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The Iconic ‘Poltergeist’ Clown Doll Still Triggers Nightmares [Scene Screams]
![The Iconic 'Poltergeist' Clown Doll Triggers Nightmares as it Ushers in the True Climax! [Scene Screams]](https://bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/poltergeist1982-1.jpeg)
The restless spirit tormenting the Freeling home in 1982’s Poltergeist uses every scare tactic possible in its attempts to snatch young Carol Anne Freeling (Heather O’Rourke). That includes utilizing each family member’s worst fears against them and, in turn, ours. Director Tobe Hooper tackled two phobias at once when the poltergeist targets Robbie (Oliver Robins), ushering in the climax with the iconic, nightmare-inducing attack by the clown doll.
Diane (JoBeth Williams) and Steve Freeling (Craig T. Nelson) live the idyllic suburban life in a new planned community with their three children. That changes when paranormal activity plagues their home shortly after breaking ground on a backyard swimming pool. What begins as benign ramps up to a menacing degree fast until Carol Anne gets kidnapped by a malevolent entity dubbed the Beast. Poltergeist builds the terror and stakes until spiritual medium Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) steps in and guides the Freelings through a daunting process of entering the spirit realm to retrieve their daughter. Steve nearly derails the dangerous mission out of fear for his wife and daughter, but Diane succeeds.
The entire sequence feels like a climax, from the slime-coated spectacle of crossing over and back to the emotional payoff of Carol Anne’s return. Just as the Freelings’ joyous tears dry, their sighs of relief fade and they attempt to resume their quiet life, the Beast violently pulls the rug out from under us all.
Diane, alone in the house with Carol Anne and Robbie, draws herself a bath as the house settles down for the night. Robbie nestles down under his covers, but not before giving the ghastly grinning clown doll at the foot of his bed one last anxious glance. He tries to cover it with a jacket and misses, then tamps down his fear by rolling over and ignoring it. That’s when a creak catches his attention. The clown’s chair is empty. Hooper stretches out the tension here to an unbearable degree as Robbie slowly peers around his bed and underneath it. The tension explodes when Robbie sits back up to find the clown waiting for him, where it then elongates its arms to coil around his neck and drag him under the bed. It’s the sounding alarm that signals the Beast’s final onslaught to steal Carol Anne for good.
[Related] Mediums, Mothers, and the Miraculous Women of ‘Poltergeist’
What makes this Poltergeist scene so potent isn’t just the eerie design of the clown doll, how its face grows more grotesque and toothsome, or the way Hooper stages this scare. It’s the way the filmmaker establishes Robbie’s fear of the doll very early on in the film, biding his time until the precise moment where the payoff will achieve maximum impact. In one of the first scenes with Robbie, his trepidation toward the doll is apparent as he covers its watchful gaze before bed. Hooper ensures the viewer never wholly forgets about the doll’s existence throughout, keeping it in the frame when the camera enters Robbie and Carol Anne’s bedroom.
Even as the Beast hurls visions of rotting flesh or ghostly images upon the family, the doll remains an inanimate object. It’s a passive reminder of Robbie’s fear that lulls the viewer into a distracted complacency. Then comes the false climax. The emotional relief of the Freeling reunion feels like closure with only an uplifting epilogue remaining. Tangina did, after all, proclaim the house as cleansed of evil. By the time the doll does spring to life, we’re no longer wholly prepared.
While Robbie struggles against the coiling clown, Diane faces a gauntlet of horror to race back to her children as the Beast whips up a paranormal storm. That the clown doll’s attack serves as the starting point only adds to its power.
Of all the unforgettable scares and moments in Poltergeist, the clown doll stands apart for how Hooper patiently uses it. It’s a chilling demonstration of the Beast’s tactic for using someone’s worst fears against them and how long it’s willing to wait. Triggering both pediophobia and coulrophobia at once ensures its perpetual nightmare fuel.
Scene Screams is a recurring column that spotlights the scenes in horror that make us scream, whether through fear, laughter, or tears. It examines the most memorable, and often scariest, scenes in horror and what it is about them that makes them get under our skin.
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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