Review – Poltergeist

One of the all-time great cinematic ghost stories, even if it does start out as little more than a movie version of the old “Little Girl Lost” episode of The Twilight Zone. This film combines Steven Spielberg’s ability to capture suburban banality with Tobe Hooper’s ability to disrupt suburban banality with his sense of the macabre. The two make a good combination, inasmuch as Hooper keeps the film from becoming ET-syrupy sweet, and Spielberg helps Hooper overcome his abysmal sense of pace and timing. The effects aren’t knock-down terrific, but they’re good sight gags. Of course, the real nightmare was actually having the what-if-the-forces-of-evil-stole-your-house question on a real estate final in law school (no doubt the professor’s largely unsuccessful attempt at humor). Oh, and then there’s the curse (two of the actors who played the kids are dead, one the victim of a bizarre crime and the other the victim of a bizarre medical mishap). Buy the tape