POLTERGEIST (1982)
Label: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: PG
Duration: 114 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen
Director: Tobe Hooper
Cast: JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Zelda Rubinstein, Beatrice Straight, Heather O’Rourke.
Poltergeist, the 1982 was written and produced by Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and directed by Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and you can see those two disparate world's colliding here. It's got the Spielbergian suburban fantasy elements mixed with the visceral touch of Hooper. There's long been a raging debate about who actually directed the film, and I don't have any insight into it, other than to say it's my belief Hooper helmed it, but Spielberg both write and produced it, so of course it has his touch, they're baked into it from a script level. The real debate for me was how did this face-peeling slice of kinder-trauma get a PG-rating!?!
In it suburbanites Steve (Craig T. Nelson, Poltergeist II) and Diane (JoBeth Williams, Stir Crazy) live an idyllic suburban life with their three kiddos; Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke, Poltergeist III), Dana (Dominique Dunn, TV movie Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker) and Rob (Oliver Robins, Airplane II: The Sequel), when their life is suddenly disturbed by paranormal activity within their home. It's starts off as more of a curiosity at first with low-level poltergeist activity that seems fun, but quickly turns into a nightmarish wave of terror that sets their world on fire.
After a bizarre night of supernatural terror the youngest Carol Anne is sucked into the closet and disappears into an in-between world were she is help captive by an unseen force. At their wits end the parents bring in Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight, Network) and her team of researchers Marty (Martin Casella, Robocop 2) and Ryan (Richard Lawson, Streets of Fire), who are all quite startled by the severity of the poltergeist activity, it's unlike anything they've ever seen. Poor Marty is traumatized by the experience, not only is he bitten by a Jaws-sized phantom chompers but a late-night snacking binge involving a maggot-riddled piece of cold chicken and a crawling pork chop that sends him to the bathroom to not only puke out his guts, but hallucinating that he tears off his own face! This is the scene that horrified me as a kid of 10 watching it on cable TV, it's bloody, chunky and oh-so visceral - and yet somehow this got a PG rating. Was this the birth of kinder-trauma, it certainly was for me! This film alongside Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom seem to be the reasons the MPAA came up with the PG-13 rating, to address the concerns of parents whose kids were traumatized by these films. Eventually the parapsychologists realize that they are out of their depth and call in the diminutive exorcist (Zelda Rubinstein, Anguish) to cleanse the home of the unwanted spirits and to retrieve their daughter from the other side, leading to a spectral special effects extravaganza in the final third that is both dazzling and terrifying.
Poltergeist was the first Hollywood blockbuster I recall that gave me horrific nightmares, it hit on so many childhood fears; we get creepy clown dolls, a scary tree scratching at the window during a storm, and it forever made TV white noise something to be afraid of. I use to watch a lot of movies on the couch late at night, and would often fall asleep and wake up after the sign-off when the screen would turn to white noise (which might need to be explained to younger audiences these days), and after seeing this movie I was afraid to approach the TV when it was white noise, thank God we had a TV remote! I would snap walk to the next room, snap it off with the remote, thrown the remote into the couch and run to my room and hide under the covers.
I'm also pretty sure that at 10 the tearing-off-your-face scene was my first experience with gore, this coming a few years before I was a young horror-head, so this might be the film that both traumatized me and made the lifelong horror fan that I am today. The spectral special effects were also so eerie and I think they hold up today. Carol Anne sitting in front of the TV holding her hand to the screen filled with whote noise and creepily intoning "They're heeeeeere" still gives me chills. The look of the luminescent spirits, the look of the otherworldly portals, the gelatinous ectoplasm, the floating household objects guided by the unseen hands of the spirits - it's all holds up to my eyes, the seams might be more visible but the illusion still sets my imagination on fire with wonder and terror. When I think about the Hooper vs Spielberg issue comes up my go-to is Hooper's Lifeforce, a film in which he explores some similar ground as far as spooky effects go, it's just a wonderful mash-up of Spielbergian style and Hooper's eye for traumatic imagery, it succeeds on both levels.
Audio/Video: Suburban supernatural terror Poltergeist arrives on 4K Ultra HD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in 2160p UHD framed in 2.39:1 widescreen. As with the WB release of The Lost Boys there's no specific information about the source elements, but it does look quite nice. Fine organic structures are visible throughout, the 4K resolution offers a more nuanced and tighter appreciation of textures and fine detail. The cinematography here is not super crisp and it does not translate as a razor sharp presentation, which is to be expected, but the wide color gamut HDR10 color-grading really plumps up the visual presentation with crisp white, deep blacks and more layered contrast, plus primaries get a nice boost with reds, yellows and spectral silver-blues looking terrific. There's a bit of teal push present here but not in the extreme, I enjoyed the warmer skin tones, and the improved color balance.
Audio comes by way of uncompressed English DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo or 5.1 surround with optional English subtitles. Not sure if these are remixed or carry-overs from the 2010 Blu-ray, but they both sounded great. Sadly no Atmos upgrade for the Jerry Goldsmith (The Omen) score, but the DTS has a strong low-end and is quite immersive with loads of surround activity that put you amidst the supernatural wonder.
No new extras for this one, and given the juicy Hooper versus Spielberg who-directed-it debate that's too bad, I would have loved a retrospective with the cast and crew. Hooper passed a few years ago and to get Spielberg on record here would have been fantastic. It's the film's 40th anniversary, that we don't get anything new is a travesty in my opinion - it deserves better. There are no extras on the UHD disc with all the archival extras are on the accompanying Blu-ray disc, which also offers the new scan in standard-definition, and it looks great. There are over 100 screenshots from the Blu-ray at the bottom of the review.
Archival Special Features:
- They Are Here: The Real World of Poltergeists Pt. 1 - Science of the Spirits (16 min)
- They Are Here: The Real World of Poltergeists Pt. 2 - Communing with the Dead (16 min)
- The Making of Poltergeist (7 min)
- Trailer (2 min)
The 2-disc UHD/BD release arrives in a black dual-hub keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork, a new design, which I think is pretty trash to be honest, and it's repeated on the slipcover. The original artwork is iconic for a reason, and to not include it just to do something different, and ultimately inferior, is rather silly. Inside there's a redemption code for a digital copy of the film you can redeem through Movies Anywhere or Vudu. There's also an insert warning of a strong strobing light effect that could cause seizures.
Screenshots from the Warner Bros (2022) Blu-ray:
