A group of seemingly benign ghosts begin communicating with five-year-old Carol Anne Freeling (Heather O'Rourke) in her parents' suburban California home via static on the television. Eventually they use the television as their path into the house itself.
First, there are a few signs that the ghosts have arrived. Carol Anne carries on a seemingly one-sided conversation with a television set that's turned on but has no signal, an earthquake occurs that only the Freelings feel. Carol Anne later announces, "They're here." The next morning, glasses break at breakfast, forks bend by themselves, and when the mother, Diane (JoBeth Williams), asks Carol Anne, "What did you mean? Who's here?" she answers, "The TV people." At first the ghosts play harmless tricks and amuse the mother, including moving and stacking the kitchen table chairs.
Diane must convince Steven (Craig T. Nelson) that night by showing him. He then announces that "Nobody goes into the kitchen until I know what's happening."
During a rainstorm, a gnarled tree comes to life and grabs Robbie (Oliver Robins), Carol Anne's brother, through a window. However, this is merely a distraction used by the ghosts to get Carol Anne's parents to leave her unattended. Like a black hole, a shining light appears in the closet that pulls everything from the room into it, but only Carol Anne is taken into their dimension. The tree attempts to swallow Robbie whole but he is rescued, and as the family watches Steven pull Robbie out of the tree, a tornado drags the tree into oblivion. They then realize that they can't find Carol Anne. They search the entire house including the hole dug for their new swimming pool, which is extremely muddy and shallow, until Robbie hears Carol Anne through the television.
Steven reluctantly calls on a group of parapsychologists from UC Irvine: Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight), Ryan (Richard Lawson), and Marty (Martin Casella), who are awestruck by the manifestations they witness. With the parapsychologists present, the Freelings show them things they've never before seen. They open the door to the children's room to reveal toys and other objects flying around by themselves and disembodied laughing voices reverberating throughout the room. Previously, one of the parapsychologists described a Matchbox car taking seven hours to move seven feet, calling it "[F]antastic. Of course, this would never register on the naked eye." After they see the Freelings' house, they are all humbled.
Over coffee (and a coffee urn that moves by itself), the parapsychologists explain to the Freelings the difference between a poltergeist and a haunting. They determine that indeed, it is a poltergeist they are experiencing.
It turns out that the spirits have left this life but have not gone into the "Light." They are stuck in between dimensions, watching their loved ones grow up, but feeling alone. Carol Anne was born in the house. Only 5 years old, she gives off her own life force that is as bright as the Light. It distracts and confuses the spirits, who think Carol Anne is their salvation. Hence, they take her.
After the group witnesses several paranormal episodes where they hear Carol Anne talking to Diane through the television, see spirits, and hear the pounding footsteps of the spirit, which subsequently injures Marty, Dr. Lesh leaves, with Ryan staying in the house as moral support, admitting they will need more help. Carol Anne's elder sister Dana (Dominique Dunne), shaken and overwhelmed, leaves to stay with friends. The Freelings also send Robbie to his grandmother's house for his safety.
When the parapsychologists return, they bring a spiritual medium, Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinstein), who informs Diane that her daughter is "alive and in this house."
That if a living being were ever to be present in the world of spirits it would confuse and attract to their lifeforce. She also explains the malevolent spirit in the house to Diane, saying "it lies to her and tells her things only a child can understand." It exploits the fact that the spirits are confused and lost, and uses Carol Anne as a distraction so they cannot move on into the Light. "To her, it simply is another child. To us, it is the Beast."
They realize the entrance to the other dimension is through the children's bedroom closet. And after witnessing several pieces of jewelry and watches fall through, and a spirit use it as a way back, they conclude the way out is through the living room ceiling. By tying a rope around a live person who can enter, and presumably exit the other side, with enough time to grab Carol Anne, they could bring her back. Diane is the only choice to go. What happens next is a terrifying sequence where Diane gets Carol Anne and Tangina coaxes the agonized spirits away from Carol Anne to the real Light (during this, Steve panics, thinking that she's talking to Carol Anne and not the spirits, and pulls on the rope, causing the Beast to appear right in front of him). Diane falls through the living room ceiling clutching Carol Anne and bearing new streaks of grey hair, presumably from fright; both Diane and Carol Anne are also covered in ectoplasm.
The spirits, who were generally passive, have seemingly moved on. Unfortunately, the Beast hasn't, and wants revenge. On their final night in the house, when they are almost packed up and ready to go, the Beast returns to reclaim what he believes is his: Carol Anne. This time, the Beast does his own dirty work and comes after Carol Anne personally. The Beast, since losing his manipulative power over the other spirits now resorts to solely extreme fright and violent behavior.
While Robbie and Carol Anne are getting ready for bed, Robbie's clown doll comes to life and pulls him under the bed. Diane, in the other room hears her son's screaming voice and tries to investigate but is pulled against the wall and ceiling by an unknown force. Robbie manages to defeat the clown doll but a strange, mouth-like portal appears in Carol Anne's closet and attempts to pull the children in yet again.
Diane tries to get to her son and daughter but runs into the Beast himself, in the form of a snarling, skeletal demon with ghastly flowing white hair. He blocks Carol Anne's and Robbie's door and lunges at her, causing her to fall down the stairs. Diane runs to the backyard to seek help from her next-door neighbors, but slips into the mud filled pool which is now infested by skeletons, as well as a coffin, which bursts out of the ground and opens. Her neighbors hear the commotion and arrive to help Diane out of the pool, but they refuse to enter the house with its windows now blazing with ghostly energy, so Diane runs back into the house alone to get Robbie and Carol Anne.
Through skill and luck, the Freelings finally escape the house, but not before the anger of the Beast reveals the reason (so far until the sequel) for the spirits being there in the first place: coffins and skeletal bodies begin exploding out of the ground throughout the neighborhood. When the neighborhood was first built the real estate developer Steven worked for moved a cemetery that was on the location, but in reality in order to save money they moved the cemetery headstones but left the bodies, building houses right on top of them, thus desecrating the burial grounds. As the Freelings flee down the street in their car, the Beast is so angry that the house implodes into the other dimension as stunned neighbors (including Steven's boss) look on. The family checks into a Holiday Inn for the night. Not wishing to tempt fate, Steven puts the television set outside their room.
Poltergeist was a box office success worldwide. The film grossed $76,606,280 in the United States, making it the 8th biggest release (regardless of genre) and highest grossing horror film of 1982.
Many critics discussed the role of the white American middle class family in the film. Douglas Brode compares the "family values" in Poltergeist to the Bush/Quayle 1992 reelection campaign. Andrew Sarris, in The Village Voice, wrote that when Carol Ann is lost the parents and the two older children "come together in blood-kin empathy to form a larger-than-life family that will reach down to the gates of hell to save its loved ones." In the L.A. Herald Examiner, Peter Rainer wrote:
Buried within the plot of Poltergeist is a basic, splendid fairy tale scheme: the story of a little girl who puts her parents through the most outrageous tribulation to prove their love for her. Underlying most fairy tales is a common theme: the comforts of family. Virtually all fairy tales begin with a disrupting of the family order, and their conclusion is usually a return to order.
The film was re-released in cinemas for one night only on Thursday, October 4, 2007 as a promotion for the new restored and remastered 25th anniversary DVD released on October 9. This event also included the documentary "They Are Here: The Real World of Poltergeists" that was created for the new DVD.
The film spawned two sequels, Poltergeist II: The Other Side and Poltergeist III. They retained the family but introduced all-new reasons for the Beast's behavior, tying him to an evil preacher named Henry Kane, who led his religious sect to their doom in the 1820s. As the Beast, Kane went to extraordinary lengths to keep his "flock" under his control, even in death. He used Carol Anne to do this, as he discovered his flock was attracted to her innocence. Kane and his flock were never mentioned in the first movie, only that the Beast needed Carol Anne to hold spirits captive. But the original motive—building a housing development on top of a cemetery, thus disturbing the souls of those buried there—was altered; the cemetery was now on top of a cave where Kane and his flock met their ends.
"The Poltergeist curse" is the rumor of a supposed curse attached to the Poltergeist motion picture series and its stars.
The rumor is superstition largely derived from the fact that four cast members died in the six years between the release of the first film and the release of the third, with one dying during production of the second film. Two of them died at young ages, 12 and 22. It is not clear that these particular films are atypical in the number or nature of the deaths of their actors, and at least two of the supposed victims had serious health problems before becoming attached to the film series.
The actors who are supposed victims of the curse include:
- Dominique Dunne, who played the oldest sibling Dana in the first movie, died in 1982 at age 22 after being strangled by her jealous boyfriend. The boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison, but was paroled after serving three and a half years.
- Julian Beck, 60-year-old actor who played Kane in Poltergeist II: The Other Side, died in 1985 of stomach cancer diagnosed before he had accepted the role.
- Will Sampson, 53 years old, who played Taylor the Medicine Man in Poltergeist II, died as a result of post-operative kidney failure and pre-operative malnutrition problems in 1987.
- Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Anne in all three Poltergeist movies, died in 1988 at the age of 12 after what doctors initially described as an acute form of influenza but later changed to septic shock after bacterial toxins invaded her bloodstream. At the time, she had suffered acute bowel obstruction, initially diagnosed as Crohn's disease, which may have been the cause of death.
- While writing the novelization of the screenplay, author James Kahn told People magazine that seconds after he wrote the line "Lightning ripped open the sky", the building was struck by lightning and all the arcade games in the lounge began playing themselves.
- Louis "Lou" Perryman, who played Pugsley in the first movie, was murdered at the age of 67 in his Austin, Texas home in April, 2009, by Seth Christopher Tatum (the two did not know each other.) Tatum stabbed Perryman several times with a sharp object (possibly an axe) and then stole his car to flee from police due to an unrelated aggravated assault charge.
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