Written by James M. Tate / 5/21/2015 / 1 Comment / craig t. nelson , eighties , heather o'rourke , horror , steven spielberg
STEVEN SPIELBERG PRESENTS THE ORIGINAL POLTERGEIST
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year: 1982 rating: **** |
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JoBeth Williams |
A taut combination of at least two horror sub-genres, Haunted House and Paranormal Research, POLTERGEIST exists within the suspenseful collision of either, introducing the family at a newly developed semi rural suburbia, a pivotal character in itself…
Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams are cool parents of three kids, and only two really matter. Sadly, in real life, a few years before O'Rourke's death, teenage daughter Dominique Dunne, playing the temperamental and eventually absent teenage daughter, was killed by her boyfriend – catapulting the “Poltergeist curse" that unfortunately adds to the overall pop culture spell of the original vehicle and eventual franchise.
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Nelson & O'Rourke |
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Send in the Clown |
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No Bozos After This |
But it’s Oliver Robins as young son Robbie Freeling, attacked by his infamous clown doll not long after a nightmarish tree grabs him into a menacing thunderstorm, who goes through the most hellish torture – that’s if you don’t count the guy who pulls his face off under heavy bathroom lights, supplying Tobe Hooper fans a taste of 70’s exploitation smoothly combined with Spielberg’s stylistic vision that earns genuine chills while avoiding cheap thrills, and eventually focuses on not only the house but where it was built, giving the tagline and famous dialogue “They’re here” a deeper meaning since, basically, "they" never left: it's the family that moved in.
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A great review. A great movie. I'm not a fan of the horror movie genre, very few appeal to me, but this was one of the rare ones that zapped my head wide open. I really loved this movie. Thanks to cable television when they only had one channel of HBO or SHOWTIME or THE MOVIE CHANNEL and very few movies that they would repeatedly play all day all night I saw this movie at least 100 times. I just re-watched it recently, haven't seen it in 25 years, I still love it just as much now as I did then. Great stuff.
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