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Poltergeist was made in 1982. I was ten. It was probably two or three years later when I saw it for the first time: it would have been a video rental. Horror movies were a staple of my childhood. I started watching Hammer House of Horror when I couldn't sleep at nights when I was about seven. We got our first VCR in the days before video rentals required an age-related certificate and I saw most of the old classics: Halloween, Friday the Thirteenth, The Exorcist as well as a couple of the movies that were later banned when the BBFC started certificating video releases.
Very few films from those days frightened me. There are not many I even remember. I remember one Hammer film featuring an African fetish (doll, not sexual); I remember An American Werewolf in London mostly for the bad joke the guy in the pub tells before everything goes bad ("Remember the Alamo"); and I remember Nightmare on Elm Street as the movie that made me give up on the genre for good...or so I said at the time.
Poltergeist is one of the few horror movies of my childhood that actually scared me. Over the past couple of years it's been shown regularly on Film Four and I keep missing it. So I finally bought it on Blu Ray DVD (bringing my total Blu Ray collection to three - it's huge!).
Rewatching over the past couple of days, I was struck by how completely outside the usual conventions of the genre this film is. Read a summary and it sounds like a typical haunted house movie. It's even got a couple of sequels which, as is traditional, are not especially good. It's got the usual quota of screams and special effects and made-you-jump moments. And yet...
( Five reasons Poltergeist is awesome. )
Lastly: the print of the film was remastered for Blu-Ray and it really shows. I don't think the effects were re-done but there's probably some digital enhancement. The quality of this new print is fantastic. I can't comment on the sound so much as there's too much ambient noise in my house for me to judge properly, but the picture is pin-sharp and has real depth, and the special effects are actually just as good as modern CGI. Totally recommended...and just what I needed this week.
Very few films from those days frightened me. There are not many I even remember. I remember one Hammer film featuring an African fetish (doll, not sexual); I remember An American Werewolf in London mostly for the bad joke the guy in the pub tells before everything goes bad ("Remember the Alamo"); and I remember Nightmare on Elm Street as the movie that made me give up on the genre for good...or so I said at the time.
Poltergeist is one of the few horror movies of my childhood that actually scared me. Over the past couple of years it's been shown regularly on Film Four and I keep missing it. So I finally bought it on Blu Ray DVD (bringing my total Blu Ray collection to three - it's huge!).
Rewatching over the past couple of days, I was struck by how completely outside the usual conventions of the genre this film is. Read a summary and it sounds like a typical haunted house movie. It's even got a couple of sequels which, as is traditional, are not especially good. It's got the usual quota of screams and special effects and made-you-jump moments. And yet...
( Five reasons Poltergeist is awesome. )
Lastly: the print of the film was remastered for Blu-Ray and it really shows. I don't think the effects were re-done but there's probably some digital enhancement. The quality of this new print is fantastic. I can't comment on the sound so much as there's too much ambient noise in my house for me to judge properly, but the picture is pin-sharp and has real depth, and the special effects are actually just as good as modern CGI. Totally recommended...and just what I needed this week.
