Geek Movies From The Summer of 1982 - Poltergeist

Poltergeist was a movie that was billed as being really scary.  I remember my Dad renting this movie from the video store to watch one evening.  I wasn’t too impressed with it back in the 80’s (not sure if I saw it in 1982) and was kind of hesitant watching this Steven Spielberg written and produced (some say directed but that is a conspiracy theory of sorts) film again. But for the sake of the Summer of 82 reviews I marched on.

 

Well the plot to this one is simple.  Ghosts live in the TV and they get out and haunt the house.  They kidnap Carol Anne, Rob and Diane’s daughter. So she is in ghost dimension and the Freeling’s call in poltergeist experts to try and get her back to their dimension.  What they end up discovering is that there house and housing development is built on top of graveyard that was supposed to have been exhumed but in reality just had the graves removed.

 

Of the geek movies of the Summer of 1982 Poltergeist is my least favorite.  In fact I really do not like it.  For one I do not find it scary in fact sometimes comical.  Like the scene where the tree grabs Robbie and tries to eat him.  I thought that looked pretty stupid plus predictable.  Same with the clown doll.  I mean it was pretty predictable that the tree and clown where going to attack Robbie.  Considering how many times they focused on his fear of those two items I would have thought they would have attacked him sooner.

 

The movie is also too long in my opinion.  I would have thought it was a good place to end it right after they get Carol Anne back.  At that point they are loading up the moving truck and heading out.  Ok. Well then they decide to spend another night in the house and all hell breaks loose.  If it was me I would never have gone back into that house after all the stuff that went on.  At least they had the common sense to take the television out of the hotel room at the end.

Poltergeist just didn’t do it for me.  It didn’t scare me and I just didn’t get into it that much.  It did have some good moments in it like when Marty’s face starts falling apart while he is being sick from eating chicken that was littered with maggots.  But really I just didn’t care for Poltergeist even though I know it’s revered but I just don’t care for it.  I didn’t like it in the 80’s and I still don’t like it now.