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I love the part where the one investagator is telling them about how ' A toy car rolled 2 feet in only 5 hrs" and the family is just like "Oh thats cute" then opens the door to the kids room showing all the stuff flying around like mad. Yeah no wonder her hands where shaking in the next scene lol
I saw this in the theater when it first came out. When Carol-Anne gets sucked up into the TV and you hear her voice, the voice would travel all around the theater. It really felt like she was in the theater running around lost.
Just watched this movie for the first time ever in theaters on Sunday! My theater does a retro night every week and man I'm glad I didn't miss this one. It really did sound like she was running around
It cracks me up how youngsters are so confused by the opening scene. Back in the ‘80s there was really only 3 or 4 channels and they weren’t on 24/7. Each station would end their broadcast day with the National anthem and then snow until morning. Anyone who stayed up past midnight found the opening extremely relatable. Also, RIP Heather and Dominique. They are buried a few yards from each other and I’ve visited them many times.
I love the parents in this movie a lot, I feel like they're realistic and fun but also devoted. They might not always make the right decisions, but you know they're there for their kids. (Except for the clown doll because what parent in their right mind would buy that?) Also the guy pulling his face off in the sink was a formative movie trauma for me.
I remember watching that scene while I was eating goulash at dinner back in the mid-ish 80's. I had seen it a couple times already, but it kind of hit me differently that particular time. 😄
You can really see how much inspiration the guys who did Stranger Things got from this movie. The ropes to cross between realms. Having a child missing in some other realm and only having Christmas Light--uh, TV static--to communicate with them.
The first time I saw this movie was at a theatre in Kenosha, WI. I was performing with a marionette troupe at a nearby Renaissance festival, and we camped out there. When we got back, we had a little walk about the grounds, and a good chuckle over how we felt safer sleeping in a tent instead of a house that night. Poltergeist is, I'm pretty sure, the first haunted house film to take place in a modern house instead of an old mansion.
Strange that you would mention the girl dying. She actually died at age 12 and the girl that plays the big sister was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. It was said that the movie was cursed. Was a big thing back in the day.
Yeah, Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Anne, died before the third film was even released. Dana's actress was murdered the year this film came out, only a few months later.
For iconic horror movies there's always people claiming a curse. The Exorcist and The Omen are others that have this cursed stigma to them even though the vast majority of people who worked on those movies led full lives not affected by tragedy
@@NiceDudeMovieNight Poltergeist II is a decent sequel with a really unsettling villain. The actor who played the villain died before they could finish filming, so arguably the curse continued into the second film.
My theory about why things went insane on the last night: Tangina Barrons wasn't lying when she said "this house is clean". She thought that, once all the lost souls trapped in that in-between had moved on, the Beast would be rendered powerless. But instead, robbed of its spectral congregation, the Beast lashed out and threw a massive tantrum, shoving the actual corpses up out of the ground like an abusive parent flipping furniture. Everything up until then was the human spirits; the final night was the Beast saying, "Okay, now I'm p*ssed." Trivia: the hands in the face-peel scene were Steven Spielberg's own; the scene itself was based on a prank he used to pull on his sisters as a kid. And the actor who plays Ryan is somehow Beyonce Knowles' ex-stepfather.
1:45 - The ET house and the Poltergeist house are a 35 min drive apart you can easily visit them both in an afternoon. Also it would have been very unrealistic if that little boys room wasn't filled with Star Wars merch at that time.
Robbie squeaking out “Mom! Mom!” is both heart breaking and damn impressive. I can’t speak for freezing up from trauma, but having been frozen from a panic attack unable to move, being able to vocalize at all is amazing. Big brother instinct must have kicked into hyperdrive.
Sometimes in dreams I'll be trying to talk or scream and not able to, then I wake up really trying to talk or scream. I used to talk in my sleep very clearly when I was a kid. I even sleepwalked a few times. Once I walked through the house, down a few steps and got into the car. I had been taking a nap. My mother followed me and said, "what are you doing?" I said, "gotta go to school" while still asleep. I was 8 or 9. Also around that age, my mother said that I sat up while asleep and it was very creepy when I "looked" at her. Then when I was 11 or 12, I was sleeping but suddenly sat up and started saying what sounded like an alien language, according to my mother's boyfriend at the time (we'd stay at his apartment on weekends, he had cable!). Said it scared the crap out of him lol.
That is true. Counting the time between the flash and the thunder is a way to know if a storm is approaching or moving away. If the time increases its going away, if it decreases is coming towards
22:20, Tangina Barrens is an awesome character, she knows what she's doing, she knows what evil lives inside the house, she knows how to fight off the malevolent presence.
"Fun" fact, the skeletons in the pool were actual real skeletons they dug up because "it was cheaper". The actors were not informed until after the movie had wrapped. Not to mention the actual 'Poltergeist Curse', in which actual cast and crew died horribly after filming the movie (most notably the young girl and the teenage daughter).
I remember first time i watched this a few years ago being pleasantly surprised that A) the family accepts there is a haunting so quickly and B) that it actually wasn't a Native burial ground
There was a time when clowns weren't automatically sinister. Even when I was a kid, the general schoolyard consensus was that clowns were annoying and dorky, not scary.
I can't believe i never caught the symbolism/foreshadowing of the bulldozer and the box the bird was in. Ive only seen this twice but man I need to pay more attention.
In the chair scene you can see the reflection of the crew running in to swap out the chairs with the stacked ones in metal of the sandwich maker on the counter, one of them also bumps the plant next to the counter
30:30 that’s a good idea. You two should totally have your heart rate in these reaction videos. It would be hilarious especially for these scary movies.
At 31:05 you was wondering how they do the effects for the scene where Diane is rolling to the wall-ceiling. It´s problably done with a rotating room. They use the same effects in A Nightmare on Elm Street. It´s an old trick and is also used in Fred Astaire´s famous scene when he´s dancing on the walls to the ceiling in one take.
Tobe (Tob-ey) Hooper is great and really killed it in this one. It holds up icredibly well, including the effects. This was one of my intro to horror as a kid and I would always watch it, even through my fingers when I was real young. Tobe had Spielberg on call for a lot of this and helped him with a lot of ideas but even Spielberg will tell you, this is a Tobe Hooper movie.
Yeah we noticed the mispronunciation of Tobe while we were editing 😅 You can definitely feel Spielberg's fingerprints on it but yeah it doesn't feel like HIS movie if that makes sense
It's basically a Spielberg film where it relates to the family and the kids especially, and the whole neighborhood atmosphere that is so obviously a straight copy of the neighborhood from ET. Where it comes to everything else that is otherworldly horror and death is when it passes into Hooper territory - plus if it were truly Spielberg shadow directing then it would have been John Williams composing the score instead of Jerry Goldsmith, he would have insisted.
You guys are a lot of fun! In the 80's we had never even heard the word Poltergeist so we didn't know what to expect. Some people don't give this movie enough credit or value as a scary movie because it doesn't have enough gore and killings but it's one of my favorites!
Tangina is a very fun character. Due to her size and occupation, my sister and I (when first watching the movie on HBO as high schoolers) dubbed her "the Small Medium at Large"!
First time I saw this when Tangina said “to us it is the beast”, I got such goosebumps on my arms for a good ten minutes. Zelda Rubinstein should have been nominated for this performance
The comedian Dan Cummins has a story about that clown in the kids room. Turns out, it was not just a prop for the movie and was actually a commercially available toy at the time.
A damn fine reaction video. And yeah, it's crazy how the special effects from this somehow still hold up well to this day - for the most part. The pacing was great. The actors did a fantastic job of convincing us they felt the confusion and horror. Everyone seems to fail to understand the wife though with her initial phase of excitement and wonder about how stuff moved on its own. Some people are just terrified by seeing things move without seeing any forces moving them, but a large amount of people would just think it was really cool and be amazed by it without any threats involved like throwing the chairs at people. Most of my paranormal experiences have been harmless so I look at them with intrigue and curiosity rather than fear. That said... there were certainly creepy ones I did not like in the least.
The delayed thunder fact from the beginning is actually true. Thunder is a sound shockwave created by the lightning superheating the air. Since light moves faster than sound, you see the lightning before hearing the thunder. The farther away the lightning strike, the longer it takes for the sound to reach you.
18:45 Steven Spielberg is the only man who could get away with faces melting, and hearts being ripped out in his movies, and they still be rated PG, in both Poltergeist, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Temple of Doom hahaha
@@theelder4797I know, and Steven Spielberg's films were the reason the PG-13 rating came to be lol. I think that he got away with a lot of stuff that would even be considered R back then :)
This movie and others in the franchise have been known to be cursed during production, all steming from the skeletons shown in the first film are 100% real.
Yeah? So are all the skeletons in every Indiana Jones movie from the 80s. Oh, also every movie since the invention of movies had real skeletons. 😂🤷♂️ how come theres no Raiders curse?
Some people donate their bodies to science, while others are killed and sold for parts. I would imagine that the latter make for disgruntled skeletons. We had a real skeleton in my junior high science classroom. He was not cursed. He was happy to be there. ☠️
I don't know if I'm remembering correctly but I'm pretty sure they didn't tell the actors about it till after they swam around in the pool with real skeletons lol
Tobe has a bonkers, all-over-the-place filmography. Another one of his that’s criminally underseen is Lifeforce- and it feels like the ultimate adaptation of Quartermass pulp.
The fact that they used REAL human bodies in the later scenes still blows my mind... It was cheaper than using plastic replicas... Still, one of the best scary, but not too scary, horror movies. ^^
If you guys are doing Halloween Movies. You gotta watch the classic "Killer Clowns from Outer Space" or "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes". 2 classic "bad" horror movie classics that people love
The fact that the two same dudes who did The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jaws made this film blows my mind! The scariest PG rated horror film ever made!!!!!
What so many people miss when they see this film for the first time, is that this is not really a horror film, but a film about the love and close bond of a family and how it triumphs over adversity no matter how strange or terrifying. THAT is the reason this film works so well. Sure the effects and all that are great as is the really spooky atmosphere but the clue to true intent of the movie is blatantly given right at the start - the Spielberg-ian family neigbourhood etc.
"It's not an ancient tribal burial ground" always gets me, locally we actually have a sizable area that was a Native American burial ground that was paved over and developed beginning in the 50's with full knowledge of what it was by those in charge. The area includes multiple apartments, mostly meant as student housing, and a sewage treatment plant. It was always a bit of an open secret, but when word finally spread to a larger bit of the public there was a brief fruitless campaign to rename the main affected road to something at least representing the Native American group who utilized the area. About half of it currently is dedicated as a national wildlife preserve, and so at least through that it is protected from further attempts at building on the land.
I had that stupid clown doll as a child. My parents didn’t realize I was watching the film one day, and well, I had coulrophobia for the next 22 years or so. Phobia of clowns, for those unaware of the term.
I love that, out of all the stuff flying around in the kids room during that first reveal to the paranormal investigators of the haunting, the Alien poster is the only thing that wasn't moving at all...I mean, let's face it, that poster has seen scarier shit than anything in this movie.
Poltergeist is somewhat unique in that it follows the classic 3-act recipe quite faithfully (although the second act goes quite a bit harder than is usual), but then serves up an unexpected 4th act just as the audience is feeling comfortable that the horror is over.
If you need another Craig T. Nelson that’s scary, ‘Devil’s Advocate’ with Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino. This movie legit scared my best friend back in 1998, he converted to Christianity. The most eerie part of ‘Poltergeist’ (to me) was the slow zoom and groaning music in at the cemetery scene with his boss. The shadow that cast over Steve’s eyes, concealing them, as the gravity set in as to what his company did…wow. That was the moment we were introduced to human behavior that could be as evil as the supernatural.
When we had analog antennas for tv, shows did not go all night like they do today. At midnight the national anthem would play letting us know that no more tv shows until morning. Thus after the national anthem we'd see snow until programming starts again for the next day.
Still my favorite horror movie of all time. It doesn't waste any time, has many fantastic moments, and the cool mix of Steven Spielberg family and Tobe Hooper terror is timeless (as is the effects). The remake is just totally superfluous. It's also wonderful to see a 'mom' character be such a central and useful person, which is rare for the '80s especially. Incidentally, Poltergeist released the SAME MONTH as Spielberg's E.T. - June 1982.
Lifeforce is *another* Tobe Hooper film. From the writer of Alien. It's...its something. Lovecraft, Cannon-film, naked-space-vampire, Quatermass apocalypse...is...well, its something!
I watched this alone, in the dark, as a 4-year old kid on VHS in '85. LOL Yeah, this movie made me hate scary movies for years until the summer that I was 9 when my babysitter, Andrew, who was a major horror movie buff and was going to college for film production, found out that I refused to watch any scary movie and even some scary scenes in other genres. He sat me down and made me watch every scary movie that he had on tape at the time, like the 4 Nightmare on Elm Street movies, the 7 Friday the 13th movies, the 3 Halloween movies, the 2 Alien movies, Hellraiser, Child's Play, The Black Room, Don't Look Now, Daughters of Darkness, as well as a bunch of drive-in horror flicks from the 60s and 70s . He explained every mistake made in each scene that got the cast killed, and the mistakes made by the killer that let the cast survive, how to force the killer to make mistakes, the best way to survive in various situations shown in the films, and then explained both the nature of the scene and how to determine and expect what sort of scare was coming. To this day I immediately like people who are named Andrew because he helped me conquer horror movies. Now they just tend to be funny to me, or really dumb, like Blair Witch.
I was 12 when this came out. This was released one week before E.T. I saw them both in theaters (twice). The 1st time I was POLTERGEIST was in a packed theater, the reaction was INCREDIBLE!!!! After the scene where the family is packed up and ready to go, the entire theater began to get tensed up! We knew something wasn't right: it SHOULD be over, but the story kept going. The tension got sooo thick as the movie kept going you could cut it with a knife. When Robbie sees the clown is gone...DEAR LORD!!! everyone mumbled, quietly saying: "oooh....no..." or just gasping quietly. When the clown attacks, I swear you probably heard the screams FROM SPACE!!!😂😂 IT, WAS, AMAZING!!!👻👻👻
Wooohoo! Spooky dude season! Did you know theres a curse pertaining to this movie? I wonder if Craig T. Nelson's character was the basis for Bob Parr when Brad Bird was developing The Incredibles. Hes a mad genius, so its definitely likely. Jack Jack is basically a stand in for Carol Anne minus the hodge-podge of superpowers, Dana is clearly Violet and the son is Dash, basically.
The plot of Incredibles is basically a mash-up of the Fantastic Four (a family of superheroes, with Violet's powers equal to Sue Storm's, Elastigirl's the same as Reed Richards', Mr. Incredible's like Ben Grim's, Flaming Jack Jack like Johnny Storm, etc.) and Watchmen (costumed heroes banned by the government, a mysterious force killing them off one by one, a villain whose only power is his intelligence faking an attack on a big city to achieve his goal, etc.) However, the casting of Craig T. Nelson as Mr. Incredible was almost certainly inspired by his brilliant performance here. It would have been a real reunion if Jo Beth Williams had voiced Elastigirl, but I think Holly Hunter is actually a slightly better fit. Anyway, both The Incredibles and Poltergeist are notable for their realistic portrayals of families in fantastical circumstances.
Great movie, the 2nd one is pretty good too! Worth checking out, just don't believe the stories about the movies being cursed. (There was some untimely deaths of a couple of the cast.)
the "chair-stacking" scene from Poltergeist was a single unedited take. When the camera turns away, the crew members jostle a plant, and you can glimpse their reflection in the appliances as they quickly swap the chairs with a single pre assembled glued-together stack.
Before TV was 24/7 all of the networks went offline at midnight playing the national anthem and then it just goes to snow. It went to snow because there was no signal to pick up. This is just how things were back in the '60s '70s '80s and even the '90s really maybe not the '90s
The upside down being in the same place but in a different dimension used in Stranger things is not a new concept. BUT What made stranger things work is the directors used it as a trope and then continued to use different 80s movies tropes per season and own it. That’s why the show works so well. But with out movies like this Stranger Things would not exist. It was the love for these movies and D&D that inspired them to make the show in the first place. ❤ one of my favorite shows ever. Also this movie is one of my favorite horror films.
This was officially directed by Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), but Speilberg wrote it. The were a lot of rumours that Speilberg spent a lot of time on set anyway, but he had a contract to work on E.T. instead. Another one of my favourite "horror" movies. But it's almost not a horror movie, it's more like a different take on suburban life. lol (or how things aren't as ideallic as they might seem, under the surface. This was an obvious parallel to how Speilberg felt after his parents divorced.) As always, John Williams' score is amazing, the effects (practical and optical) are great, the actors took it seriously (for the most part), and the sound design was also superb. There is a very weird edit part-way through, I think when the Dad (Steve) was sat on the floor in the kitchen, and about to make a joke about Pizza Hut or something. They edited that part out (at least in most versions I've seen), I think because Pizza Hut complained? The edit was very bad, and very abrupt, though.
9:18 - A fantastic, but very simple *practical* effect. You can probably work it out after seeing the part where the chair is whizzing across the floor later, and there are lines on the floor. I mean, the whole thing is a set after all. ;)
10:55 Yep, there it is - the gnarly cut / edit. From geektyrant... "I initially thought this might have some weird artistic decision, but nope. It was all because of Pizza Hut. The reason for the cut was because in the original scene, Steven talks about how much he hates Pizza Hut. The scene was edited after Pizza Hut took offense." "This is odd because Pizza Hut wouldn’t have been able to sue Spielberg or the studio for saying their pizzas suck, that's a first amendment issue! I’m not sure why the creative team cared so much about not offending Pizza Hut! It not like they were a sponsor of the film or anything. They crudely cut the scene at the expense of not offending them and it the one big glaring imperfection of the film."
25:40 And yes, Zelda Rubinstein (RIP) pretty much *made* this movie. lol It was a good movie to begin with, but her performance made it so much better. My sister used to cry laughing, when Zelda ran up the stairs.
34:23 - I think this was a commentary on the Reagan era, consumerism, and the rise of media BS. lol The sequel is pretty good, btw. Not as good as the first movie (which is often the case), but worth a watch. Although it does spoil the "mystery" quite a bit. I wouldn't bother at all with the third movie. It was set in a skyscraper, and it was terrible. I think the actress playing Carol Anne sadly passed away during the final production of the third movie, so it had a lot of weird editing done to get it "finished". That was probably another reason why the movie itself was quite bad.
"Carol Anne, " the beast is calling "Carol Anne, Carol Anne, " she can hear souls sing "Carol Anne, " the beast it needs you Here it comes, here it comes Reaching out somewhere from inside your TV / Shining by The Misfits
This is the movie that helped me to be able to watch scary films without covering my eyes or peeking through my fingers. I recorded it from tv and forced myself not to look away; simple exposure therapy.
The reason it cuts so fast that way in the kitchen scene is because the mom wanted to order Pizza Hut pizza and the father yelled out. I hate Pizza Hut so they had to cut that out because they were going to be sponsored in the film but after they heard that they said no cut the scene
Dudes, you are my bros. You know how to enjoy movies. It seems as though so many people just watch a movie trying to tear it apart and be as cynical as possible, but I love watching with you guys. Keep it up!
The little girl in this film actually lived in my neighborhood when this film came out. Both I and my younger brother went to the same elementary school as her; Stoddard Elementary. My brother was 2 years ahead of her. This was back when people knew you if you were in a movie, but it didn't consume your life like today with the paparazzi. There was no internet. Fan mail thru the post office was all she had to deal with.
🎙 NEW SHOW where we discuss Poltergeist deeper! ua-cam.com/video/RW41z8SeMPw/v-deo.html
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Thanks so much for watching! Hope you're all having an amazing October 🎃
you guys might wanna watch "Your highness" starred by james franco and natalie portman 😊
I love the part where the one investagator is telling them about how ' A toy car rolled 2 feet in only 5 hrs" and the family is just like "Oh thats cute" then opens the door to the kids room showing all the stuff flying around like mad. Yeah no wonder her hands where shaking in the next scene lol
I saw this in the theater when it first came out. When Carol-Anne gets sucked up into the TV and you hear her voice, the voice would travel all around the theater. It really felt like she was in the theater running around lost.
There was no 3D sound back then.
@ I know. Us oldsters had to have someone running around the theater yelling for our 3D sound. What a idiotic statement. Of course there was.
@Yes there was. It's been around since at least the 1970s
Just watched this movie for the first time ever in theaters on Sunday! My theater does a retro night every week and man I'm glad I didn't miss this one. It really did sound like she was running around
It cracks me up how youngsters are so confused by the opening scene. Back in the ‘80s there was really only 3 or 4 channels and they weren’t on 24/7. Each station would end their broadcast day with the National anthem and then snow until morning. Anyone who stayed up past midnight found the opening extremely relatable.
Also, RIP Heather and Dominique. They are buried a few yards from each other and I’ve visited them many times.
I love the parents in this movie a lot, I feel like they're realistic and fun but also devoted. They might not always make the right decisions, but you know they're there for their kids. (Except for the clown doll because what parent in their right mind would buy that?)
Also the guy pulling his face off in the sink was a formative movie trauma for me.
I couldn't eat beef for a year after watching this as a kid.
Agreed! The parents felt like real parents that were in over their heads with what they were facing
My uncle showed me this movie when I was like 11. That scene traumatized me! And he laughed his ass off 😂
I remember watching that scene while I was eating goulash at dinner back in the mid-ish 80's. I had seen it a couple times already, but it kind of hit me differently that particular time. 😄
@MartinFransson Your uncle sounds like a dick.
“I immediately love her” - that’s the Zelda Rubinstein effect! Can’t explain it, she’s just perfect. Always a joy when she appears on screen
You can really see how much inspiration the guys who did Stranger Things got from this movie. The ropes to cross between realms. Having a child missing in some other realm and only having Christmas Light--uh, TV static--to communicate with them.
The first time I saw this movie was at a theatre in Kenosha, WI. I was performing with a marionette troupe at a nearby Renaissance festival, and we camped out there. When we got back, we had a little walk about the grounds, and a good chuckle over how we felt safer sleeping in a tent instead of a house that night.
Poltergeist is, I'm pretty sure, the first haunted house film to take place in a modern house instead of an old mansion.
That's an interesting observation! Never thought about how the cliche is the "old haunted mansion" and it's just happening to a normal, modern family
Strange that you would mention the girl dying. She actually died at age 12 and the girl that plays the big sister was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. It was said that the movie was cursed. Was a big thing back in the day.
Yeah, Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Anne, died before the third film was even released.
Dana's actress was murdered the year this film came out, only a few months later.
Yeah, we didn't know about that until after we shot this video! So sad what happened to them
For iconic horror movies there's always people claiming a curse.
The Exorcist and The Omen are others that have this cursed stigma to them even though the vast majority of people who worked on those movies led full lives not affected by tragedy
@@NiceDudeMovieNight Poltergeist II is a decent sequel with a really unsettling villain. The actor who played the villain died before they could finish filming, so arguably the curse continued into the second film.
Don't forget that the "fake" skeletons were actually real skeletons and no one knew until after they finished filming.
My theory about why things went insane on the last night: Tangina Barrons wasn't lying when she said "this house is clean". She thought that, once all the lost souls trapped in that in-between had moved on, the Beast would be rendered powerless. But instead, robbed of its spectral congregation, the Beast lashed out and threw a massive tantrum, shoving the actual corpses up out of the ground like an abusive parent flipping furniture. Everything up until then was the human spirits; the final night was the Beast saying, "Okay, now I'm p*ssed."
Trivia: the hands in the face-peel scene were Steven Spielberg's own; the scene itself was based on a prank he used to pull on his sisters as a kid. And the actor who plays Ryan is somehow Beyonce Knowles' ex-stepfather.
That would make sense.
1:45 - The ET house and the Poltergeist house are a 35 min drive apart you can easily visit them both in an afternoon. Also it would have been very unrealistic if that little boys room wasn't filled with Star Wars merch at that time.
Robbie squeaking out “Mom! Mom!” is both heart breaking and damn impressive. I can’t speak for freezing up from trauma, but having been frozen from a panic attack unable to move, being able to vocalize at all is amazing. Big brother instinct must have kicked into hyperdrive.
Sometimes in dreams I'll be trying to talk or scream and not able to, then I wake up really trying to talk or scream. I used to talk in my sleep very clearly when I was a kid. I even sleepwalked a few times. Once I walked through the house, down a few steps and got into the car. I had been taking a nap. My mother followed me and said, "what are you doing?" I said, "gotta go to school" while still asleep. I was 8 or 9. Also around that age, my mother said that I sat up while asleep and it was very creepy when I "looked" at her.
Then when I was 11 or 12, I was sleeping but suddenly sat up and started saying what sounded like an alien language, according to my mother's boyfriend at the time (we'd stay at his apartment on weekends, he had cable!). Said it scared the crap out of him lol.
That is true. Counting the time between the flash and the thunder is a way to know if a storm is approaching or moving away. If the time increases its going away, if it decreases is coming towards
Poltergeist 2 explains the haunting and even expands on it. It's really good, and I highly recommend it.
The tree in Poltergeist legit scarred me for years.
Yeah. Duel, Poltergeist, and Jaws have traumatized multiple generations in multiple settings.
Did you know? The ghost effects in Ghostbusters were inspired by the effects in this movie?
22:20, Tangina Barrens is an awesome character, she knows what she's doing, she knows what evil lives inside the house, she knows how to fight off the malevolent presence.
But the house wasn't clean 😂😢
Who thought that the house was clean when it wasn't...
"Fun" fact, the skeletons in the pool were actual real skeletons they dug up because "it was cheaper". The actors were not informed until after the movie had wrapped. Not to mention the actual 'Poltergeist Curse', in which actual cast and crew died horribly after filming the movie (most notably the young girl and the teenage daughter).
I remember first time i watched this a few years ago being pleasantly surprised that A) the family accepts there is a haunting so quickly and B) that it actually wasn't a Native burial ground
Yeah it's nice to see them see supernatural occurrences and immediately understand what they're seeing 😆
That's what I really like about the sequel - it explains more about who the spirits were and who was leading them away from the light
Fun fact, that clown was an actual toy. Like... people owned that toy.
There was a time when clowns weren't automatically sinister. Even when I was a kid, the general schoolyard consensus was that clowns were annoying and dorky, not scary.
After people saw this movie they probably got rid of their clown dolls 😁😄🤡
I can't believe i never caught the symbolism/foreshadowing of the bulldozer and the box the bird was in. Ive only seen this twice but man I need to pay more attention.
In the chair scene you can see the reflection of the crew running in to swap out the chairs with the stacked ones in metal of the sandwich maker on the counter, one of them also bumps the plant next to the counter
Ace Ventura "This House Is Clean!!!!!" LOL
30:30 that’s a good idea. You two should totally have your heart rate in these reaction videos. It would be hilarious especially for these scary movies.
At 31:05 you was wondering how they do the effects for the scene where Diane is rolling to the wall-ceiling. It´s problably done with a rotating room. They use the same effects in A Nightmare on Elm Street. It´s an old trick and is also used in Fred Astaire´s famous scene when he´s dancing on the walls to the ceiling in one take.
Tobe (Tob-ey) Hooper is great and really killed it in this one. It holds up icredibly well, including the effects. This was one of my intro to horror as a kid and I would always watch it, even through my fingers when I was real young. Tobe had Spielberg on call for a lot of this and helped him with a lot of ideas but even Spielberg will tell you, this is a Tobe Hooper movie.
Yeah we noticed the mispronunciation of Tobe while we were editing 😅 You can definitely feel Spielberg's fingerprints on it but yeah it doesn't feel like HIS movie if that makes sense
It's basically a Spielberg film where it relates to the family and the kids especially, and the whole neighborhood atmosphere that is so obviously a straight copy of the neighborhood from ET.
Where it comes to everything else that is otherworldly horror and death is when it passes into Hooper territory - plus if it were truly Spielberg shadow directing then it would have been John Williams composing the score instead of Jerry Goldsmith, he would have insisted.
Note that Tobe was coked out of his gourd almost through the entire production and it's basically directed by Spielberg. :D
@@ThatBonsaipanda The writer's guild will disagree with you as well.
@@WhatAboutZoidberg Yes, the official stance is that Tobe directed it. but you can hear what the set was like from the cast and the crew.
"I know Craig T. Nelson as the coach from Blades of Glory." is a perfect Homer Simpson line.
When he said "Coach" I immediately thought of him as the Coach in the TV series "Coach".
This and Poltergeist 2 traumatized the hell out of me
You guys are a lot of fun! In the 80's we had never even heard the word Poltergeist so we didn't know what to expect. Some people don't give this movie enough credit or value as a scary movie because it doesn't have enough gore and killings but it's one of my favorites!
Tangina is a very fun character. Due to her size and occupation, my sister and I (when first watching the movie on HBO as high schoolers) dubbed her "the Small Medium at Large"!
First time I saw this when Tangina said “to us it is the beast”, I got such goosebumps on my arms for a good ten minutes. Zelda Rubinstein should have been nominated for this performance
One of the few scary movies that was done with proper suspense building and hints of what is to come being with the elements in plain sight.
The comedian Dan Cummins has a story about that clown in the kids room. Turns out, it was not just a prop for the movie and was actually a commercially available toy at the time.
A damn fine reaction video. And yeah, it's crazy how the special effects from this somehow still hold up well to this day - for the most part. The pacing was great. The actors did a fantastic job of convincing us they felt the confusion and horror. Everyone seems to fail to understand the wife though with her initial phase of excitement and wonder about how stuff moved on its own. Some people are just terrified by seeing things move without seeing any forces moving them, but a large amount of people would just think it was really cool and be amazed by it without any threats involved like throwing the chairs at people. Most of my paranormal experiences have been harmless so I look at them with intrigue and curiosity rather than fear. That said... there were certainly creepy ones I did not like in the least.
8:16 That box Tweety was in, it's like perfect symbolism and foreshadowing for what happens at the end, and the things that were done with the house😳
The delayed thunder fact from the beginning is actually true. Thunder is a sound shockwave created by the lightning superheating the air. Since light moves faster than sound, you see the lightning before hearing the thunder. The farther away the lightning strike, the longer it takes for the sound to reach you.
18:45 Steven Spielberg is the only man who could get away with faces melting, and hearts being ripped out in his movies, and they still be rated PG, in both Poltergeist, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Temple of Doom hahaha
This was before PG13, it was only PG and R when this came out.
@@theelder4797I know, and Steven Spielberg's films were the reason the PG-13 rating came to be lol. I think that he got away with a lot of stuff that would even be considered R back then :)
This movie and others in the franchise have been known to be cursed during production, all steming from the skeletons shown in the first film are 100% real.
Why would skeletons cause a curse? There are no curses 😂
Yeah? So are all the skeletons in every Indiana Jones movie from the 80s. Oh, also every movie since the invention of movies had real skeletons. 😂🤷♂️ how come theres no Raiders curse?
Some people donate their bodies to science, while others are killed and sold for parts. I would imagine that the latter make for disgruntled skeletons.
We had a real skeleton in my junior high science classroom. He was not cursed. He was happy to be there. ☠️
I don't know if I'm remembering correctly but I'm pretty sure they didn't tell the actors about it till after they swam around in the pool with real skeletons lol
LOL
Tobe has a bonkers, all-over-the-place filmography. Another one of his that’s criminally underseen is Lifeforce- and it feels like the ultimate adaptation of Quartermass pulp.
Lifeforce is nostalgic for me, along with Poltergeist and many other 80s movies. For a long time I thought Poltergeist was rated R lol. Same for Jaws.
I only rewatched this recently and had entirely forgotten just how GOOD it is.
Great reaction dudes.
The fact that they used REAL human bodies in the later scenes still blows my mind... It was cheaper than using plastic replicas... Still, one of the best scary, but not too scary, horror movies. ^^
If you guys are doing Halloween Movies. You gotta watch the classic "Killer Clowns from Outer Space" or "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes". 2 classic "bad" horror movie classics that people love
Those were Spielberg’s hand pulling the poor guy’s face apart. LOL!
It drove me nuts that you called her Carol all movie. It's Carol Anne!!😂
They mention that little Carol Anne was the only one of the kids born in that house.
The fact that the two same dudes who did The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jaws made this film blows my mind! The scariest PG rated horror film ever made!!!!!
You two definitely watch part 2!!!!!!!!!
My wife and I still bust out the "This house is clean" line all the time 🤣
What so many people miss when they see this film for the first time, is that this is not really a horror film, but a film about the love and close bond of a family and how it triumphs over adversity no matter how strange or terrifying. THAT is the reason this film works so well. Sure the effects and all that are great as is the really spooky atmosphere but the clue to true intent of the movie is blatantly given right at the start - the Spielberg-ian family neigbourhood etc.
I saw this in the theater when it was released. I was 12. It was terrifying.
This is one of my favorite movies to watch with people who have never seen it.
"It's not an ancient tribal burial ground" always gets me, locally we actually have a sizable area that was a Native American burial ground that was paved over and developed beginning in the 50's with full knowledge of what it was by those in charge. The area includes multiple apartments, mostly meant as student housing, and a sewage treatment plant. It was always a bit of an open secret, but when word finally spread to a larger bit of the public there was a brief fruitless campaign to rename the main affected road to something at least representing the Native American group who utilized the area. About half of it currently is dedicated as a national wildlife preserve, and so at least through that it is protected from further attempts at building on the land.
Bury your pets there.
This happens a lot. I think there are a couple parks in NYC that are also built over a graveyards.
National Lampoon's Horror Vacation with the Griswalds!
I wanna see that!
I had that stupid clown doll as a child. My parents didn’t realize I was watching the film one day, and well, I had coulrophobia for the next 22 years or so.
Phobia of clowns, for those unaware of the term.
The imploding house at the end was a practical effect. Remember, this was before CGI.
I hate that every single horror movie nowadays are CGI 😭
I love the bits of comedy in this, they're so unexpected in the middle of the horror
I love that, out of all the stuff flying around in the kids room during that first reveal to the paranormal investigators of the haunting, the Alien poster is the only thing that wasn't moving at all...I mean, let's face it, that poster has seen scarier shit than anything in this movie.
Poltergeist is somewhat unique in that it follows the classic 3-act recipe quite faithfully (although the second act goes quite a bit harder than is usual), but then serves up an unexpected 4th act just as the audience is feeling comfortable that the horror is over.
This is so much better than the 2015 remake.
That was just dreadful.
The remake is sooooooo Effing boring
Craig T Nelson was in a very funny show called Coach. Started in 1989 and lasted for almost 10 years.
Used to watch this a lot when I was about 9....I love Blades of Glory as well
Nevermind the dead bodies and ghosts. The most scary things in this film are the tree and the clown!
the tree scared the hell out of me when i was a kid
I know you guys mentioned Spielberg putting yoda in e.t. But did you know George also put e.t. In the phantom menace?
If you need another Craig T. Nelson that’s scary, ‘Devil’s Advocate’ with Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino. This movie legit scared my best friend back in 1998, he converted to Christianity.
The most eerie part of ‘Poltergeist’ (to me) was the slow zoom and groaning music in at the cemetery scene with his boss. The shadow that cast over Steve’s eyes, concealing them, as the gravity set in as to what his company did…wow. That was the moment we were introduced to human behavior that could be as evil as the supernatural.
When we had analog antennas for tv, shows did not go all night like they do today. At midnight the national anthem would play letting us know that no more tv shows until morning. Thus after the national anthem we'd see snow until programming starts again for the next day.
TV used to sign off late night and have no overnight shows. They often played the national anthem to conclude the days programming.
Those were Spielberg's hands ripping the flesh off the face
The most expensive phrase in movie history (at that point ;), "and the house imploded", lol
Still my favorite horror movie of all time. It doesn't waste any time, has many fantastic moments, and the cool mix of Steven Spielberg family and Tobe Hooper terror is timeless (as is the effects). The remake is just totally superfluous. It's also wonderful to see a 'mom' character be such a central and useful person, which is rare for the '80s especially. Incidentally, Poltergeist released the SAME MONTH as Spielberg's E.T. - June 1982.
I picture you dressed as her on Halloween going door to door telling people their houses are clean.
Magic Spoon cereal. LOL - That reminds me of Jim Cornette when he stopped promoting it and said "No, I don't eat that s***. It was alllll a WORK!" lol
Back in the day, for late at night, they would stop running shows, the national anthem music would play, then just static until the morning.
Lifeforce is *another* Tobe Hooper film. From the writer of Alien. It's...its something.
Lovecraft, Cannon-film, naked-space-vampire, Quatermass apocalypse...is...well, its something!
I watched this alone, in the dark, as a 4-year old kid on VHS in '85. LOL Yeah, this movie made me hate scary movies for years until the summer that I was 9 when my babysitter, Andrew, who was a major horror movie buff and was going to college for film production, found out that I refused to watch any scary movie and even some scary scenes in other genres. He sat me down and made me watch every scary movie that he had on tape at the time, like the 4 Nightmare on Elm Street movies, the 7 Friday the 13th movies, the 3 Halloween movies, the 2 Alien movies, Hellraiser, Child's Play, The Black Room, Don't Look Now, Daughters of Darkness, as well as a bunch of drive-in horror flicks from the 60s and 70s . He explained every mistake made in each scene that got the cast killed, and the mistakes made by the killer that let the cast survive, how to force the killer to make mistakes, the best way to survive in various situations shown in the films, and then explained both the nature of the scene and how to determine and expect what sort of scare was coming. To this day I immediately like people who are named Andrew because he helped me conquer horror movies. Now they just tend to be funny to me, or really dumb, like Blair Witch.
It's pronounced "TOE-bee". And Craig T Nelson was also a coach in the TV series, "Coach". This is just a great movie--fun reaction!
Yes, it's true (the counting between the lightning and thunder)!
I was 12 when this came out.
This was released one week before E.T.
I saw them both in theaters (twice).
The 1st time I was POLTERGEIST was in a packed theater, the reaction was INCREDIBLE!!!!
After the scene where the family is packed up and ready to go, the entire theater began to get tensed up! We knew something wasn't right: it SHOULD be over, but the story kept going. The tension got sooo thick as the movie kept going you could cut it with a knife.
When Robbie sees the clown is gone...DEAR LORD!!! everyone mumbled, quietly saying: "oooh....no..." or just gasping quietly. When the clown attacks, I swear you probably heard the screams FROM SPACE!!!😂😂
IT, WAS, AMAZING!!!👻👻👻
Now for the sequel. Poltergeist 2 is one of my favs
Wooohoo! Spooky dude season! Did you know theres a curse pertaining to this movie?
I wonder if Craig T. Nelson's character was the basis for Bob Parr when Brad Bird was developing The Incredibles. Hes a mad genius, so its definitely likely. Jack Jack is basically a stand in for Carol Anne minus the hodge-podge of superpowers, Dana is clearly Violet and the son is Dash, basically.
The plot of Incredibles is basically a mash-up of the Fantastic Four (a family of superheroes, with Violet's powers equal to Sue Storm's, Elastigirl's the same as Reed Richards', Mr. Incredible's like Ben Grim's, Flaming Jack Jack like Johnny Storm, etc.) and Watchmen (costumed heroes banned by the government, a mysterious force killing them off one by one, a villain whose only power is his intelligence faking an attack on a big city to achieve his goal, etc.) However, the casting of Craig T. Nelson as Mr. Incredible was almost certainly inspired by his brilliant performance here. It would have been a real reunion if Jo Beth Williams had voiced Elastigirl, but I think Holly Hunter is actually a slightly better fit. Anyway, both The Incredibles and Poltergeist are notable for their realistic portrayals of families in fantastical circumstances.
@@colemannee9898I always forget that The Incredibles was a deconstruction of superhero genres.
Great movie, the 2nd one is pretty good too! Worth checking out, just don't believe the stories about the movies being cursed. (There was some untimely deaths of a couple of the cast.)
the "chair-stacking" scene from Poltergeist was a single unedited take. When the camera turns away, the crew members jostle a plant, and you can glimpse their reflection in the appliances as they quickly swap the chairs with a single pre assembled glued-together stack.
Before TV was 24/7 all of the networks went offline at midnight playing the national anthem and then it just goes to snow. It went to snow because there was no signal to pick up. This is just how things were back in the '60s '70s '80s and even the '90s really maybe not the '90s
30:38, this was on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
When they build the pool and the canary's grave is dug up, is excellent foreshadowing.
Great reaction, Guys!! I first saw this back in 84 when I was 10 years old, and it pretty much destroyed me.
The upside down being in the same place but in a different dimension used in Stranger things is not a new concept. BUT What made stranger things work is the directors used it as a trope and then continued to use different 80s movies tropes per season and own it. That’s why the show works so well. But with out movies like this Stranger Things would not exist. It was the love for these movies and D&D that inspired them to make the show in the first place. ❤ one of my favorite shows ever. Also this movie is one of my favorite horror films.
This movie has that "real people" charm that I get with the casts in Alien and The Thing as well. Love it.
This was officially directed by Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), but Speilberg wrote it.
The were a lot of rumours that Speilberg spent a lot of time on set anyway, but he had a contract to work on E.T. instead.
Another one of my favourite "horror" movies.
But it's almost not a horror movie, it's more like a different take on suburban life. lol
(or how things aren't as ideallic as they might seem, under the surface. This was an obvious parallel to how Speilberg felt after his parents divorced.)
As always, John Williams' score is amazing, the effects (practical and optical) are great, the actors took it seriously (for the most part), and the sound design was also superb.
There is a very weird edit part-way through, I think when the Dad (Steve) was sat on the floor in the kitchen, and about to make a joke about Pizza Hut or something.
They edited that part out (at least in most versions I've seen), I think because Pizza Hut complained?
The edit was very bad, and very abrupt, though.
9:18 - A fantastic, but very simple *practical* effect.
You can probably work it out after seeing the part where the chair is whizzing across the floor later, and there are lines on the floor.
I mean, the whole thing is a set after all. ;)
10:55 Yep, there it is - the gnarly cut / edit.
From geektyrant...
"I initially thought this might have some weird artistic decision, but nope. It was all because of Pizza Hut. The reason for the cut was because in the original scene, Steven talks about how much he hates Pizza Hut. The scene was edited after Pizza Hut took offense."
"This is odd because Pizza Hut wouldn’t have been able to sue Spielberg or the studio for saying their pizzas suck, that's a first amendment issue! I’m not sure why the creative team cared so much about not offending Pizza Hut! It not like they were a sponsor of the film or anything. They crudely cut the scene at the expense of not offending them and it the one big glaring imperfection of the film."
25:40 And yes, Zelda Rubinstein (RIP) pretty much *made* this movie. lol
It was a good movie to begin with, but her performance made it so much better.
My sister used to cry laughing, when Zelda ran up the stairs.
34:23 - I think this was a commentary on the Reagan era, consumerism, and the rise of media BS. lol
The sequel is pretty good, btw. Not as good as the first movie (which is often the case), but worth a watch.
Although it does spoil the "mystery" quite a bit.
I wouldn't bother at all with the third movie. It was set in a skyscraper, and it was terrible.
I think the actress playing Carol Anne sadly passed away during the final production of the third movie, so it had a lot of weird editing done to get it "finished". That was probably another reason why the movie itself was quite bad.
"Carol Anne, " the beast is calling
"Carol Anne, Carol Anne, " she can hear souls sing
"Carol Anne, " the beast it needs you
Here it comes, here it comes
Reaching out somewhere from inside your TV
/ Shining by The Misfits
This is the movie that helped me to be able to watch scary films without covering my eyes or peeking through my fingers. I recorded it from tv and forced myself not to look away; simple exposure therapy.
The pool scene scarred me as a kid😂
The reason it cuts so fast that way in the kitchen scene is because the mom wanted to order Pizza Hut pizza and the father yelled out. I hate Pizza Hut so they had to cut that out because they were going to be sponsored in the film but after they heard that they said no cut the scene
...Thats dumb
I watched the after the reaction for blues brothers, and i think im going to try and catch them after each of these, some great conversation.
Dudes, you are my bros. You know how to enjoy movies. It seems as though so many people just watch a movie trying to tear it apart and be as cynical as possible, but I love watching with you guys. Keep it up!
Such a great film. Nothing more needs to be said.
A Vacation Horror movie would be pretty great. Cousin Eddie with a chainsaw. Clark being tempted by a succubus. The possibilities are endless.
It’s funny that you said it looks like E.T.’s neighborhood. That’s because it is. Both films were shot in Simi Valley CA.
Saw this when I was 12, and it did a number on me...kind of cathartic to watch this 40 years later and appreciate how well it was done.
Fantastic practical effects
The little girl in this film actually lived in my neighborhood when this film came out. Both I and my younger brother went to the same elementary school as her; Stoddard Elementary. My brother was 2 years ahead of her. This was back when people knew you if you were in a movie, but it didn't consume your life like today with the paparazzi. There was no internet. Fan mail thru the post office was all she had
to deal with.