YMMV / Poltergeist (1982)

aka: Poltergeist

• Adorkable: Steve actually manages this in a very dorky yet adorable scene of him role playing for Diane before bed.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The skeletons used in the film are real human skeletons. At the time of filming, it was a lot more affordable to use real ones than to fabricate them by hand. Science classes across the US also used actual human skeletons for the same reason. As costs of fabrication have drastically been reduced in the decades since, modern audiences may find the use of real skeletons to be unwholesome or even taboo.
• Awesome Music: Jerry Goldsmith strikes again.
• Common Knowledge:
  • That the scene where Dianne falls in the pool and is surrounded by dead bodies was filmed with real corpses. This is in fact only half-true as while the bodies were indeed real, they were originally medical skeletons, like the ones found in biology classrooms, that were then given makeup and painted to look like dug up bodies.
  • "The Freelings' house was haunted because it was built on an Indian Burial Ground." Except it wasn't, it was built on a cemetery which was the site of a doomsday cult and had the headstones moved but the bodies left.
• Complete Monster: Reverend Henry Kane was the insane leader of a utopian cult in the early 19^th century who led his "flock" into an underground cavern under the premise that the world was about to end, but in actuality, his only intention was to harvest their souls for his own power. As a ghost, he absorbed the energy from his followers, which fused with the evil in his heart and turned him into a monstrous apparition — a demon called "The Beast". When the Freeling family moves into the home built where the cavern once was, Kane tries to abduct the young Carol Anne and bring her to the realm of the dead, dubbed the "Other Side," where he could use her to attract more souls for his energy. In Poltergeist II: The Other Side, he keeps on tormenting the Freelings, possessing Steven's body in order to rape Diane while taking a proactive role in psychologically and physically tormenting the family as he seeks to take Carol Anne. At the end of Poltergeist III, Kane apparently abandons his pursuit of the Freelings and accepts the mystic Tangina's offer to show him into the light, but the film ends with a flash of lightning and Kane's demonic laughter, showing his supposed redemption as a sham.
• Director Displacement: It's directed by Tobe Hooper, not Steven Spielberg. Interestingly, this popular belief might be nearer the truth than expected: Spielberg produced, wrote and storyboarded the film, to the extent some actors of the film have went to say he directed more than Hooper himself (Zelda Rubinstein claims that Spielberg directly directed her scenes, although other lead actors gave accounts that differed on who did what). All sources are in agreement that Hooper had little to no involvement in post-production, with the sound editor claiming he received no input from him and composer Jerry Goldsmith saying he only interacted with Spielberg, never with Hooper.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Tangina is easily the best remembered character from the franchise. Newer viewers might forget that she's one of four supernatural experts in the film, and she's the last to be introduced. But by the third film, she was the only character besides Carol Anne to return.
• Fetish Retardant:
  • The last twenty minutes of the film feature Jobeth Williams being thrown around in her panties and a football jersey, which keeps getting pulled up; then running outside and getting muddy when she falls into the pool; then a bunch of coffins rise from the ground, and their corpses, actual corpses mind you, fall out turning the thing into a bowl of dead guy soup.
  • The scene with the football jersey becomes this when you realize that it is not just a cheap joke, but that the Poltergeist is trying to rape her.
• First Installment Wins: The first film has Carol Anne's "they're here", the chairs being stacked offscreen, the "you moved the headstones but not the bodies" plot twist and the famous climax of the house vanishing. The two sequels have endured less in pop culture.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The subtle Running Gag of Dana being a bit of a tramp became harder to stomach when the actress was murdered by her ex-boyfriend only a few months later.
  • The film focuses on Heather O'Rourke's character being trapped in a netherworld of ghosts. The actress would pass away at the age of twelve.
  • A poster in the children's bedroom wall advertises the 1988 Superbowl. O'Rourke ended up dying on the day of the '88 Superbowl.
  • The canary-burial scene's a lot grimmer when you consider that two of the three mourners will be dead in a few years.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In one scene, Steve and Diane are in their bedroom and the movie A Guy Named Joe is playing on their television. Not only is this a movie about a dead person who is still "hanging around" as the spirits in this film are, but Steven Spielberg remade the film seven years later as Always.
  • Diane gives Carol Ann an old cigar box to bury Tweety Bird; Carol Ann complains that the box smells funny. The assumption is that the old box still smells of cigars, except that later in the film, we see Diane hastily hiding the parental marijuana in an identical cigar box, implying that Diane gave Carol Ann her old stash box as a pet coffin.
• Memetic Mutation: "They're HHHHEEEE-reeee!" and "This house is clean" both became famous quotes. In a visual sense, the poster/scene showing Carol Anne hands raised in front of tv static also saw some post-film referencing.
• Moe: Carol Anne is just adorable, and the fact that she spends most of the film in life-threatening danger just endears her to viewers. Even her famous line "they're here" is said so cutely.
• Narm:
  • Steve's angry outburst towards his boss at the end when the corpses of the cemetery their house was built in start bursting from the ground during the final meltdown, revealing that he'd only moved the headstones and left the bodies exactly where they were is rendered unintentionally funny by Craig T. Nelson's hysterical delivery:
    Steve: You only moved the headstones! WHYYYY?!! WHYYYYY?!!
  • The constant screaming at the end can veer off into this for some viewers.
  • When Steve/Nelson has packed his family into their car to flee the self-destructing house, he frantically paws at his rear pockets looking for his car keys while the camera focuses on his butt, making it look for about two seconds that Steve has decided to do a brief booty dance.
• Narm Charm: Tangina's voice is funny at first, but then you get used to it.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • The best example being a man ripping the flesh off his head.
  • And of course the pool scene, with the knowledge that real corpses were used! Hell, even the mud can get the stomach queasy if one doesn't like dirt.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The power of the stacked chairs scene is ruined once you see the crewmen in the chrome stacking them.
  • Marty's face is clearly made of rubber when he's pulling the skin off his face.
  • When the house implodes and the neighbors watch with the Freelings, Only Teague casts a shadow.
  • The football game shown on the TV is pre-recorded, as it moves in slow motion.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Much of the film's presentation of televisions has become this due to advancing technology.
  • In the '80s, analog television sets would produce a screen of static when not tuned to a specific channel. Nowadays, not so much.
  • In the '80s and earlier, networks would stop broadcasting late at night, typically "signing off" by playing the national anthem before cutting to static. Younger audiences might not even be familiar with what's going on.
  • The remote-control war between Steve and his neighbor resulted from early wireless remotes working by ultrasonic frequencies. If two remotes used the same frequency as a nearby television, they might interfere with each other in this way. (In fact, by the time of the film's setting, modern infrared remotes were widespread, meaning that Steve and his neighbor both had out-of-date models.)
  • Nowadays, hotel televisions are typically tied in place with cables to prevent theft, so the final shot of the father evicting a TV from their hotel room is dated.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The construction workers who are digging the pool hit on Dana as she heads out for school (and, mind you, she's wearing her uniform, so she's very obviously a child). It's Played for Laughs as she elaborately flips them off and seems no more than annoyed, but these are still three adult men catcalling a sixteen-year-old. This is especially highlighted that even her mom seems to find it funny (though that could be her laughing at how her daughter was able to handle herself).
  • Lampshaded when Tangina has Steve threaten to spank Carol Anne to provoke a response from her on the other side. Steve is indignant at even the idea of spanking the children. Tangina obviously is a bit older and from a time when spanking was acceptable, and the movie is caught in that transition period where it would be seen as old fashioned rather than outright abusive.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Yup. Written by the same dude who did E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. And, you know... Jaws. To make things even more interesting, according to David Hughes' The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, originally E.T. and Poltergeist were one film, the never-produced Night Skies. The mind boggles. What’s more is that the film was originally given a PG rating! Though to be fair this was before the PG-13 rating, and this was one of the films that led to its creation.

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