fantastic movie. It’s a part of a trilogy and I personally think they’re all pretty good. They do reuse a lot of the same type of material, but to me, it never gets old. What’s kept this franchise popular is the supposed curse. This movie was released in June 1982. In November 1982, the woman who played Diana, the daughter, was strangled to death by her boyfriend. She was 22. Two actors from the second movie passed away shortly after it was released. But the creepiest associated death is that of Heather O’Rorke, who played Carol Anne. She died a week before filming was supposed to wrap due to an undiagnosed bowel obstruction. She was 12. There’s really no correlation to speak of there, but a good urban legend has a way of staying alive, and this one is no different.
From a technical perspective, this is a really great movie. The special effects still hold up well despite their age. The ambience that makes the movie unsettling still works. The acting is great, the dialog is good, and the story is tight. As I said before, I love these older horror movies because they had to rely on solid storytelling and this one is no different. It delivers in all the right ways! It’s truly a treat to watch start to finish, and it’s got one of the best dialog exchanges ever. At the point that Diane goes into purgatory, she and Tangina have a disagreement as to who should go. Tangina makes the argument that Diane has never done anything like what’s about to be done. Diane retorts that neither had Tangina. Tangina pauses for a moment and says something to the effect of, “You’re right. You go!” It’s great! Watch it for that line alone! Also, the theme of this movie is particularly awesome. Where most horror films solve problems via violence of some sort, this movie ultimately solves it's main problems via the strength of the family. It's a rare message coming from Hollywood, and especially from a horror movie. Stay tuned for next week as we continue our Spooky Spookfest!
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