Poltergeist

(1982) *** 1/2

Ye gods, what is this? A review of a horror movie?

Sigh. It is. Since last year I've had seven folders parked on my computer's usually immaculate desktop, one for each of the movies I watched for Horrorthon 2008 that I never got around to reviewing. And now it's September. I offer no excuses.

But I want to get these out, and it will be a good warm-up for Horrorthon 2009, which galumphs fast upon us. Can I write an effective review of a movie I watched more than ten months ago? We'll see. (Btw, I realized this year that the loathed April 15th marks the exact middle of the time between the end of the last Horrorthon and the beginning of the next.)

I'm totally OCD about reveiwing my flicks in the order I saw them, and the delay might be down to being hung up on Poltergeist. Here's why.

When we first got cable, it was in the middle of May, 83 or 84. I think most of the town just got cable. The monthly Cable Guide had a picture of Julie Andrews in Victor Victoria on the cover. The next month, the first full month we had cable, the cover flick was Poltergeist.

As I'm sure some of you remember, being the Cable Guide's cover movie meant that month held an opportunity to see that movie, like, at least eighty times. Or just parts of it. You'd do the HBO-Showtime-Cinemax circuit (channels 20, 21 and 22 on our old box) and oh! Here's the part where the guy peels his own face off. And before you knew it Craig T. Nelson would be throwing the TV out of their hotel room and the credits would roll and you'd watched the whole movie.

(Another important facet to the experience was Rocky III on the cover of the July Cable Guide. I saw that last fight SO many times. Learned the moves like you learn lyrics We were kids. We had nothing but time. And we watched stuff over and over.)

Poltergeist came out the year I turned 14, it was just on the cusp of scary we were meant to handle. In secret we would watch much worse stuff, but we could be public about Poltergeist. It was our horror movie, you know?

Which is why I've been hung up on it. I expected to go in and experience the delights of wearing that ancient sweater you've had since high school, all soft and comfy and perfect. In a way it kept that promise, hitting the beats in all the right places. But Poltergeist turned out to be coming from a much weirder place than I expected, and I guess that place can be none other than... 1982.

Your eyebrows arch at once, because the credits open to a tight close-up on the televised station-sign off, a montage of old newsreel footage set to The Star Spangled Banner. Yeah? Remember that? TV used to turn off at night. For a while there, there'd be no TV. It's been a long time since that were true, now that insomniacs can be marketed to. I found myself wondering how the ghosts of today would invade our sets when there isn't any static to be found.

Then, in the opening scene, a grown man is attempting to get a case of beer to Craig T. Nelson's afternoon football party, and he's doing this on a child's dirt bike. Suddenly a whole new chunk of this movie fell into my head: it's staffed with baby boomers just edging into midlife-crisis land, trying to be kids. Of course I'd never paid much attention to the adults before. I remembered the parents getting high in the bedroom, but this time I noticed how JoBeth Williams, when she sees her son walk in, takes one more quick hit before stubbing out the joint. The following morning she watches her teenage daughter openly harassed by construction workers, then smiles proudly as her daughter makes a big show of flipping them off. Julie and I looked at each other, stunned and puzzled. That would not be the last time, as the movie would at turns get slapstick, garish, or simply seem beamed in from a parallel reality.

Stuzzled?

I don't mean to be discouraging; this movie will always have some game. When this was in theaters, I would often hear the challenge "Nah, that movie isn't scary." And while Poltergeist is never all that scary, I would always back it. The filmmakers do sometimes display a lot of skill, and nothing shows that off more than the creepy scenes of Carol Anne talking to the TV. She's a great horror movie kid, the right combination of appealing and spooky. Part of Speilberg's thing back then was his ability to get great performances out of kids (I know he didn't direct this, but you can see his fingerprints), and I'm not saying Heather O'Rourke was a great actress as much as I'm saying that scene is just perfect.

"Hello? What do you look like? Talk louder, I can't hear you! Hey, hello! Hello, I can't hear you! Five. Yes. Yes. I don't know. I don't know."

Yeah, that's the good stuff.

So the next night things get cooking and you've got the tree and the closet and the evil clown from Hell, which doesn't even do anything yet. And then the iconic "Mommy? I can't see you. Where are you mommy?" comes into play. And it really is nothing less than iconic. I mean, there it is, right? Our horror movie. Little girl trapped in the TV set. Or something like that.

Unfortunately, this time the scene was somewhat weakened by the distracting HUMONGOUS BUCK TEETH on the brother there. Yikes.

"I'm so upset I wore my wife's sweater by mistake."
While it was clear that Poltergeist still had the good stuff, this viewing revealed that the good stuff is strung together by a completely haphazard and ramshackle collection of ideas. Dad makes it clear they haven't told the police anything, prompting more stuzzled looks from Julie and me, and solicits the help of the local parapsychologists. More looks from us: does every town have parapsychologists?

Of course any cred these characters could have has been long destroyed by Eddie Murphy, who mocked them in his HBO special Delirious. And when you look at these absurd people you think he was absolutely right -- they're just more white people foolishly going to the haunted house because they were invited by the white people who foolishly haven't left it yet.

"And we got the whitest black guy we could find."

"Mmmmm. Yes. To see the Spirits I like the big glasses."
For me the movie's slapdash philosphy turns on the axis of the conversation between Big Glasses Lady and Bucktoothed Brother. The music box music plays, he whispers stuff about dying so he could see Carol Anne and she whispers stuff back, Mom cries a little bit and Dad silhouettes himself significantly in the doorway. And Julie and I knit our brows more and more furiously, trying to decipher just what the hell they're talking about.

I have to pause and give props to the face-ripping scene. The effects are outdated, of course, and it's another example of the story just throwing another curve ball, but the psychology behind it is so deep. If you've ever picked at some blemish on your face, you know what I'm talking about. The real horror isn't that you wouldn't be able to stop pulling yourself apart, it's that you wouldn't want to.

The curveballs just get more curvy as the midget psychic lady shows up (sure, okay), then they all wind up fighting the closet with rope and tennis balls (sure, okay). At some point there's a big communication breakdown in which the midget lady goes all prairie preacher and there's all this business about going into or not going into "the light." Seems they really didn't prep all that well and Dad pulls on the rope and this happens.

When people said this movie wasn't scary I would always reference this moment. Leading up to this were vague mentions of a Beast figure, but nobody ever says anything about the humongous closet-sized head. What a classic surprise, like the ultimate Jack-in-the-box.

And however you feel about the crazy crap the movie's throwing at you at this point, its pinnacle of supernatural weirdness is achieved basically with a couple of spotlights and a wind machine and a big paper mache head. That is pure cinematic chutzpah, that is.

Then the corpses start popping out of the ground. This maneuver is nothing short of hilarious, watching it after all the zombie movies I've seen. When people said this movie wasn't scary I would also reference the moment when the first corpse rises from behind JoBeth Williams. It's still a good moment, but all the corpse appearances are handicapped by the fact that they don't do anything. They're just corpses. The coffins pop out of the front walk and Mom and kids scream and retreat the other way. Just walk around them! Both Raiders and Poltergeist feature scenes involving swarms of corpses that don't actually move or anything, it's just bad enough that the following is true: corpses are here.

The movie ended and Julie and I were left with lingering stuzzlement at just what the heck happened. Where was the titular poltergeist? Did the ghosts who died long before the graves were moved go into the light and then come back out? Why was JoBeth Williams rolling around on the ceiling? Who would let their child have such a demonic clown toy? That thing was obviously up to no good. (And what a delicious moment when he rips it apart: "I hate you! I hate you!" So much angry history with the damn thing. Probably a gift from a crazy aunt, like Ralphie's bunny PJs, but evil.)

I didn't watch either of the sequels because I wasn't interested of the franchising of my old movie. It still stuck the dismount in places, it still had the old magic, kind of, and it was still a little bit scary. But it's not the kind of movie that ages well and it certainly didn't look as familiar as I'd expected.

Six more to go!

Horrorthon!