Where is poltergeist set

Of the other three deaths, all were the results of long-term, chronic illnesses: Julian Beck Kane in Poltergeist II: The Other Side died in after a long battle with stomach cancer; Will Sampson Taylor in Poltergeist II: The Other Side died of complications from a heart-lung transplant; and Heather O'Rourke Carol Anne in all three movies died in at age 12 from cardiac arrest caused by septic shock from a bowel obstruction caused by intestinal stenosis after being misdiagnosed with Crohn's Disease in Nelson , Tom Skerritt , Nancy Allen , etc.

Though on-screen credit goes to Tobe Hooper , a wealth of evidence suggests that most of the directorial decisions were made by Steven Spielberg.

In fact, Spielberg had wanted to direct the film himself, but a clause in his contract stated that while still working on E. Hooper, though, had developed the film with Spielberg, and if Spielberg had wanted to wrest the film away from Hooper, it would have caused a rift between the filmmakers.

Members of the cast and crew, including Executive Producer Frank Marshall and actress Zelda Rubinstein , have stated that Spielberg cast the film, directed the actors though this has been often contested by several other performers , and designed every single storyboard for the movie himself although Hooper has maintained he both collaborated on and did fully half of the storyboards.

Based on this evidence, the DGA opened a probe into the matter, but found no reason that co-director credit should go to Spielberg.

Stephen King was briefly approached to write the screenplay. It would have been the first written by King directly for the screen, but the parties could not agree on the terms. Zelda Rubinstein supposedly had genuine psychic ability, claiming to have visions of things before they happened. This film and E. Robbie has a poster in his room for Superbowl XXII, which would not take place for another six years. When writers Michael Grais and Mark Victor first met with Steven Spielberg , they were being hired to write the film that eventually became Always When Spielberg happened to mention he also had an idea for a ghost story, Grais and Victor said they'd rather write the ghost story than Always and that's how they got this job.

The highest-grossing film of Tobe Hooper 's career. Zelda Rubinstein auditioned for the part of medium Tangina four times. Fantasy and Friends. Fantasy is a nickname for producer Frank Marshall. After telling a reporter that he basically directed the movie himself " Tobe Hooper isn't a take-charge sort of guy" Steven Spielberg took back the comments and issued an apology to Hooper, saying his contribution to the film was invaluable.

Lesh Beatrice Straight makes the point that the paranormal activity at the Freeling home is probably a poltergeist, not a haunting, since poltergeists typically are associated with a person, and hauntings are associated with a place. However, this assessment is revealed to be incorrect when Steven realizes that the house was built on a cemetery; that means it was actually a haunting, not a poltergeist. When originally released in the UK the film was anticipated as being an 'X' certificate, prohibiting anyone under 18 from seeing the film - this rating was also printed onto the poster art.

This was due to a delay in the BBFC's introduction of the new '15' certificate which replaced the old 'AA' rating , and UIP's wish to release the film as soon as possible. When the '15' certificate was introduced in November the film was re-rated.

In a recent interview, Oliver Robins said Steven Spielberg toasted Heather O'Rourke 's birthday on the set with a bottle of wine for all the adult actors. He said Spielberg then said when O'Rourke was 21, he would buy her a bottle of wine. Tragically that day never came, as O'Rourke died on February 1, at age 12 due to cardiopulmonary arrest and intestinal stenosis during the filming of Poltergeist III The children's bedroom is littered with Star Wars products.

Talk about product placement! Joe Spano was originally cast as family patriarch Steve Freeling, but he was starring in Hill Street Blues at the time, and series creator Steven Bochco wouldn't let him out of his contract.

On top of the master bedroom television set sits an Atari Video Computer System console with its two joysticks; later known as the Atari One of the few Steven Spielberg films not to feature music by John Williams. This could very well be an homage to the hotel room number in The Shining Steven Spielberg first approached Universal about distributing the film before he sold the idea to MGM.

In Robbie's room there is an Alien poster on the wall. This is a nod to Jerry Goldsmith , Poltergeist's composer who also scored Ridley Scott 's movie three years before. Nelson interview with Dr. Lesh Beatrice Straight and her associates at the college, the backward writing on the office door reads "Department of Popular Beliefs, Superstitions, and Parapsychology.

Jerry Goldsmith wrote this theme song and the theme song to The Omen , but whereas The Omen got praise from critics for being so dark and foreboding and effectively setting a menacing, demonic tone, the Poltergeist theme was criticized for being too Disneyfied and Leave It to Beaver , bullying the audience into an inappropriately cheerful and family-friendly state.

Zelda Rubinstein was a medium and a psychic in real life. This may have had a lot to do with why she got the part in the first place. Eight very similar movies all came out during the movie season; all about families battling the supernatural! Two of them were about families battling dead family members: Don't Go to Sleep and Creepshow 's "Father's Day", and Poltergeist almost had that plotline. Three of the movies have a team of paranormal experts coming in and helping them: Poltergeist , The Entity , and Amityville 3-D There has never been a year with more haunted house themed movies in movie history as this one.

Shirley MacLaine was offered a starring role in the film, but backed out in order to make Terms of Endearment Lou Perryman is credited as Pugsley but Diane refers to him as Bluto when she catches him drinking her coffee and testing her pasta sauce. Saints football game seen near the beginning of the film is taken from a Monday Night Football game in The original cast of the film included veteran actor Edward Ashley , who portrayed Dr Lesh's older and wiser colleague, who convinced her to bring in Tangina to handle the case.

The scene was cut from the film. Marty was originally named Dr. Casey Tak and instead of having a vision of ripping his face off, he instead saw himself as a rotting corpse in a coffin. In fact, they originally started out as one film called "Night Skies", about a family in the countryside being terrorized by evil aliens, however one of these aliens would befriend the family's youngest child would turn on its own kind to protect the family.

Due to troubles with severe tonal clashes, it was decided to split the concepts of an alien befriending a child and a family being terrorized by supernatural forces into two separate films. Skeletons and ancient desecrated burial grounds crop up in other Steven Spielberg productions including Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark and Young Sherlock Holmes The word "Poltergeist" is spoken three times, and only once by three different characters, Diane, Dr.

Lesh, and Marty. The two media scandals that haunt this film are the Poltergeist Curse, concerning the deaths of Heather O'Rourke , Dominique Dunne , and other people associated with the production, as well as the scandal about who actually directed the movie, Steven Spielberg or Tobe Hooper. Most of the people associated with the production say it was a collaborative effort, with Hooper having equal say and input in terms of story development and shot setup, it was Hooper's idea to do a ghost story in the first place, not Spielberg's ; while Spielberg definitely had the upper hand and the final say in terms of editing.

The media seems to have already decided it was completely a Spielberg movie and that Hooper was used as a front man so that Spielberg wouldn't break studio contractual commitments that prevented him from directing another movie while he directed E.

While the theatrical production credits lists Dana Gendian and Jaimi Gendian under "Stunts," the reissue includes them among the cast as "Special Children. The first and only film produced by Steven Spielberg for his Amblin company. Diane gives Carol Anne a cigar box to bury her dead bird in, and Carol Anne says the bird does not like the smell.

Later the audience see them mother uses the same kind of box to store her weed, meaning she gave her daughter her old stash box to use as a coffin. The audience is having red flags as soon as they see it's a cigar box since the Freelings clearly don't smoke cigars. Amazingly Oliver Robbins starred in two movies about a suburban family of 5 being terrorized by ghosts in ; Poltergeist and Don't Go To Sleep!

And ironically the Aaron Spelling tv movie had a much higher body count and was much scarier! Body count for Poltergeist: 0. One if you include Tweety! Body count for Don't: 4! An earlier draft of the film was called "Nighttime" or "It's Nighttime" and had substantial differences from the final film, including an elder teenage son named Kerry, the haunting being the result of the neighborhood being built over the the secret burial place of a group of pioneers who were massacred by a savage Native American tribe who worshiped an evil fire god, the Freelings becoming ostracized and later persecuted by the community, the haunting spreading out to the rest of the neighborhood, Steve being possessed before having sex with Diane, Diane secretly resenting Carol Anne because she was an accidental pregnancy, Carol Anne and Dana both being possessed by spirits with Carol Anne repeating the original title over and over and Dana reliving a pioneer's horrific fate of being burned alive and the death of Carol Anne.

Writers Mark Victor and Michael Grais insisted that one member of the family had to die and when Steven Spielberg relented and asked which one, they chose Carol Anne, much to Spielberg's surprise and chagrin. The original ending of the film had Carol Anne be possessed by the ghosts and abandoned by her family and left to die as the house burns down, leading to the entire neighborhood becoming a literal ghost town.

Spielberg was uncomfortable with how dark and bleak the script became and insisted it be toned down. Oliver Robins is the only surviving child actor of this film that played a member of the Freeling family.

The winding staircase in the middle of the living room is a rip off of the big portentous winding staircase in the haunted house of s The Haunting. She doesn't remember anything! It's like it was all a bad dream and she's woken up! But then later, when the evil clown attacks Robby; and their doorway opens in a sinister, beckoning way, she says, "No more No more So obviously she DOES remember her interactions with the evil spirits earlier in the story.

Poltergeist: The Legacy was a sci-fi horror TV series focusing on the paranormal which came out after Poltergeist III wrapped; and although it used the Poltergeist name, it really has nothing to do with any of the films in the Poltergeist franchise.

The most commercially successful film of the Poltergeist trilogy. Lesh talks with Diane and Robbie about a white light that people see when they are dying. This comes from two places: war stories where pilots claim to have seen such a light in combat and the book "Life After Life", written by Dr.

Raymond Moody and published in It's a series of compilations and testimonies about people who technically died and were brought back to life, a phenomenon known as a Near-Death Experience NDE. One of the trademarks of this phenomenon is a voice commonly a friend or family member who died some time ago saying "It's not your time," indicating to the person that they must go back to the land of the living.

According to William Finley he was originally cast as Marty but replaced before filming. In Robbie and Carol Anne's room, there's a poster of the film Alien. Tuesday Weld was considered for the role of Diane. Coincidentally, a few months later The Entity was released, which was another horror film about a woman sexually attacked by a supernatural force. It took four months to create. Thick wires were attached inside of the model and pulled into a funnel, with the model placed over the funnel and the camera shooting downward.

If something went awry, the model would have melted or burst into flames. Spielberg was not allowed to direct both Poltergeist and E. Times : When we were shooting the practical location on the house, the first two weeks of filming were exterior, so I had second-unit shots that had to be picked up in the front of the house.

I was in the back of the house shooting Robbie [actor Oliver Robins] and the tree, looking down at the burial of the little tweety bird, so Steven was picking those shots up for me. The L.

Really, that is my knowledge of it, because I was making the movie and then I started hearing all this stuff after it was finished.

Dominique Dunne Dana was murdered by her ex-boyfriend five months after the film's release. Julian Beck, who played Kane in the sequel, died of cancer while shooting the film he was aware of his condition when he signed up.

Will Sampson, who played Taylor in the sequel, died of kidney failure a year after that film's release. All of these deaths have led to a rumor that the production was haunted, on account of the prop master reportedly using actual skeletons.

It involves a typical family. The wife is a homemaker. The husband sells new houses in the same neighborhood that the family lives in. But I digress. There is a teen daughter from some unmentioned first marriage because she only looks 15 years younger or so than Jo Beth Williams who plays the mother.

There are two kids age 7 and 6 that belong to the second wife. The youngest, Carol Ann, was born in the house. So the horror starts with harmless stuff like the kitchen chairs rearranging themselves when you're not looking but escalates quickly. And the movie tag line "It knows what scares you" turns out to be so true. Remember when you were a kid. What scared you? Lightning storms? Big leafless trees that looked like some kind of being with lots of arms?

Clown dolls with macabre smiles? It all plays into it. Stephen Spielberg "ghost" directed this one. You could always tell by the preponderance of wind machines and seemingly meaningless close ups - hallmarks of 80s Spielberg. The one thing that really dates this - The poltergeist originally gets into the house when the husband falls asleep in front of the TV late at night, the Star Spangled Banner plays, the channel signs off, and then there is no signal.

Cue the poltergeist. Today, channels never sign off. There is always some infomercial, with the set dressed like the old CNN Larry King Live show to add credibility, yelling at you how you can have product X for only The poor poltergeists of today are trapped listening to this nonsense, waiting for a chance to escape that will never come! Oh the humanity. It doesn't hit me like it did when it first came out, but it is still good enough with a very shocking ending that it is still worth a a look.

AlsExGal Jun 20, FAQ What is Ryan listening to while drawing? Who is the glowing ghost floating across the living room? What is 'Poltergeist' about? Details Edit. Release date June 4, United States. United States. Box office Edit.