It Came From the ‘80s is a series that pays homage to the monstrous, deadly, and often slimy creatures that made the ‘80s such a fantastic decade in horror.
As far as haunted house horror is concerned, Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist is a bit of a trailblazer. The haunted abode wasn’t some gothic mansion or sprawling fixer-upper, but a brand-new house built in a developing community. A house with no prior residents or history, therefore an unlikely setting for a haunting. Of course, the modern suburban Freeling family eventually discover that the community developers started construction on top of a former cemetery. Except, only the headstones had been removed, and the dead aren’t happy about their new neighbors.
The special effects-heavy horror movie initially earned an R-rating, because this was still two years before the advent of PG-13. Spielberg and Hooper talked the MPAA down to a PG, making Poltergeist quite possibly the scariest PG horror of all. It’s not hard to get why the film would ruffle the MPAA’s feathers; special makeup effects artist Craig Reardon (The Gate, Dick Tracy, Thir13en Ghosts) handled some of the grislier moments including the rotten steak and the face removal. Hooper pulled Reardon into the project after having worked with him on The Funhouse.
One of the most subtle aspects of the movie is the “why” of the haunting. Or rather, why did the haunting start well after the Freeling family had moved in and settled? Especially when their neighbors don’t seem to be dealing with any poltergeist in their own homes. The only real clue lies in the backyard pool. Breaking ground on installing the Freeling pool seems to be the catalyst in their paranormal activity, and it climaxes with Diane Freeling (JoBeth Williams) being stuck in the would-be pool’s muddied pit. The rain and mud leave her struggling to climb out to rescue her children, who are under attack inside when corpses pop up all around her.
For this horrific moment, Reardon ordered 13 biological supplied skeletons from India. Meant for classroom-type study, they came wired together for display and included a metal stand and a vinyl cover. Why real ones? Because they were cheaper than the plastic counterparts and offered variation among the skeletons. From there, Reardon and his team dressed them down, taking them from bleached specimens to gnarly corpses. He drew inspiration from E.C. Horror Comics to create their look.
Poltergeist was a perfect marriage of makeup effects and visual effects. The film’s visual effects earned an Academy Award nomination in 1983, but it lost out to Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. While Hooper enlisted Reardon, Spielberg turned to Industrial Light & Magic and visual effects supervisor Richard Edlund (Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Monster Squad) for the VFX moments that included the flying objects in the children’s room, the esophagus-like visual that engulfed a bedroom, and of course the house implosion at the end.
Making a house implode, as in suck into itself rather than simply explode, proved a challenge that took ILM a while to develop and test. In the end, they created a very detailed miniature model of the Freeling house, rigged it on a funnel-like steel cable rig, set up a high-powered vacuum system to capture any debris not pulled through the funnel, and filmed the implosion on a high-speed camera in one single take. It’s been reported that Spielberg has the remains of the four-foot-wide replica on display in his home!
There are so many reasons Poltergeist has endured as a horror classic. Jerry Goldsmith’s score, the ever-endearing Freeling family, and the unique take on the haunted house are all compelling and worthwhile reasons on their own. On top of it all, Poltergeist is a visual spectacle, a perfect union of gruesome special makeup effects and otherworldly, award-nominated visual effects that help this seminal film withstand the test of time.
