History Film / Poltergeist

* DawsonCasting: Dominique Dunne was a few years older than sixteen.

* FridgeLogic: The mother is thirty-two. With a sixteen year-old daughter. Maybe she's not the mother after all. Might explain the height difference.
** 32-16=16. You can have a child at sixteen. It's the not ideal by any means, but it happens. And with a helpful family and partner, some are able to have a successful life.
*** Not the case here, however, as the father specifically tells a workman that his first daughter's mother is dead. (The pool-digging crew had been praising Dana's looks, and saying she must take after her mother.) Mrs. Freeling is clearly Dana's ''step''mother.
**** That doesn't happen in the movie. (maybe you're thinking of Hellraiser when that exact situation does occur.)
**** Go back and watch it again. It's the bit where one of the pool-diggers leans in the kitchen window for a cup of coffee.
***** ...Nope, doesn't happen. Diane's the one that finds the pool-digger, and the entire scene consists of her asking how it was, him saying it was great, her asking for her cup back, and him saying that she makes great coffee. There was a scene where the diggers were praising Dana's looks (before the coffee thing), and after she flipped them off they might have commented on her mother's looks, but the father never says that Diane's Dana's stepmother.
** Steve mentions to a couple he's showing a house to that they have very generous construction standards in the area. He has a neighbor who put a wading pool and an aqueduct in their yard, and he himself is having a swimming pool built...in a yard that's right over a cemetery. How is it none of the bulldozers digging up his backyard (that pool is at least ten feet deep) never encountered a coffin (No, the cigar box doesn't count)? And if the development company wants to keep the bodies a secret, why allow people to do things like that?
*** Possibly the old cemetary lay at the bottom of a gully, that got covered over by 20 feet of infill when the subdivision was landscaped. That'd make the violent emergence of those coffins in the finale even more impressive.

* {{Tearjerker}}. Julien Beck was dying of cancer during filming of ''Poltergeist II'', and it's plainly evident. It's more sad when you knew Julian and what a great guy he was in real life.

''{{Poltergeist}}'' (1982) is a horror movie directed by Tobe Hooper and co-written by StevenSpielberg, chronicling the terrifying paranormal events that surround the Freelings, an ordinary suburban family, whose home is invaded by spirits that show a special interest in their five-year-old daughter, Carol Anne.

[[caption-width-right:350:I wonder what other movies they were in? [[{{Lostalgia}} Oh...]]]]

* DirectorDisplacement: It's directed by Tobe Hooper, not StevenSpielberg.

* FunnyAneurysmMoment: Several, involving Heather O'Rourke and Dominique Dunne, but the most wince-inducing is Carol Anne's remark from the second movie: "I hope I don't grow up... doesn't look like much fun."

* HarsherInHindsight: An odd meta-example. The scene near the end where an invisible force pulls up the mother's night-shirt and exposes her panties gets laughs from kids. However when seen as an adult, you realize that the poltergeist is attempting to rape her. (In the screenplay it actually does).

* HighOctaneNightmareFuel: And HOW.
** Critics initially blew off this movie as "not scary enough" because nobody gets killed messily. But seriously - ask any parent how they would feel to see their five-year-old dragged off by malevolent spirits, unable to reach them or stop it. I'll see your chopped-up corpse and raise you parental love for a child.
*** For some specific examples: maggot crawling meat, ripping your face off, swimming in a pool full of corpses, Reverend Kane, throwing up a giant worm...
*** And let's not forget the clown doll. The FUCKIN CLOWN DOLL.
*** And the simple fact that it all unfolds in somebody's home, not out in the woods or whatever, is pretty creepy. How many people who watch this for the first time can avoid looking suspiciously at their closet doors for several nights?
*** The trouble is nothing really comes of the threat, though. Even Jurassic Park lets a couple of characters get eaten by dinosaurs. As a result, the threat posed by the Beast in Poltergeist looks pretty impotent.

* {{Lostalgia}}: What might have become of Heather O'Rourke and Dominique Dunne?

* NauseaFuel

* ParanoiaFuel: The chairs. Good GOD the chairs.

** Not the case here, however, as the father specifically tells a workman that his first daughter's mother is dead. (The pool-digging crew had been praising Dana's looks, and saying she must take after her mother.)

** This troper had figured that the souls from the cemetary were indeed present, because the grave goods that came through the ceiling were of recent origin. It's the ''monster'' ghost, Kane, whose backstory the second film filled in. So, no RetCon, just added history.

** Turns out to be a RedHerring.
** Possibly not, as there's a lot more than one spirit involved in the first movie's haunting. And the jewelery that fell out of the portal was from the cemetery, not the Reverend's cult.

* ImColdSoCold: Lara Flynn Boyle's shower scene in part 3.

** 32-16=16. You can have a child at sixteen. It's the not ideal by any means, but it happens. And with a helpful family and partner, some are able to have a succesful life.