Poltergeist – Species – tape 2417

This tape opens with a recording from TNT Classic Movies.

It’s another recording of Poltergeist. I’ve already looked at one recording of this, so you can read what I said about it here.

Because I love it, I watched it again. It really is a great movie, and every time I watch I’m more convinced that Spielberg was literally calling the shots here. I can’t believe that Tobe Hooper is a good enough director to so accurately mimic Spielberg’s style. It’s not just the iconic shots, like the dollies in to people’s faces staring at some bright light – or the zoom/dolly on the extended corridor in the finale. It’s other, lower’key shots, like this one of JoBeth Williams bouncing with excitement as the chair moves in the kitchen. The chair is in the foreground, in sharp focus, and Williams is in the background, very out of focus. It feels like a very Spielberg shot to me.

Or just watch the opening when the neighbour is riding the BMX bike round to the house with the case of beer. It’s a simple scene, but all the shots are clear, and perfectly set up the collision with the remote control cars. And the entire neighbourhood looks almost exactly like the neighbourhood in ET, which Spielberg was making at roughly the same time.

Poltergeist really works. It’s full of lovely small moments, in among the giant setpieces. When the paranormal researchers are telling the Freelings about how they once filmed a toy car that took eight hours to move across a bedroom floor, just before they’re shown the chaos inside the children’s bedroom, it’s a nice laugh, which is then amplified by the jump cut to Beatrice Straight’s hands shaking as she holds a cup of tea. And one thing I noticed this time that I’d never noticed before – when Dominique Dunne returns home from her visit to ‘friends’ just as the house is finally being sucked into a nether vortex, you can clearly see a lovebite on her neck. It’s a tiny detail, but lovely when you spot it.

I love the casting of Zelda Rubinstein as the medium who comes in to help the Freelings. Craig T Nelson gets to play all of our reactions at the utter ludicrousness of the situation, but she’s the real thing, and does successfully help them rescue Carol Anne. I love her argument with Diane about which of them should go through to rescue Carol Anne.

                          DIANE
               What do you think you're doing?

                          TANGINA
               I'm going in after her

                          DIANE
               She won't come to you. Let me go.

                          TANGINA
               You've never done this before.

                          DIANE
               Neither have you.

                          TANGINA
               You're right. You go.

The fake-out ending, with the rescuing of Carol Anne also works well. At first, you think that’s the end, but the longer they stay in the house, just doing mundane things like dyeing the grey hairs Diane had got, you start to realise that the film’s not over, and the tension rises, even before anything supernatural happens. Then there’s the masterstroke to restart the supernatural shenanigans with the creepy clown doll. It’s scary enough when it’s just sitting there, but when it appears behind Robbie, face contorted with malice, it’s a scene that few people will easily forget.

I think the film has aged fairly well, although my 9yo daughter watched the scene where the children’s bedroom was full of stuff flying around, she wrinkled her nose and said “it’s all just edited on”. Kids today don’t appreciate quite how much work was involved in these types of movies. It even has some classic ILM cloud tank skies.

One scene that’s definitely of its time – if not out of time – is the scene where both neighbours have a remote control that works on the same frequency. How long were RF remotes around? By 1982 I’d have thought they were long gone.

I should thank TNT for showing the movie in the correct aspect ratio, and without adverts. Even the BBC still doesn’t show it in the full 2.35:1 ratio.

Next on the tape, we swap to Sky Movies for Species. Not quite the classic Poltergeist is.

I like to think of Species as a loose remake of Lifeforce. It shares a pulpy sensibility, some creaky dialogue and a lead actress who spends a fair amount of time naked.

It’s a serviceable horror/sci fi mix. The premise, that a signal from space gives instructions how to splice a new segment of DNA into the human genome, with the resulting lifeform naturally being a handful, is good enough, even though it’s hard to imagine quite how some new gene sequences could endow a human with all the abilities Sil has here. It’s a typical case of DNA being used like a magic potion, as it so often is.

Species was made at an interesting time in cinema. CGI was finally becoming mainstream, and this movie mixed a lot of practical creature effects with some CGI, and they’re not too bad. As my friend Tim said when he saw it, “Well, they can do anything now.”

The alien creature design for ‘Sil’ was by the great HR Giger who, of course, designed the Alien for Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic. Sil isn’t quite as iconic.

After this, recording continues for a bit, and we’re treated to Only The Strong (a film by Sheldon Lettich). The tape stops shorty into this film.

adverts: Trails

• trail: TNT Classic Movies
• trail: Cartoon Network
• Unicef

• International Herald Tribune
• GayXchange
• Fairy washing liquid
• Program anti-flea medicine.
• Goodfellas pizza
• Quick Chat
• RBOS Mastercard
• Glade Plug-ins
• trail: To Die For
• trail: Steven Seagal season
• trail: May on Sky
• VW Passat
• The Nutty Professor on video
• Lynx
• Kwik-Fit
• Quick Chat
• Weetabix
• RBOS
• Goodfellas Pizza
• trail: Under Siege 2