REVIEW: Poltergeist (1982)

Steven Spielberg is a man of many talents. He has brought us so many things from dinosaurs coming to life on the big screen to Abraham Lincoln coming to life on the big screen, and one of his more beloved endorsements is a quaint little film called Poltergeist.

Director: Tobe Hooper

Starring: JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Heather O'Rourke

IMDb

Yes, this classic horror film has been a sort of classic in the history of the genre since it came out in 1982. It was directed by Tobe Hooper, who gave us Texas Chainsaw Massacre…

But also gave us the sequel.

So you can see how I’d be skeptical upon watching a film from a man who brought us such polar opposites in quality. But Poltergeist is one of the classics and I’d be a shmuck if I didn’t give it its fair dues. Let’s take a look at this bizarre and shocking old film and see what makes it tick.

The film begins with families at Thanksgiving fighting over the TVs and changing the channel in the house next door, just like any holiday should have. I’m so glad the film has such conflicts as “what should we watch on TV, football or Mr. Rogers?” Any film without THAT level of conflict just doesn’t get full marks in my books.

I'm just struck by how pointless this whole thing is...it goes on for way too long and ends up feeling like a big silly joke, especially when the neighbor character isn't really ever elaborated on or anything. Like the movie just forgot about him.

And to add to the bone chilling drama, we also get a dead bird and the mom tries to flush it down the toilet, but gets caught by the daughter, Carol Anne:

Busted! So they give it a Viking funeral and send it off to an afterlife with 777 virgins awaiting it…well, OK, they bury it in the backyard with some flowers and a picture of the family. How touching. It’s so touching that they immediately get fish right after!

Later on the son, Robbie, is trying to go to sleep, but keeps getting scared of the freaky clown he has sitting on a chair facing his bed…so why even have the clown sitting there at all? Also he’s afraid of the tree outside which is just crazy in how twisted it is…he has blinds that he could close, but he chooses just to leave ‘em open so the tree can scare the shit out of him.

Pennywise's Disciple.

I think this kid is a masochist. Or at the very least, just wants an excuse to go in and see his parents smoking pot and acting like jackasses in the next room over, so loudly that I’m surprised anyone else in the house gets any sleep at all. Good parenting, guys! Top notch!

After a long day of Mr. Rogers, dead parakeets and buying fish, the parents like some relaxing time...

The daughter apparently sleepwalks and ends up going to sit in front of the TV and watch the static, proclaiming loudly “They’re Here!” This line is one of the film’s most memorable, but apparently the mother didn’t care enough to ask what she meant then, but instead brings it up the next morning at breakfast, because that’s great morning talk…Carol Anne replies that “The TV People” are here, which the mother just takes as nonsense I guess...too pot-addled to really care what her daughter is doing...you know, if this was made in the 2000s, it would probably heavily focus on the dysfunctional aspects of this family.

However, later on the chairs start moving by themselves! Groovy, huh?

Wouldn't they be able to hear this happening before the ghosts could make the chairs into that exact pattern? And what is the ghosts' motive for such a thing, anyway? Do they just get off on making random, nonviolent, silly acts happen?

By the time the dad, Steven, gets home, the mom has gone completely nuts about the whole thing and is excited that she can put a chair in the middle of the room and it moves across the floor by itself. They even try it with Carol Anne!

Have I mentioned that I'm not thrilled with the way the mother acts in this film? Might as well just send your daughter to school through the neighborhood infested with gang violence at this point; couldn't possibly get any less considerate of her safety.

It’s also notable that the mother, Diane, is afraid Carol Anne will sleepwalk outside and fall into the pool which is still being completed in the backyard. Uh, there are things called LOCKS for a reason, you dumbass! I think I see where Robbie gets his window closing phobia from. I guess this is just a family that thinks the whole world is a death trap. Everything can kill you, and why bother trying to prevent that? Living in fear is the only way to live! Luckily, the rest of this horror movie won’t make those views any worse. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? Is that creepy tree going to burst through the windows and attack Robbie and Carol Anne? Pfft…

And tonight on "When Trees Attack"...

Oh. Well….shit.

Then they find out that Carol Anne has been taken by the strange mystical void inside their bedroom closet. They search the whole house but end up finding out that she is actually inside the TV static she spent so much time watching in a trance earlier. This is where the film gets a little more serious, as now we see the family pushed to their limits as they try to figure out what happened and how to fix it, and also the house is pretty fully haunted, too. So they call in this paranormal research squad who helps out mostly by telling them the house is dangerous. Gee, I wonder why…

Hmmmmmm....yeah it's probably haunted. INSIGHTFUL DEDUCTIONS!!!

Also we get this scene, where one of the paranormal research dudes ends up getting a face lift…

Ohhhhh yeah, flash those sexy looks!

The next day, Steven’s boss comes around to see why Steven hasn’t been to work lately, and they go to the graveyard on the hill to talk about buying the whole plot and building more houses on it. Steven finds out that his house was built on a graveyard and that that’s probably why their house is currently haunted. So even though Steven was apparently such an integral part of the company, one of their best salesmen…he didn’t know they ever did things like this? That’s a bit hard to swallow, movie. For such a top employee, he sure doesn’t know much about the business practices of his own company!

Then they call in this lady, who is some kind of spirit medium…

And by the power vested in me...I WILL GIVE THE HAMMIEST PERFORMANCE IN THE FILM, BY FAR!

...she then makes rounds of the house and tells the family exactly what the audience has already known for several scenes now: the house is haunted, Carol Anne is stuck in a halfway-dimension where she has to stay away from “the light,” and they have to get her back. Brilliant deductions! Truly if the audience didn’t hear all this twenty minutes ago, they’ll get it now. A brilliant strategy to waste the audience’s time if I ever saw one…

Now, okay, to be honest, these are some of the best parts of the movie, as the pace slows down and the family prepares for what’s to come next. We get some nice atmosphere, some good dialogue and the characters are fleshed out more as we really see what they’re going through. The film has had a great sense of atmosphere and setting for its duration and that continues now. The balance between the fast-paced, screamy parts and the quieter and more subtle ones is very well done. So there. I CAN be honest and admit a film's good points! Ha! Proved anyone wrong who thought otherwise!

So that spirit medium lady tells them it’s time to take action, and we get the big plan of sending Diane through the portal with a rope around her waist to save Carol Anne…and it works. There’s a lot of screaming, yelling, wind blowing and bright lights, but it works, and they get shat out of the vortex covered in blood and entrails for some reason. The spirit medium then says everything is A-OK! Which will be proven very, very wrong soon…where did she get her degree again? A back alley drug dealer or something? A back alley drug dealer of spiritual medium degrees? It’s possible.

The family moves out but stays in the house for one night longer…why? After all that bullshit, they’re not just going to leave immediately and stay at a hotel? They even let the kids sleep in their same room! You know…the one with the insane hell portal in the closet that only just got closed a few hours ago? Screw the idea that it’s safe…GET YOUR KIDS OUT OF THERE, YOU MORONS! Why do I get the idea these parents are the kinds of people who would just let their kids wander around without supervision in the neighborhood chainsaw and serial rapist super-store?

As expected, the hell portal opens up again, proving that the spirit medium lady was full of shit the whole time. Just look at what these parents have been letting their kids live next to all these years:

Reminds me of the time I had a portal to hell in my bedroom....just one of those things every kid goes through, like puberty, ya know?

Looks perfectly safe to me!

And then we see what happens when Diane takes a dip in the pool…

Hey, you skeletons! Get out of here! Go swim in the other pool. You don’t pay enough to be able to use this one and it’s really inconsiderate to those who do pay the extra fees…ugh, stupid skeletons. Such freeloaders.

Then we witness the collapse of the American housing market as the owner of Steven’s real estate company comes back just in time to witness this:

It's a fixer-upper.

Somehow I doubt he will have much luck finding new tenants for this neighborhood after this.

So that’s Poltergeist, the horror film where nobody dies and somehow it still ended up becoming a classic anyway. Spielberg and Hooper just delivered a great film with this one, as it’s filled with memorable scenes, cool atmosphere and good characters. Some parts get a bit dull and maybe the movie doesn’t need to be 2 hours long, but the overall film is still worth watching for some classic scenes and very enjoyable moments. 

It's a doofy, soft-headed movie but it's got heart to it, and plus, some scenes are just great. How can anyone deny the great chaotic scenes at the end of the film, where everything is going nuts? It’s just tons of fun. And there’s a certain simple, innocuous pleasure to the film, too, that gives it a sort of personal and intimate edge over films that copy it like Insidious and The Orphanage in later years. Those films perhaps took their themes further than this one did, but they don’t really have the “heart” that Poltergeist has, and so there’s something here that you might not find anywhere else. Call it the classic ‘80s’ style of Spielberg.

Much has been said about the “Poltergeist curse” which surrounded this franchise, in which many of the lead actors died in strange circumstances as well as other people involved in the production. It doesn't factor into my enjoyment of this movie, so I didn't feel I needed to mention it in the actual review. The most tragic is probably Dominique Dunne, who played the older daughter, and who was murdered by her boyfriend before the film even came out. There really are no words for that, and I'm dedicating the review to her memory as well as to the memory of all the others who passed away in the middle of this series of films. Hats off to the lost ones of the Poltergeist series...and let us move forward, to the sequels!

Images copyright of their original owners; I do not own any of them.

Review: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Starring: Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain, William Vail, Teri McMinn, Gunnar Hansen

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072271/

I believe this serves as sort of an instruction manual – a blueprint, if you will, for horror films…if you’re asking how to start one off, how about with a grim, seedy black backdrop while a scrolling text tells the audience that what they’re about to see is an account of some teenagers who witness something truly horrible and tragic:

"The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But, had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre."

It sets an atmosphere incredibly well, and is only furthered by the weed-ridden, dusty Texas outback setting that we’re dumped into next. Everything is untrustworthy and suspicious as hell. Then we get introduced to the characters – they’re all fairly interchangeable hippy types, except for Franklin, who is an invalid and needs help getting around in a wheelchair. They’re going out to the Texas lowlands to visit their grandfather’s grave. However, this turns out to not be a good idea. Especially when they pick up a hitchhiker who cuts his hand open and sets things on fire – I think that means it’s time to kick him out, guys. Sooner than you did, at least.

Just look at this setting. Has there ever been one more fitting of a horror film? I don’t think there has. It’s just such a desolate, unsettling setting; this broken down husk of a house way out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by unfriendly woods. Pure terror. The kids all split up to explore the house, on top of the world and believing they can never really be hurt, and that’s when they’re struck down. There’s a ton of atmosphere bleeding out of every inch of this scene as they explore the grounds of this weird back country Texas lot. It’s weird, it’s minimalistic and it sets a better atmosphere than any other horror movie at the time, and even better than many in the future.

Until a giant in a skin mask appears out of nowhere and murders them all individually with hammers, chainsaws and meat hooks.

I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to see this in 1974. Even today it’s scary as shit! I mean…wow! This is just such a stark, cold-blooded scene. There’s no emotion there at all; it’s just pure, detached slaughter. Imagining what’s going through his head is even scarier, because he’s just so unpredictable. Leatherface is like a child here, and the shot when he’s sitting in that beam of light by the window is one of the best in the film. He looks at you with those blank eyes and that half-open mouth full of deformed teeth, and you’re trapped in the movie’s world for good. Nothing will ever be the same again. After this dead-end point the movie becomes a complete nightmare on all sides.

An eternity in the dark follows – chased through the woods by a chainsaw-wielding maniac. Listen to the sounds of their screams and that revving, rusty sawblade. How can you possibly have any hope? The scene where Franklin is butchered is another masterwork of complete, bile-spewing terror. Completely void of any kind of emotion, and for that, scarier than almost anything in mainstream horror cinema since.

Then we get the scene where she goes back to the gas station from earlier in the movie, hysterical, screaming for help. Good, right? Maybe she’ll finally get some help out in this insane miasma of Southern weeds and dirt and blood…maybe someone will help her out and get her to safety, the poor girl. Oh, wait, no; the guy at the gas station is in on it. Isn’t that just the ultimate gut-punch in this situation? The one guy she actually finds out in this backdoor of the world is in on the whole thing and he takes her right back to the bloody mayhem from where she already came. Look at that scene where he’s got her tied up with a bag over her head and he keeps prodding her with the broom handle. Sickening…

And of course what comes next is the Big Horrific Payoff. Because there’s no way to end these movies other than with a bang. You have to escalate the terror to its breaking point and then push it further; that’s the only way to do it. And TCM does exactly that when it puts the lead girl tied up in a chair in the middle of a room full of yammering wackos who could kill her at any minute. This scene has been influential to countless horror movies, the biggest of which being Evil Dead and House of a Thousand Corpses off the top of my head. Just pure, unadulterated chaos. Points for those creepy, bugged out shots of her eyes as her mind breaks. Just chilling. We then get the classic, iconic scene where Leatherface chases her out of the house and starts spinning around with his chainsaw as she gets away with a truck driver. It’s cool. And it is the perfect way to send off this grave, unforgettable masterpiece of the genre.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is just a classic. It’s not one of those dull movies that you call a classic because it’s old and important; no – this is still a landmark of fear and paranoia. This could be you; that’s what’s so scary about this. It could be you out there lost in the Texas outback, and nobody would ever hear from you again. Therein lies true fear. All posers beware.

All images are Copyright (c) of their original owners.

Review: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Starring: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Bill Moseley, Bill Johnson

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092076/

The legend goes that 13 years after the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they finally decided to make a sequel. And it sucks. It sucks hard. Do you need more?

Our movie starts with a few seconds of text recounting the legend of the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie, and thusly reminding us of how good that one was. We then go to an open country road where some dork wearing kooky prism-sunglasses is shooting a gun out the window for no reason. He and his companion call up a sexy radio hostess named Stretch, whose name is clearly ripe for any number of sexual innuendos, and joke around with her while playing chicken with some poor shmuck who was probably just trying to get home and eat lunch or something. Gee, listen to the way that prism-sunglasses kid is laughing…it’s like audible AIDS. He gives off this really shrill, piercing laugh that I actually think is exploding my---

Oh, hey, radio girl is playing The Cramps. That’s much better. Thank you, movie.

Buuuut it’s not long before we switch right back to the two asshole brothers who want to prank-call her again, because they clearly have nothing better to do on their trip to the Texas low country than prank call innocent people and make their lives that much more annoying. Well, movie, I’ve got to give you credit; you’ve already made me want to kill these guys myself! I can’t wait till Leatherface does it later.

And luckily we don’t have to wait that long, as he actually shows up on the road a second later and attacks them after the driver calls him a pig-fucker and tells him to back up – which Leatherface does, right before he gets out his chainsaw and cuts their car to pieces while it’s already moving. For some reason he’s wearing a weird zombie-scarecrow costume or something that covers his face, even though it falls off and you can see it’s him; that’s fucking weird. And the whole thing gets caught on Stretch’s radio tape…

The next morning we get introduced to our main character, played by Dennis Hopper. Yup, Dennis Hopper again; he’s been appearing in almost every god damn movie I’ve watched lately, like he’s fucking haunting me or something. He’s playing a washed up sheriff who has been hunting the Texas Chainsaw Massacre killers ever since the first movie and none of the other cops really take him seriously or believe anything he says. But Stretch comes to talk to him and try to help him, and he refuses…I guess he just doesn’t like publicity that much.

So then we go to a Chili Cook Off where a famous chef is winning for the second year in a row. “It’s the meat,” he says, when asked what his secret is to making it so good, with a twinkle in his eye. Gee, that couldn’t possibly be foreshadowing the fact that he’s probably a bad guy and is using cut-up humans killed by Leatherface to make it, could it? Not that I’ve ever seen this movie. Just a healthy bit of speculation, mmm.

After buying a chainsaw at the World Chainsaw Emporium, Hopper goes to meet with Stretch the radio girl at her house, apparently having changed his mind as he wants her to play the tape of the two morons getting killed on the radio for everyone to hear…he says it’s so that the law will realize that he’s not just a joke, but really, I think it would just get her in huge amounts of trouble and probably even set Hopper back further, but hey, what do I know, I haven’t been chasing the Leatherface family for 14 years. And he introduces himself as Lefty. That’s right; our crime fighting team in this movie is named Stretch and Lefty. Why does that sound more like a bad comic strip you’d find in the Sunday papers or something?

So Stretch plays the horrific murder noises on the air for everyone to hear, and that guy from the Chili competition hears it from someone on the phone while driving a truck that only Kurt Russell from Big Trouble in Little China would drive. Oh, and it doesn’t matter, but he’s actually driving with the chili open and sitting on the Texas-shaped trophy he won sitting next to him in the passenger seat. That’s…really strange. Then that night after Stretch is all alone, she gets ambushed by Bill Moseley, playing one of the Leatherface family. He stumbles around chewing the scenery and acting like a ham until Leatherface pops out of the records room, where he’s apparently been hiding this whole time – gee, how did he even stay put that long? I thought he was like some kind of barbaric savage who couldn’t do those kinds of things to save his life.

I have to admit there are a few good scenes in this whole thing that do invite a few scares and some tension. Like when Leatherface corners Stretch in the room and runs his chainsaw up her leg…but for the most part the silliness of Bill Moseley and the temper tantrums of Leatherface afterward kind of drag it down.

So then Stretch decides to follow them. While she’s driving, apparently the sound guy for the movie was so bored that he decided to put in goofy, over the top music that has nothing to do with the TCM franchise. And why the hell is she following them? What, she couldn’t just alert the law enforcement? I know they didn’t believe anything had really happened, but come on, lady, YOU COULD HAVE SHOWN THEM YOUR WRECKED UP RADIO STATION. That’s veritable proof right there! You don’t have to go after them alone, you frigging idiot!

She gets chased by a car that is driven by Hopper, imagine that, and she ends up standing right in the very spot where there’s a trap-door to cave in the ground on her. Hopper gets out his chainsaw and starts screaming his head off as he goes to attack the Leatherface family madhouse, which is full of things like giant statues of hands holding knives, twisty slides like you’d find on a playground and walls that are full of fresh human entrails – weird family decoration, but I’ll go with it. But man, Hopper is a terrible cop. Does he just go in screaming and shouting every time he wants to apprehend a suspect? Imagine how that would have worked in Silence of the Lambs. He would have been dead in two seconds. He really doesn’t think this is going to, uh, alert anyone of his presence and possibly get him killed? Well, again, I guess I’m not the expert here. He probably knows best.

Hey, kids, let’s play PLOT ROULETTE! This is a game where we spin the great wheel of movie sequel plots and see what we’re going to have to deal with. Today’s plot wheel winner is…the sympathetic serial killer! Yes, Leatherface actually falls in love with Stretch, and tries to hide her from his crazy family by putting the face of her dead best friend over hers and also putting his hat on her head, too, and then tying her up so she doesn’t get away. It turns out he’s still alive, though, even though his face was skinned off…and actually, what follows is a really touching scene that’s also equally hard to watch and brutal, as he stumbles around, having been beaten within an inch of his life and had his face cut off. He manages to untie her and even talk a little, but he falls over and dies. This scene is actually really sad, and one of the only moments in this damn movie that actually evokes some kind of emotion.

But ugh…then we have to go back to watching Bill Moseley and that Chili cook guy who is apparently the head of the family. These two characters are so damn annoying and grating to the ears that they had me hoping that Dennis Hopper would show back up again. Hell, even Stretch herself is hardly sympathetic anymore. All she does is scream and she’s the one who got herself into this whole thing in the first place, so what the hell should I feel sorry for her for? Luckily Hopper does show up – although any protagonist whose choice of attack is a chainsaw to the other guy’s ass as he runs away is kind of questionable, but I’ll overlook that if we can get this movie done with faster.

I think one of the funnier parts is how Dennis Hopper has this armory of chainsaws, all of different sizes, tucked into his uniform like guns or knives or something – I’m not sure they’re supposed to be used like that, dude. And FINALLY Stretch kills Bill Moseley and puts the audience out of their misery of his horrible performance. In a startlingly cartoonish climax, the old grandpa throws a hammer at Dennis Hopper, who ducks, so it hits Leatherface, who falls over and knocks the floor in on the Chili cook guy, who loses control of the bomb he was about to explode.

Wow. Did we just enter the fucking Looney Tunes?

But no, the movie isn’t done torturing us yet, so Bill Moseley comes back and fights with Stretch some more until she finally knocks him down the mountain and into a pipe like he’s a golf ball at a mini golf course. Phew.

This just sucks. It’s got a few redeeming factors and a couple scenes that were okay, but for the most part, it just sucks. It completely eschews the tension and atmosphere of the first movie by putting in a bunch of annoying fuckholes screaming and cackling all the time and it gets rid of the cool Texas outback setting in favor of a carnival funhouse that just isn’t nearly as impressive. There’s just nothing about this that works or creates any kind of fear. The acting is over the top and annoying, the plot is just boring and…well, that’s all I need to tell you why this sucks. I guess in between the first one and this one, director Tobe Hooper lost his marbles or just stopped giving a shit, because this just isn't any good at all. If you see a copy of this, spit on it. That's all, folks!