Poltergeist was my gateway Horror film. Rated PG and produced by Steven Spielberg, it played all the time on HBO when we first got cable TV. It doesn’t frequently make the lists of ‘scariest’ horror films, and there’s the unmistakable tone of Spielbergian escapist fantasy and special effects wizardry. A number of those effects have aged poorly, and as for the family-friendly rating I have to wonder what the ratings board was thinking. While the film is sparingly graphic, it is gruesome in places. It is also terrifying.
There are earlier examples of ‘Clown Horror’, but Poltergeist is where it became a thing. The clown by itself is scary enough to where you question the parents buying something like it. Then it is part of one of the great Horror movie fake outs: here…gone…under the bed…on the bed!!!
Before watching Poltergeist, I slept with my head to the closet. Never again afterwards. It’s my earliest memory of a movie giving me nightmares, and because it played on HBO all the time, I watched it repeatedly. Partly to make the nightmares go away, building up my fascination with how these movies are made and chasing a Horror High I’ve been pursuing ever since.
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