Editorials
The Mummification of Kane and the Curses of ‘Poltergeist III’ [It Came From the ‘80s]
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.
The Poltergeist series is one of diminishing returns, at least in terms of narrative. By the third entry, the premise is that poor Carol Anne’s parents could no longer stomach the paranormal trouble that came with raising her and sent her off to live with Diane’s sister Pat (Nancy Allen) and her husband Bruce (Tom Skerritt). Or at least that’s what Pat surmises, though they have no awareness of the events of the previous films. While the backdrop has shifted dramatically from California suburbs to Chicago high-rises, Reverend Kane, now played by Nathan Davis, has no trouble acclimating in his continued pursuit of Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke). While the overarching story might have waned, the series never wavers in its dedication to special effects. Poltergeist III impressively achieves a lot on a reduced budget.
After Poltergeist II, MGM approached Gary Sherman (Dead & Buried, Raw Meat) to tackle the sequel. There was no story in place, and the only criteria was that it centered around Carol Anne in an entirely new environment. Sherman brought in Brian Taggert (Visiting Hours, Of Unknown Origin) to co-write the script. From the writing stage, Sherman planned out the visuals and effects. All of the special effects were handled during production; there were nearly no VFX done during post-production, a first in this series. Handling the effects live like this made the production extremely complicated.
That doesn’t even touch upon the troubled production this franchise had developed a reputation for, dubbed the “Poltergeist curse,” that began with the death of actress Dominique Dunne after the release of the first film. As for Poltergeist III, the arduous shoot proved extra tricky due to a fire that broke out in the parking garage, Zelda Rubinstein suffered a death in her family, and Sherman had to navigate his duties from the confines of a wheelchair after breaking his foot. Then there’s the tragic passing of lead star Heather O’Rourke, who died not even a month after her twelfth birthday.
Her death came a few months into post-production, after Sherman and the studio had decided to reshoot the ending with a different special effects sequence. The news made Sherman extremely reluctant to continue, though studio pressures overruled his hesitance. For the new conclusion, they used a stand-in for O’Rourke, and special makeup effects designers John Caglione Jr. (C.H.U.D., Dick Tracy) and Doug Drexler (C.H.U.D., Battlestar Galactica) had only twelve days to prep. That gave them just under two weeks to create two desiccated corpses and a plan to handle the on-screen mummification of Kane’s head after Pat knocks it off his shoulders with a shovel. Sherman was adamant that it be handled live without any stop-motion.
For the effect, the special makeup effects team layered thin wax over actor Davis’s (fake) face, which in turn was layered upon a corpse-like articulated face that had been sculpted by legendary effects artist Dick Smith. Once the cameras were rolling, the layers were melted away under severe heat blasts. A re-edited cut of the film with the new ending was submitted to the MPAA, who bumped the film from a PG to a PG-13 rating.
In the end, Poltergeist III proved to be a box office and critical failure. Whether you’re a fan of the direction the sequel took or not, it’s hard not to marvel at its ambition. Sherman’s dedication to handling the effects live and all of the hurdles that came with that is nothing short of impressive.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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