Movies
[Vintage Video] 36 Years Ago, Chilling ‘Poltergeist’ Trailer Used Paranormal Experts to Tease the Horror
The unknown will be revealed. The visible will be seen.
As horror fans, we’ve all spent too much time debating who actually directed 1982’s Poltergeist. Was it Tobe Hooper, who is officially credited as director? Or was it Steven Spielberg, who was credited as producer but sure seems to have had a hand in the film’s directing? On that subject, I ask a more important question: does it really matter?
No matter who directed the bulk of Poltergeist, the fact of the matter is that it’s one of the best horror films ever made, introducing us to a truly likable family and then subjecting them to iconic and enduring sequences of terror. Many films over the years have tried to do what Poltergeist did 36 years ago… most have failed.
Yes, Poltergeist turned 36 today, having been originally released on June 4, 1982. In celebration of the anniversary, writer Shane Bitterling shared the film’s original teaser trailer over on Twitter, which we figured we’d share with you guys. The teaser mostly used still images from the film, alongside interview snippets with paranormal experts.
Bitterling recalls, “This is the first trailer I saw for [Poltergeist] and one of my favorites ever. The “real” paranormal experts scared the poo out of me and solidified that I would never see the movie. That lasted until June 4th.“
The unique teaser advertised that Poltergeist was “the first real ghost story,” and goddamn was it effective. It managed to spoil nothing about the movie while ensuring anyone who saw it simply *had* to buy a ticket, teasing the horror that awaited inside that darkened theater without actually providing any real peeks at it.
It worked. Poltergeist was a smash hit. Today, it’s an all-time great.
It’s been eight years since Ari Aster came onto the scene and helped usher in a new wave of horror with Hereditary, one of the rare horror movies from the past ten years that still seems to come up in conversation every single week. And it’s back in the conversation this week, with Ari Aster revealing at an event that he’s already written a prequel to Hereditary!
Ari Aster was on hand at the American Cinematheque for Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair last week, a Los Angeles festival that screened all of Aster’s movies to date. The website Gold Derby reports that Aster revealed the Hereditary prequel script during a Q&A at the event, and you can watch the full Q&A conversation below for confirmation on the website’s report.
“I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster told the crowd, referring to Hereditary. “It never feels like the right time to do it. It’s a prequel, not a sequel so I don’t know where this goes.”
Would a potential Hereditary prequel dig deeper into the mythology of demon king Paimon? Unfortunately, Aster provides no further details on his prequel approach at this time.
Aster said of Hereditary during the same Q&A, “I was just trying to make a really good horror movie.” I think most horror fans would agree that he more than accomplished that goal, and the past eight years have proven that Hereditary is an enduring classic of its generation.
We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Hereditary here on BD back in 2023.
Ron Breton wrote, “Hereditary offers a similar emotional resonance to this new generation of horror – my generation of horror– as movie-goers in the seventies when they first saw Exorcist. Much like Aster’s film, we see the incomprehensible evil wear the face of a young girl; the victim of a raw deal she had no say in, as it tears a family to its core. Sure, both films offer so many terrifying visuals that can make the hair stand up on anyone’s neck – but it also depicts intense relationships and emotions that are tangible. Real. Familiar.”
“In that familiarity lies the uncanny, ready to rear its ugly head and force us to confront thoughts and horrors laying dormant and clawing at our psyche,” Breton continued his 5th anniversary celebration of Hereditary. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s been five or fifty years. These horrors are always there, as we become pawns in its horrible, hopeless machine.”
Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and Milly Shapiro star in Hereditary. In the film, “A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.”
That’s putting it mildly, eh?!
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