That is just terrifying, Paul. I literally am getting chills listening to that.

Yeah, I'm already ready to run for the door.

And the sad thing is, is that nobody listening to this who's had a cathode ray 2 TV will understand the sheer horror of white noise on television, right?

Yes, and how this forever changed our apprehension of static.

Oh, it certainly made me apprehensive. I'm fully apprehensive right now. But on that note, I'd like to say that I'm Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And this is...

Overthruster! Summer of 82.

I love that piece of music. I don't know what to tell. It's actually cured my apprehension, hasn't it?

It is a soothing salve for our psychic trauma that was inflicted to us in childhood by the terrors of Poltergeist.

It was a scary ass movie, and it really, as a kid, it terrified me in a way that I don't think anything else had before.

It stands alone. It is a very unique collision of genres and settings and tones that I'm very excited to talk about. And basically, for those of you who may not be as familiar or aware, Poltergeist is essentially the story of a suburban family that is sort of living the American dream, only to have it very, let's say, unexpectedly invaded by the supernatural. Strange things start happening. One of the kids may go missing, and there may be just a dire struggle to try to wrestle with these forces from beyond to restore the family unit.

And it's interesting because we talk about the plot of the movie. It's like they literally go from an Amblin movie to like an Amityville movie, right? Because then they experience the full horror of it, but then they bring in exorcists. So then you have Ghostbusters because you've got the amateur exorcists, and then they bring in a professional exorcist. So like the progression of the movie is kind of really, really like it's, it goes through horror movie genres, doesn't it?

Yeah, there is a lot going on. It's world up in this crazy cauldron that just gets crazier and crazier as the movie progresses, but it all works remarkably well. And so with that, I think it's time.

Let's ring the bell. Ding, ding. Carl Weather saying ding, ding is just, I want that on my gravestone. It's not just ding, ding, but Carl Weather saying ding, ding. That's going to be the actual statement. Last time when we started talking about Rocky III, we kind of went through the whole movie. And we're going to just sort of be maybe not as summarizing, but is there anything in particular about the movie as a whole that struck you?

So many things, and I have so many notes, but yes, we are not going to walk through the movie scene by scene. We're going to kind of leapfrog to lily pads of glee. But I had not seen this film since my youth. And it's one of those movies that sort of existed in this vague tapestry of memory, a little impressionistically. And so it was a real treat to revisit it now, after all these years.

Yeah, one of the things that our conversation about this leading up to us recording this episode really kind of brought home to me is that I always thought of this film as a kind of a pop culture defining hit. Like you hear a lot about it in writers' rooms. Like people really of my age were really struck by this film. But producer Brad, in your notes, you told us that this film was not as big a hit as I imagined. It didn't even open at number one, right? No, it was number three for The Weeknd. Was it Rocky III and Visiting Hour still?

Uh, Wrath of Khan obviously was number one, followed by Rock III and Poltergeist.

Paul, I don't know, does this movie seem like something like a real cultural touchstone to you?

Absolutely, but in the kind of wealth of riches that were unleashed in the summer, not to mention the fact that the following weekend, there would be the biggest Spielberg movie... .of the film, Till Then of ET, that'll overshadow it. It does feel like one of these films that is easily kind of sidelined, if not altogether lost in cultural memory, just given the competition that there was. So, I'm really glad that we carved out a special episode just to give it kind of the focus and spotlight that it deserves, because it is a really spectacular movie.

Remarkable movie, yeah.

And to your question, in terms of kind of an overriding thought that I have, is that it is this really interesting collision and collaboration of Spielberg and Tobe Hooper, and it feels like this almost slightly... It's very Spielbergian, but it's sort of an alternate Spielbergian. So it is this suburban kind of fantasy horror, but in contrast to films like ET and Close Encounters, where those are movies about divorce and of fractured families, here we have this incredibly close-knit functional family.

Yeah, in a weird way, it's sort of anti-Spielberg because of the horror of it, but also because the family works. It's not Spielberg's usual riven-by-divorce kind of narrative.

Yeah, yeah, and in a way, like some of those other Spielberg movies have the horror of divorce. And this one replaces that with an actual functioning, like really fantastic family dynamic. And the chemistry between JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson, I think, is just wonderful.

And what's amazing is, I don't necessarily see it as sexual chemistry. I see it as like, clearly these people have lived together 10 years, you know? Like, that's so, I don't know how they got to it. You know, obviously great acting, but it's like it generally, they don't feel like they've just met. They feel like it feels so, the relationship feels so lived in, you know?

Yeah, there's such a familiarity and a bond of casual companionship that feels very unforced. And they're also just like cool mom and cool dad in such a refreshing way. And it is just, it seems like such a stark contrast to Spielberg's other films of the time. And then of course, also you have the kind of parallel universe of instead of a John Williams score, we have a Jared Goldsmith score.

What struck me most seeing this movie for the first time in decades is how much the house style of directing a studio feature has changed in the last 50 years. And specifically the degree to which this movie and all of Spielberg's films to this day, you know, rely on mise-en-scène. I mean, he literally builds frames and he stays in them. And if you look at, you know, I'm not, we shouldn't get into the who directed this film thing. Tobe Hooper is a legend. We love him and we're gonna give him the credit. And Spielberg was a strong on set producer. Let's just say that. But the style is very much what Spielberg learned from Alfred Hitchcock and from all of his antecedents, which is like very much about building strong frames and not moving the camera unless or cutting away unless you absolutely have to. And how much of this film place on the face, like the horror of this film plays on the faces of the actors and how much the impact of the movie is carried, not by the VFX, but by Craig T. Nelson and Joe Beth Williams and Zelda Rubenstein and Beatrice Strait, who is like one of my idols. But it's really about the style and how much the film avoids quick cutting and all of that. And when it actually does it, it really lands because the movie hasn't been cutting back and forth between a master and a closeup in every scene.

Yeah, and I think it's that amalgam of, it's very clearly framed and shot and staged in many ways, particularly the horror sequences, unmistakably Tobe Hooper. But there's also this unmistakable Spielberg element. And it seems clear from things that are on the record that this was a very close onset collaboration. And the fact that you had both of them bringing the strengths of the horror, the staging, the scares from Tobe Hooper, but also the focus on family, on relationship, on heart and emotion and character that Spielberg brought on the story sense, it's just dynamite.

Are you saying that was not as evident in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, perhaps?

I mean, I wouldn't say that's one of its strongest suits.

I think people who leave that movie really touched, maybe the wrong word, but certainly impacted by the family dynamic in that movie.

Yes, a decidedly different family dynamic.

Yes, indeed.

In Chainsaw, which was made not far from where I'm recording this.

That's right, yeah.

But yeah, but it's also just in terms of time and setting, again, this sort of suburban analog horror that I just find really, really fascinating. And in terms of how we're brought into this world with a couple of very interesting choices, I think the idea of sort of the possessed television and the TV as monster.

Yeah, which by the way, seems to me in apropos of that, if I may, Paul, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I know you're on a roll, but this is how we podcast. Do you think, okay, the television is a monster. First of all, I'm guessing two writers, the two writers who wrote this movie were sitting in a room going, how can we do Captain Howdy and the Ouija board without doing the Ouija board? Right? That's, I mean, it's a big social commentary, but I assume that that, because that really, watching the movie, I was like, these guys saw Exorcist and they were thinking about Captain Howdy. That's, you know, cause he's like the TV people, you know? But the other thing is, how old do you think is the last person who's gonna actually understand what's happening at the beginning of this film when the national anthem is playing and then it goes to static?

Exactly.

Yeah. Can we even explain that to the world or what? I mean.

Well, no, I'm glad you brought that up because again, it brings back these sense memories of my youth, of the rebellious stand of staying up past your bedtime to the point where the broadcast day has ended, where there's nothing left. This is again, a mind-boggling concept for a contemporary audience that has infinite scroll and unending content on every channel. But there was a time where there were just these broadcast channels and stations and their broadcast day would come to an end.

The content would stop flowing.

Exactly. It would stop and there was nothing left to watch and there would be a sign-off with this patriotic kind of flag-waving thing. I don't know how that came from. And then it was just static until the wee hours and the next morning when the broadcast day would resume again.

And that was the signal. By playing the national anthem. The broadcast day began at 6 a.m. with the national anthem and ended at midnight or whenever The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson ended or Late Late Show with the national anthem again.

Yeah. But that idea that there is this nether world where static reigns. Yeah.

Well, it just seems-

Nothing else is just kind of, it's a lost thing.

Yeah, it just seems to me that, you know, in this, it's less than 40 years ago, but we're literally talking about a time when like at night, the world stopped and it's bizarre because the TV would go, you couldn't just stay up all night watching Fox News or whatever, it's, yes, so you were saying it starts with this, you know, TV as the evil possessed being and-

And the dog. And I just love then how we're basically introduced to the house and to the characters by this dog who over the course of the film, I think gives a pretty spectacular performance.

Oh yeah, yeah, E-Buzz is pretty great, yeah.

It's an amazing dog. And this dog who I relate to is obsessed with snacks. And we follow this dog as he goes and basically introduces us to the geography of the house and all the characters who are sleeping and then the basic setup or the teaser of foreboding of this monster speaking to the youngest member of the family through static in the television.

I was going to say, you know, we're talking about the dog and the dog's name is E-Buzz. And Paul, do you know what cultural reference attitude, do you know where that's from?

I probably should.

So E-Buzz Miller was a pitch man in the really old timey SNL, Dan Ackroyd played him. And he was like the guy who always sold kids dangerous toys, you know, like bag of glass, you know, or like, you know. So just an apropos of what you're saying about the parents being so hip and being so cool, like there's literally a scene where they're smoking weed. Their dog is named after a Dan Ackroyd character from a show that was considered countercultural back then. And when the boy enters the room and mom is smoking weed, she just kind of casually puts it aside and, you know, keeps sucking him. And there's no, I don't know, dude, like I have to leave the house to get stoned at night. And more than once I've heard, what's that smell? So different days.

Yeah, no, and I do think that just the subversion of that and many of the choices, but that's like a really big one, is that, oh my God, at the time, 1982, a mainstream Hollywood movie and the family dynamic and the mom and dad are smoking pot in bed together and having this sort of wholesome relationship that's very refreshing as well as shocking. But it says a lot about the whole dynamic and their whole kind of relaxed attitude with the kids, which to me also gets into one of the areas, and this is sort of prime period of Spielberg indulging in child endangerment.

Yeah, wow.

There's sort of this rampant looming specter, and as you know, we're both parents, and I can't help but look at it through this lens of like, there's this whole other dimension of horror in this film of persistent child endangerment.

This movie, I mean, look, like I said, I haven't seen it in decades. I have not seen it since I had my first movie. I have two of them now, it's a very different feeling watching this movie as a parent. And I was so much more on the edge of my seat during the entirety of the running time of the movie this time around.

And it also reminds us of what a different time we live in now, because there's a little bit of a free-range kid vibe running through this that, again, is evocative of the time and the period that may never come again in our society.

And when I think of these parents, I genuinely think of parents that you see doing mommy blogs on TikTok and stuff like that. They are cool, they're relaxed, they're laid back. And even in something like Close Encounters, where that family dynamic was very strained, and the House of Fairy lived and all that, it didn't have that sense of casualness and comfort to it. I mean, I don't know. It's a relationship that feels very subversive to me, and because it's functional, but it's also a little transgressive, it's kind of amazing. And because the kids are constantly being put in horrible danger situations and may die.

Yeah, and they kind of have it made, too. It's like they've made it. They've hit the American Dream, they've got the suburban house, he's got a good job. Their biggest problems are figuring out this pool that they're going to be building. And there's that kind of foreshadowing a potential threat, which then emerges in ways we did not think coming. And then this kind of dueling war he's having.

With the remote control that's in the same frequency, right?

Yeah, with the remote controls, and him and his friends wanting to watch football, and the neighbor dad trying to watch Mr. Rogers for the kids. It's such an innocuous, kind of tranquil, peaceful setup where it's like, okay, everything is good.

I was going to say that they stopped to do the clicker war, right? And back then it wasn't a remote control, it was a clicker, okay? And the way that the two actors played, it's like literally the remotes are on the same frequency. He's trying to watch football with his friends. The other guy is trying to watch Mr. Rogers. And the way that Craig T. Nelson just backs away from that scene, hitting the clicker button, like he's firing a six shooter over and over again is hilarious. And it makes me love him and kind of love the neighbor too. And it feels like a moment of character. I feel like one of the things his movie does really well is that it has all these little moments of character that it stops to have and they're kind of amazing. And I don't know, I am not as versed in the modern horror genre as I probably should be, but I found that a lot of these moments landed in ways that when I watch modern movies, I go, that's such a save the cat moment. That's impeding the dog so that we like him, you know? And I felt like it was just done very naturally here.

Yeah. And the attention to those human details and asserting a lightness of tone that then will be invaded ruthlessly by the scares and the horror aspects. It's really disarming and it's charming and even like little funny things that are foreboding, like the dead canary.

Yes.

And then-

Or the fact that when they're digging up the pool, one of the things they dig up is the cigar box they buried the canary in, which is such- Paul, I believe you would call that foreshadowing, something about that you're a-

Yes, I'm a big fan of foreshadowing and that's a favorite, the whole thing about, you know, you have to respect the dead and you are doomed if you don't. That's a really good one. The other thing too is that in the dynamic of this wholesome family, we do have a kind of freaky kid. Like the little girl right out of the bat, it's kind of freaky.

Kind of the reverse Marilyn Munster, isn't she?

Yeah, yeah. And I just kind of love how it leans into that right out of the gate and the dynamic of the three kids, of those siblings and around that breakfast table and everything is just great and fun. But you immediately kind of know, oh, stuff is going to start happening.

Two things. One of them is when they are burying the dead canary, it's really interesting to watch Dominique Dunn's performance because she's the one going, oh brother, oh my God, blah, blah, blah, you know, while Heather O'Rourke is putting the canary in the cigar box and putting licorice in there and putting like a little rose there and all of that stuff. So that's also a nice sort of foreshadowing that some people just are not as, maybe have a more cavalier attitude about the dead and that's going to come back and bite us in the ass.

Yeah. And the brother is immediately asking, you know, can we dig it up over time?

And see the bones.

And also, you know, and the dog is trying to dig because he wants a snack because there's licorice in there.

But in apropos of which, Paul, I don't know if you came up like, and this is this is a 1980s movie. And I have a big bug up my ass about the Lulu Pass in movies, you know, about how like they basically all modern actors swim in a nimbus of CGI. They could be 35. They could be 72. You have no idea what age anybody is because everybody is so heavily de-aged. And I don't think people realize how much any movie they go to see now. And it doesn't have to be like Indiana Jones where they de-age him on purpose. It's like any movie you watch right now has gone through what they call the Lulu Pass, named after the VFX company that pioneered this. And they take out wrinkles and blemishes and all the shit. Everyone in this movie looks like a real human. Like these are movie stars and they look like real people.

Yes. And no one looks too ridiculously attractive. They feel like real people. And it feels like a real family.

Like the crack, you know, that scene where they're smoking weed and we'll get to the horror shit in a second. But another thing I want to bring up about the normality before we get into the weirdness. Craig Teen Elsome does an entire scene with his shirt off and he has a dad bod and he's furry. It's not just a dad bod. He's got like the Sean Connery shag carpet going on, you know. And it reminds me.

He's almost a Wookie.

Yes. And it reminds me of like, you know, like when John Hamm was doing Mad Men and he'd do shirtless scenes all the time. And people were like, oh my God, he's so like fuzzy and cuddly. These are real men. This is what an actual man looks like who hasn't been not eating for four days and then drank half a bottle of red wine in order to get dehydrated. So his veins and his six-pack show in the one scene where his shirt is off, you know? And it's so refreshing, but it also feels really odd. Like this was a mainstream temple movie and it feels like a documentary.

It's really refreshing that it's unpretentious in that portrayal. It's like it's not trying to make these people larger than life. It's making them as relatable as possible. And then the other thing that really strikes me throughout this, and this is kind of getting ahead, is that, you know, watching it at the beginning, I'm kind of waiting in part because of, oh, the Spielberg dynamic and all these other things. Are we going to get a fracture? Is there going to be some kind of friction or some kind of disconnect? But there isn't. It's that no, they're devoted to each other. And to their family. And we aren't having to be twisted along some artificial extra drama to mix that up or change that to try to add some other tension or whatever. We just get to enjoy them as a wholesome family unit and a really great functional married couple.

By the way, it's a character dynamic you don't see enough of. For me, Friday Night Lights was the perfect portrayal of a functional marriage. But as you talk about this, and I honestly didn't think about it so hard, but it's really beginning to land on me how counter to a lot of the culture that is. Because, hell, people want to remake Lost in Space, they want to make the couple estranged, and they want to make Don West an alcoholic, and you're just like, can't they just be a good family?

Yeah, and then you're rooting for them as a team. And there are dynamics that change in terms of who is stepping up and kind of in danger or experiencing different things at different points, but they always have each other's backs.

Yeah, and they're very equal, and they're a very equal part, like they don't do the same shit, but they're a very equal partnership. Even in moments of extreme crisis, these characters are talking through their problems.

Right, and we don't have sort of a panicky, submissive, less evolved wife. She is as fully formed, has as much agency, and is as heroic as anyone, if not more.

She gets the big physical scene at the end.

She has the big heroism at the end. I just love the setup and the whole dynamic of the family that is established, I think, really beautifully.

My very good friend Carlos Cotto pointed something out to me. When we first met, we were working on the same TV show, and this was in the early 90s, and we were trading stories about soundtracks because back then you had to go buy soundtracks, you could just get them out. If you had a collection, you'd talk to your friends about the soundtracks. I think you remember this, Paul. You'd go to the record store, you'd buy the soundtrack, you'd tell your friend about it. We're talking about our favorite soundtracks. Carlos pointed out that the opening cue where Cuesta Verde, which is the name of the subdivision that Craig T. Nelson is one of the salespeople for, they live in it, all this stuff. Goldsmith, who is, I mean, without a doubt, one of the greatest composers for film of all time, who is literally top five with John Williams, or top two with John Williams, to be honest with you. And if we began to say what Goldsmith did, people would be like, oh my God. But Goldsmith, that first cue in this movie is a pastiche of John Williams, and it's kind of perfect. And you almost feel like it's Goldsmith holding out his middle finger and going, I can do that. I choose not to, but here's me showing you that I can do exactly what you do, Johnny. And it's kind of amazing because I think that, while I think John Williams is the greatest sort of creator of anthems and of marches and of that classic sort of corn gold sort of a soundtrack for the second half of the century, Goldsmith really was the innovator and the guy who could do any style and do it great. And I don't know, it's a really, again, when you talk about this movie being the underside of ET, the Goldsmith, it very much shows that duality between the kind of composers that these two titans were, you know?

Absolutely. And I think that divergence, like many in this film with Spielberg's other films, is really exciting because at this point, we kind of know what a Spielberg movie is. And this sort of knows that too. And it plants those flags and then it says, but you know what, we're going this way. We're going to do something freakier.

John Williams rips off his own face, and underneath it is the bloody skull of Jerry Goldsmith.

And the atmospherics that Goldsmith brings to bear that are more avant-garde and experimental and electronic and a lot of stuff that he does that's just delicious, marries so well as the movie starts becoming more unhinged with the horror and the visual and the kind of fantastical, is really delight. But you're right because it has more of an impact because from the outset, we sort of start in the same place. We start in that classic John Williams Spielberg suburban majesty of the suburbs and of America in the 1980s, the prosperity.

And it's interesting, even Craig Tennyson reading a book about Ronald Reagan in bed. But I think that's what it was like to be a sort of early stage boomer at that time. It's like you still were doing the weed and all that stuff, but you had the house, you had the station wagon. I think that it's a very sort of, there's a real sense of like, this is what the boomers who did the quote 60s unquote were turning into in the 80s. And I think that's also really fascinating. So 21 minutes is when the shit finally hits the fan in this movie. Well, it doesn't hit the fan, but it starts.

It hits the wall and leaves a spot that the dog will then bark at.

That's right. A spectral light comes out of the TV. There's a big light show because the kids are sleeping with the parents because there's been a storm. And by the way, also that dynamic handled beautifully. Like that smash cut between Craig T. Nelson leaving the son's bedroom thinking he's got the son out to bed. It's all good. And then there's a thunderclap and then they're all in bed together.

Beautiful.

Any parent knows exactly that.

There are some exquisite just jump cuts.

Well, also like right after the Barry the Canary and the next thing out of Caroline's mouth is, can I get a goldfish?

Yes, exactly. Like, oh, moved on. Next thing. I will say the kid's bedroom. Two things really struck me. As I pointed out in Rocky III, having the sense memory rush of that arcade had a similar experience with this kid's bedroom populated by all the Star Wars merch.

Yeah, yeah. But also the cheesy Star Wars merch, like the Darth Vader poster with the kind of font they used in The Room, you know?

Yeah, it's so great. And it's just kind of this weird kind of cool pop culture crossover, but it also feels completely true.

It's also one of those things, like Tobe, it's one of those movies where it's completely true to the period in a way. Because famously, ET didn't eat M&Ms because the Mars company wouldn't let them do M&Ms. So it's Reese's Pieces. And that's the one thing in that movie that never worked for me, because who the fuck eats that? Who's not in a movie theater? It wasn't that iconic a candy back then. And nowadays, when you make a TV show and you've got a kids' room in it, and you say, I wanted to have Star Wars stuff all over the place, the first thing they tell you is, it's not a Disney show, so we can't have Star Wars, but we're Universal, so you can have Battlestar Galactica. And you're like, what kid watches that? I mean, I love Battlestar, it's a great show, but no 10-year-old is going to have the Katie Sackhoff Starbuck and Edward James Almost poster going, ah! So things have become so parochial that if Poltergeist were being made today by MGM, they could never have the Star Wars merch, because that's Disney. So there's still something really real about that that works.

Yeah, and it's kind of refreshing, because it's like, oh, it's not the studio promoting their own property. It is this crossover thing that you could do then, that now would just seem really insurmountable. But I will say the thing that struck me as wildly implausible in that kid's room, especially during the storm, why the heck do they leave the curtains open? Why doesn't he just pull the goddamn curtains close when the storm's hitting and freaking out the kids? It's like, pull the damn curtains!

Pull the curtains, yeah. You know the curtains that open to the really ominous tree that looks like a troll? Maybe we close those curtains.

The ominous tree that we know is going to...

Yeah, that tree's coming back...

.do something later.

That tree's coming back.

Kind of like also the scary clown doll that we know is like, okay, what is that scary clown doll doing there other than foreshadowing something horrifying, but then it's covered with the...

I love how they do the thing with Robbie. Robbie always, like the first time with the clown doll, he throws the Chewbacca sweatshirt over it, and it's got the snarling Chewbacca on it, so it's just as scary. And then they bring that back. That's more of a plant and payoff than a foreshadowing, but it's...

Yeah, yeah. But it's great. But finally, they're here.

Yes, they're here.

To catch back up.

So the hand comes out of the TV, and the first thing that struck me about that is, recently I was reading a review of Dial of Destiny, where they talk about Raiders and they say, and Raiders still works, aside from some very dated animation at the end, and I'm like, fuck you. That animation is not dated. It works completely well for the movie, you know, and it looks like all the other effects in the movie, so it's all of a piece with the aesthetic. The animation in this, I thought was superb, and it's the kind of thing that if you were doing it today, it would have such, it would be so zhuzhed up with CGI, and you feel like, and again, this is not an anti-CGI thing, but it feels so, it feels really frightening to me because it doesn't look digital. It looks very sort of organic. Yeah, and so there's a lot of practical effects. I mean, obviously that was an animation that they superimposed on it, but the practical effects in this movie are just phenomenally good.

It is a spectacular showcase of effects craftsmanship. And yeah, the animated elements have this just beautiful spectral quality to them. And they don't necessarily feel real, but they have this sort of super real, heightened, fantastical aspect of it that immediately opens the world of this movie that again, took its time for 20 minutes to establish it grounded in this real suburban house with this real family. And then it's like, okay, now we're going to introduce this. And I remember doing it in this very kind of elegant, artful way.

And I remember seeing that scene in the multiplex in 1982. And when the hand comes out of the TV, that was a jump scare. It was very like, you know, also because it's a girl, it's a little tiny girl, it's very frightening. So now here's the thing. So this happens and the house shakes. It's like an earthquake in the house. And then we have like maybe five minutes of them kind of having fun with the ghosts.

Okay, so the juxtaposition or the combination of very state of the art for the time, visual effects like the animated spectral hand coming out of the TV, then juxtaposed with the oldest, most classical slide of hand cinema trick ever in the book, which is in a wonder. Having the camera panning to the kitchen table with the chairs, you know, in disarray. And Jo Beth has to put them all back. It's like who left them this way? We panned back to her at the sink. And then we panned back in the same take and the chairs are freaking stacked up on top. Like a house of cards on the table. It is so like shit your pants freaky.

Yeah.

Even though, you know, oh, that's a, that's a, you know, you know, you know that they took. Yeah, doing that while the camera was turned. But it is so beautifully elegant and simple and so potent and effective.

And that's what you get when you actually have choreographed camera moves in movies instead of shooting five cameras and hosing it down and then finding the scene and editing. You know, like, like a lot of these scenes play on the Warner and it's great because it's not just a static shot. Some things. And by the way, you know, that when Joe Beth Williams is doing that, it was a racket. You know, it was like a bunch of grips going, And then they just took it out in post, you know. Now, all of this leads to Joe Beth Williams literally. She marks up the floor with crayons like where the trajectory of the chairs as they move. Craig T. Nelson comes home. She puts Carol Anne in a football helmet and shows him how the ghosts literally pull her through the floor. Yes. And that scene starts with her saying, Stephen, before I do this, I want you to reach back into our past when you had an open. Remember when you had an open mind?

Yes, it's a great scene. And again, so much of this of what makes this movie work. It's the reactions of these actors who are so good. And I think these performances are underrated because everything is sold on their reactions, their faces. And there's this moment here where she oscillates between initial shock and horror to delight and wonder. And you're almost kind of like, oh, is she a crazy person? Because I would be immediately at the stacking of these chairs. I'm getting out of the hell of the house because I think at that point, there's a jump cut to the exact same shot and setup where Craig T. Nelson is in another house. That is the exact same layout as this house.

He's selling another house.

And he is selling another house in this suburban development that is still under construction. And at first glance and moment, my first impulse was, oh, my God, they're so freaked out by the stacked chairs. They're immediately selling, trying to sell the house. But it's clearly not that because the wallpaper is different, the floors. It's clearly visually intentional that, OK, this is another house. But it's just a funny beat and a moment that plays with your head about, OK, what would I do? And she's leaning in and she's like, oh, this is cool. What is going on here? And it's fun.

It also makes you love her. It makes you think this is somebody who's like, you know, the supernatural thing has happened in her house. She's not calling the cops. She's like literally fighting. She's figuring it out on her own. And she doesn't necessarily think it's malignant to begin with.

Yes.

And I think that makes her character really interesting and fun and kind of gives her a different edge. I was going to say one of the things in this early part before, because in 10 minutes after this, the house comes to life, the tree tries to eat the boy and Carol Ann vanishes into the closet. And we're in the movie, right? One of the things I thought was funny about this was when Robbie is leaving the scene where they're having breakfast and he lifts up the spoon and the spoon is bent.

Yes.

I know they brought in The Matrix, you know, the little kid bending the spoon. It's like there is no spoon. But it's a really 1970s callback. There was this...

The Uri Geller mentalist.

Yes. There was a charlatan named Uri Geller for you Gen Zers listening, all, none of you. And he claimed he could bend spoons with his mind. And this kind of became a shorthand for psychic activity. So I thought it was really interesting how they... I mean, it works just when you watch it. But if you know anything about the period, you're like, aha, I see what you're doing.

Yeah. And also it's that there's this sense of degrees or escalation in terms of what is this... Where is this paranormal activity going to land on the dial? And not everyone is seeing all the same things. It has all the same information. And once they start kind of combining and comparing it and back with the sliding on the kitchen floor, the fact that Jo with William's character is so willing to put her daughter in potential danger...

Well, she does put the football helmet on her by letting her slide.

That's a good point. And sliding her across after it's like, oh, yeah, it's fine, the chair or whatever. And there's this moment where you think, oh, is this going to be a point of conflict between her and Craig T. Nelson, I'm just going to call them by the actor's names, by Craig T. Nelson's character, who may be, is this going to be a mold or scully? Is this going to be like then a fracture? No, no, no, no, no, not at all. It's that, okay, they're figuring it out together. They're kind of on board. And as you said, at this point, it is still relatively innocuous and amusing. And I also read it as kind of puncturing the mundane banality of suburban life, that there is this spark of wonder that has infected their house that initially is welcomed.

Yeah, exactly. Until you don't know if the movie is going to be cast for the friendly ghost yet. It could be that. That could happen.

We don't know. They don't know.

Paul, then all hell breaks loose. House goes cray. It's a storm. The tree not only comes to life, reaches into the house and grabs Robbie. The tree grows a mouth and tries to eat the kid.

Yeah.

That's just bananas.

That is some coked up shit right there. It is amazing. And not only do you get, I mean, you get this simultaneous things we've never seen before. One which is the animated tree that tries to eat the child. Then you also have this sort of cosmic anomaly like a white hole.

Yeah.

Open up in the kid's closet.

Which is a primal archetypal nightmare that something in your closet is going to suck you in and kill you. I can't believe I never saw that in a movie before.

And start sucking everything in. And again, it's just the most classically simple physical effects.

Practical effect ever, yeah.

Which is building that set on a gimbal and turning it sideways. And it is just...

So everything in the room just starts channeling into the closet. And they do it a couple of times. This effect happens later too. The one thing I would say is in this early shot, and look, because I'm so anti-CGI and I get so like, you know, whatever, like look, the dummy, the Carol Anne dummy, when you see the master shot of the room turning over, is quite obvious. And then they cut to the coverage of her, the close-up of her holding onto the bed and going, Ahh!

Yeah, fragile, feeble, wicker headboard. That has terrifyingly little structural integrity. It was never designed for this circumstance.

It was not designed to prevent a child from falling into an interdimensional vortex. That much is certain.

No, no, no, clearly.

So this sequence is balls out. It's the first time that the movie really kind of goes into warp factor. It's actually warp factor five because it goes to warp factor nine later. You know, it's funny because watching it, you can see some of it. Like there's parts of the tree that you can tell are maybe made of a pliable material, like a rubber, you know, and there's, but I mean, it works. So it's so well put together. And it's again, one of those instances where the movie goes from being very mise en scene to being heavily cut and the contrast is just phenomenal. You know, I think, I don't know that the whole sequence, but the upshot of it is, is that Caroline is now missing. She's been sucked into the vortex. Our characters don't go to the police. Well, you get the sense she's been missing for a couple of days. They go to Beatrice Strait, who is a very sort of Centaurian East Coast theater actor. She had won the Oscar for all of five minutes of screen time in the film Network for which she is my idol. I fucking love her in that scene. And she plays the kind of and it's weird because the next time we would see a university parapsychology department, it would be Peter Venkman doing fraudulent electric shock experiments. Yes, very kindly parapsychologist slash psychologist who is, you know, this is her hobby, they say. And so she brings a team into the house with other ghost hunting shit to try to catalog this stuff. Right.

Yeah, this is one of the big leaps. I mean, well, two of the big leaps the movie makes. One is just the high concept of, oh, Carol Anne has been sucked in. The little girl has been sucked into this white hole interdimensional vortex in the in the closet that has deposited her into the television or something through which the television is a portal into. And that is such a dazzling kind of conceptual leap. Yep. And it's also just so simple in terms of how it's sold with the sound design. It's very evocative and also very timely. Like it is, oh, it is how we're creating a new sort of monster and threat that is specific to this period. But then the whole, I felt like I'm missing something at this point in the movie in terms of why in God's name are they not calling the feds?

It's a big jump because it's a big jump because you get the sense Caroline's been missing for at least one or two days. Yeah, they haven't gone to the police, which makes sense because, you know, she was sucked into a pan-dimensional vortex while the tree was trying to eat their son. So you don't really, well, I don't know what your statement's going to be, but it is sort of a weird leap because then you go back to the house and they've been sleeping in the couch and you're like, wow, if their daughter's been missing for a day. And I mean, it's, you know, I, but in apropos of what you said, it's interesting because there's the two men who come with Beatrice Strait, the two ghostbusters.

The anti-ghostbusters.

Yes, they're all nice. They're not scumbags. They're not after money and they are actual scientists. So already it's a complete difference.

I do wonder, like, how did they find them? How do they know that these people exist? How do they go to that university? How do they, like, it's just, it almost feels like there's something that's cut there. But I get that narratively it's like, oh, it doesn't matter. We're just like, we're jumping to this.

That's the thing is that you can, you would know that there was a scene where they were looking at the yellow pages and brainstorming. And you know in editing somebody said, guys, the movie's already like an hour and 34 minutes long. Do we really need the shoe leather? We don't. And they cut it out.

It's death on a page. Let's just move on and buy it.

So Dr. Lesh comes in, that's Beatrice Strait, comes in with her sidekicks, Marty and Ryan. And Marty, and the interesting thing is when they're listening to Carol Anne come through to the television, Marty and Ryan are talking about how somehow the psychic plane is entering the electronic plane and how this could be coming from a CB or it could be coming from like radio waves and all this stuff. And it's fascinating because somewhere in this movie, there must have been a much bigger monologue about, you know, ghosts in electrical fields that got completely cut out.

Yeah, and there's the time with the recurring electrical storm and that is somehow connected in terms of opening this breach that has some electrical quality to it that comes to the TV.

But the one thing that I think is great about this middle portion of the film, we've seen one huge hulk out. We've seen, you know, now we know we're a good half an hour before we see the next bit, before shit goes to shit, it's the fan again, right? So the first scene where the Ghostbusters are in the house, you know, first of all, it's a great side gag because one of them describes Ryan, who's the black one. He's played by a guy named Richard Lawson, who was in Streets of Fire. He's been around forever. He's a really fun actor. You see him everywhere. I'm glad he's working to this day. Says, you know, I documented a small metal object moving seven feet over the course of 24 hours, but I got it on time lapse. It's magnificent. And then Craig T. Nelson kind of looks at him like, bitch, please. And then you smash up to them at the door to the bedroom. He opens the door and there's literally a whirlwind of everything. There's a Hulk doll on a horse. There's like a compass playing a record. There's books flapping in their faces and all that. And that shot lasts, doesn't last very long because the VFX are not good enough to hold that particular concept. Like that much.

And also very expensive to sustain.

Yeah, a lot of compositing going on, a lot of animation. So what sells, and especially there's a part where the compass comes right at Beatrice Strait's eyes and she swats it away or something like that. And that looks really fakey. But what sells it is first the bitch please look correctly and gives the guy. But then also the smash cut after that cut is Beatrice Strait picking up, she's been given coffee or tea. And she's literally, her hand is just shaking and the acting. And again, it's a really good example of how the actors in this movie do more heavy lifting than the VFX in the horror. You know?

Yeah. And also that there's sort of story within story and back story layered into this. Because these sort of academic paranormal investigators, parapsychologists, clearly have been functioning largely in the theoretical, in the academic, in the abstract. And yeah, their biggest thing, the most exciting thing was this like the thing you just described, this mundane anomaly that they, small thing that they covered and never in their wildest dreams did they think they'd be thrown into the deep end of this scale of a phenomenon. And the reactions that they have is this kind of interesting combination of, oh, we've been right all along, we've hit the jackpot, but also like, oh God, we're screwed.

Fear and awe, right?

They're out of their depth because they have not dealt with this before.

And you're totally hitting on something that is the great intersection of Spielberg and Tobe Hooper in this, is that there is a lot of horror in the movie, but there's also a lot of wonder in the movie. And I feel like that is Spielberg's contribution because in this sequence, when the Ghostbusters are getting settled into the house, there's a moment when there is, you know, the cameras all sort of start to whir away from them mysteriously. And then there's a big light show and the light passes through Jo Beth Williams. It's frightening. But then she has that thing where she goes like, oh, my God, Carol Ann passed through me. I smell like her. Oh, my God. And you can't smell her and nothing really. And she sells it so well that it's more interesting in the scene than the VFX, you know?

Yeah. And it's such a great payoff because the film indulges in this pretty long midpoint calm before the storm. Yeah. Right. Kind of in the middle of the movie where there's this long stretch where we've had like this big, huge cataclysmic paranormal nightmare. And then like, oh, help is here. And now they're settling in. They're figuring it out. They're validating their experience and they're kind of settling in for then what's next, the calm before the storm. And then one of the guys rips his face off.

Yeah. But I was going to say, yeah, Marty. Well, there's Ryan and Marty. Marty's the white one.

Yeah.

But I was going to say, I think just as you mentioned that it struck me that structurally, it's a really interesting thing as a writer because the movie really has two climaxes. It's got the climax that turns out to be a fake climax. And then the third act twist is like all hell really does break loose. So in a way, this quiet moment kind of sets you up to believe that the first climax is the final is the climax of the movie because it's still wrenching and visceral. And this actually kind of so just as a writer, just starting to think about that, Marty, Marty needs a snack. He goes to the he raids the the fridge, which is very I remember watching the movie. In 1982 going, this is very presumptuous of Marty. He literally goes to the kitchen and grabs a drumstick sticks in his mouth, pulls out a steak. Like, yes, in my house. Yeah. What's he going to do? Broil it.

Also, he inexplicably just sets the raw steak on the counter. And then and it's the middle of the night, apparently. And he's pulling out a pan and he's like, oh, he's just going to he's going to make himself a steak.

I like I was like, that's a sixty five dollar ribeye that this family has in their fridge. And you're going to fry it up in the middle of the night.

And you're like, dude, that's good. Yeah. That point you have to wonder, is he possessed?

Yes, he's possessed by a rude ghost.

But but yeah, but then the steak. It erupts in in this sort of meat volcano comes to life. He drops the drumstick in dismay to the floor, which immediately is covered in maggots. Yeah. And then he is freaked out appropriately. So runs to the sink and then in a shot that is rivaled by the melting faces at the end of Raiders. Yes.

Yeah.

He basically rips his own face off.

Yeah, because he looks up, he's got like a little welt and of course he starts working on it. And then the next thing you know, and he's literally tearing off his cheeks and you can see like his jaw. It's like it's horrifying.

And I'm watching that shot and I'm kind of waiting for it to cut away thinking like, but it just keeps going. Like, he just keeps digging into his own face, ripping more and more of it off. And you're like, this is...

And like most of the lower half is literally, yeah, it's been pulled back like curtains. And then his skull goes...

Yeah, yeah, it is a spectacular, spectacular effect. And then of course it's like, oh, he's hallucinating.

But the only way that could have been better is that Marty could have been played by Frank Stallone. I think that's, you know.

Mmm, the Frank factor. Thanks for watching! Man.

And missed opportunity, but then this leads to one of my favorite punchlines in the movie, which is like in the next scene, Beatrice Strait says she's gonna go get help because she's got somebody she wants to bring into the case. She says, Ryan is gonna stay here with you. Marty's not coming back. Yes. Well, Marty won't be coming back.

Before that, so we get the full reveals of the Poltergeists.

Yes.

And they actually do capture it on video, which is kind of amazing. And also, like, I mean, the scene that you mentioned of-

That's actually in this section, yes. It's after the face rip, right?

Yeah. Yeah, after the face rip. And then at that point, they send Bobby and the dog away in a taxi alone.

Alone.

Like to grandma's house, apparently. We never meet or see grandma. We just accept that grandma exists. But at this point, like, shit has gotten real. And they're sending Bobby and the dog to safety. But then, like that wonderful scene in the kitchen of comfort and validation, but also like, yeah, one of those paranormal investigators, like we've lost him. Like once he ripped his face off, like he's checked out, he's gone, he's not coming back. But when she says, but I'll be coming back. And I'll be bringing help.

Help, yeah.

Which is again, like one of these great moments of foreshadowing and set up. And we're so late into the movie for that. It is not until one hour, 14 minutes when that is then paid off and the help arrives.

Well, this is how, first of all, the other thing I was gonna say, and I did not talk about this earlier, but it's like there's a scene where Beatrice Strait tells Jo Beth Williams, I'm scared shitless. This is the weirdest night of my life. Paranormal investigators don't exist. It's a hobby. I'm a psychologist. Here's my flask of whiskey. Have some. And then in the scene where she says, I'm gonna come back with help, she actually passes the flask is empty. Yeah. I think it's in that scene, but it's great. Yeah, they bonded those characters really well. And I think it's because Jo Beth Williams and Beatrice Strait, it's a really nicely written scene too, but it's like you have these two really great actors like just going for it. And I think Beatrice Strait just, it's weird that this is who I have a crush on. I don't know why, but it's like, but she's so empathic, and it's something that I think only an actor of her age and maybe we haven't seen a lot of, like she had really not done a lot, she was mostly a stage actor. So at the time, like she wasn't an actress that I knew, but there was something about this being somebody, because I knew who Craig Dean Nelson was. And I don't know, there's something about the way she does that, that makes you really feel that she's a hero, you know?

Yes, and one of the things I like about it, and I know one of the things that I'm sure compels you to her is her competence. Like she is very together, she's very competent, she's also very empathetic, but here's a moment where she is free of arrogance and ego. She is recognizing the, she has hit the upper limit of her competence. Yeah, yeah. That we're, she is now in territory that she is not ashamed to say is outside of anything, but she is not going to bail. She is going to stick it out and help Jo Beth, you know, and then figure it out. But she knows she now needs to call in and bring in help.

Yeah, and because she's been established as being so human and so grounded, you know that when she says we need help, she means it.

The other thing too that I just think that is really wonderful in the scene is that we're centering the mom, the wife, Jo Beth Williams' character as sort of being in the middle of these decisions as the mother and also being respected and centered and recognized by the expert who is also a woman in this space. And then when she brings in another expert, it is another woman.

I think on some unconscious level, Paul, and I hate to say it's an unconscious level, but I think that as a child of the 80s, I don't think that I saw a lot of competent, intelligent women on film. The examples feel few and far between to me. Certainly a lot of female DAs still, but it was still a time when it was novel to have a policewoman in a show.

And again, just the stark contrast between Close Encounters, between all those male authority figures and experts in that movie, between ET of Peter Coyote and the sort of male energy of assertive dominance and expertise and authority. And we don't see any of that in this movie.

In fact, I mean, it's really, Paul, you've not stumbled. It's very thoughtful, but I think you've lit my mind to something about this movie that feels even more subversive than the sort of counter-cultural parents transmogrifying into yuppies in front of our very eyes. It's like, yeah, I mean, I think that one of the reasons why this movie felt so compelling to me was probably because I hadn't seen that before. Now, on Saturday, right? We will go see a movie where Bibi Besh plays Carol Marcus, who is a tough-as-nails scientist who's competent and has created something amazing, but we won't see that movie till the next day. So this is all new.

Exactly. And also she is not in an empowered position of authority.

No.

She is wrongfully kind of-

She has to call her admiral ex-boyfriend for help. So yeah.

Exactly. But here it's like all, we have all this authority and expertise centered in characters who are women, and balanced with empathy and compassion as opposed to arrogance and ego, which is the typical norm of what happened in this movie.

Or playing the female characters for some level of laughs.

Yeah. Yeah. Or as sex objects or anything else. It's like we're dealing with them as confident, real, dimensional, distinct people. And all three of these women are also so very different from each other.

Which brings me, I gotta get into this because Paul, I cannot hold back anymore. I'm sorry. But this brings me to the introduction, which is one of the greatest introductions of a character ever. And one of the greatest characters in the history of cinema, Tangina Barron, the little person exorcist who comes in to clean the house. And she's a little person. And she has this high-pitched voice and she is a fucking badass. I adore her. I mean, the way the introducer is Craig T. Nelson is not buying any of it. And Tangina is walking around, this is Zelda Rubenstein's character. She's walking around the house, checking the paranormal activity. And she shouts a question at Craig T. Nelson from the top of the stair. And this is again, a mise en scene shot. So they're holding the shot. Craig T. Nelson's in the foreground. Tangina, Zelda Rubenstein is on the top of the staircase in the background, going from room to room. You see her every once in a while. She pokes her head in to ask the question. They hold the shot. And she says, what is the thing with the whatever? And then Craig T. Nelson in the foreground closes his eyes. And you realize he's trying to answer her telepathically because he doesn't believe in her, right? And like- Yeah, but then Beatrice Strait says, dude, he asked you a question. What are you doing? And he goes, well, you said she was one of the most talented clairvoyants ever. And then from the background, and you don't even see her, you hear, I am, but I don't like trick answers.

It's dynamite.

Oh my God, she is like just such a, already she's such a hero. I adore her. Oh my God. Yeah, anyway.

Yeah, no, I mean, it is, so it is miraculous casting.

Yes.

Yes. I don't know how this movie works without her. It's also just so bold a choice in terms of writing and structure to hold her introduction back for an hour, 14 minutes.

Yep.

Until then, oh, now we're calling in the real sort of psychic cavalry. And then giving her that scene, but on top of it, there is this just beautiful, extensive, expository monologue that just is a feast.

Yeah.

And she goes to town on it with perfection in terms of just how kind of subtle and underplayed and freaky and assured. And it's marvelous. It is just one of the great expository monologues, I think, in film history.

I agree.

In addition to a character introduction.

And a great performance.

It's dazzling. It's absolutely dazzling.

I wanted to point out, as you're saying this, that I had the exact same, I'm so happy this is what you're talking about, because this is the exact same response I had. I was, they had, and also most of that expository monologue where she basically explains theology and why the ghosts aren't, you know, I mean, she basically explains the movie. She's saying it because she's also trying to explain to Jo Beth Williams and Craig T. Nelson, they're gonna have to get their daughter back. They're gonna have to do shit they don't like. So it's also very emotional. If you think of this movie, this movie was made 11 years after The Exorcist, okay? And The Exorcist in 1973 was the highest grossing film of all time. So nobody's seen this movie hasn't seen The Exorcist, right? Now, Father Marin in The Exorcist isn't introduced again until an hour and 40 minutes into the movie, but his introduction is that quite literally, it is one of the most iconic shots in cinema history, which is that Georgetown townhouse, it's night, the windows are lit, there's a big, big specular light coming down.

It's the poster.

Yeah, he gets out of the taxi holding that briefcase and it's like, fucking the Catholic Church is here to handle this shit. And you hear it in Michael's, you know, ding, you know, like all of that shit, right? And in this, it's like they subvert it. And look, the more we talk about this movie, the more I realize just actually kind of how subversive it is, three lead female characters who actually call the shots for the entire film, because Jo Beth Williams really is driving a lot of the movie. And then you've got, you know, but then also the way that it basically says, exorcist and Ouija board, we're doing TV because we live in the 20th century, God damn it. You know, and then the way that the introducer, exorcist is so different and the character is not Max Von Sito in Old Age Makeup. It's like this little person with a very high pitched voice.

It is, again, it's subverting the archetype of the hero who's going to ride in on the white horse to save the day or the great wizard Gandalf or whatever. Instead, we get the hobbit.

It's amazing. By the way, how ballsy is it for whoever directed the movie and whoever wrote the movie that they literally looked at the studio and said, this is the actor who's going to deliver a two-minute expositional monologue explaining the entire movie and you better believe she's going to sell it. There's a lot about this movie. It's funny, I think one of the things that makes these Amblin movies stand out from a lot of the modern blockbusters is that they were written and directed and produced by people who kind of came out of the 1970s. And I'm not one of these snobs that was like, we were the 70s for the Golden Age of Americans, independence, whatever. But you do see that there's like when you see that Spielberg coming out of making movies like Duel and Sugarland Express, George Lucas making stuff like American Graffiti, working on Francis Coppola's movies and all that. And all of these guys who were friends at the time and all that, they're literally coming out of a filmmaking tradition that is not based on, I saw Star Wars and I liked it, let's all do something cool. It's all based on a much more sort of intellectual and philosophical knowledge base and base of personal experience. I think you see human relationships that are very different and much more real in these films because I feel like the life experience of the people who made these movies is so much less about media and consumption of media and much more about real people. Is that horrible and reductive or does that make any sense?

No, I agree because I think for all the kind of razzle-dazzle of the effect sequences that are impeccably crafted for the time and there's wonderful stuff about them in the ILM documentary on how they did them, but the real high wire act for me in this film is arguably Zelda's monologue. Is to have the faith and the trust to devote that much runway to that much exposition in the hand of that actor. And again, that's the whole movie. It explains everything, it encapsulates everything, but it has to hold your attention and you have to buy it and believe it and believe the other characters believe it for it to work because it's all fundamentally, it's about storytelling. None of that matters if you don't buy that.

Because that monologue is ultimately the pep talk.

Yeah, and it is the set up, the ramp up to the rescue.

Everything, which involves, so the rescues, they summon the ghost by calling Carol Anne, by summoning their most sort of, you know, Craig T. Nelson is forced to be the awful dad who's threatened to spank her, all of this stuff. She's not supposed to go into the light because that's the way to heaven, but they're trying to lead the ghosts who are holding her captive into the light while getting her to go back toward the spectral vortex and pull her out of that. But the way the spectral vortex works is that the in is the closet, the out is through the chandelier in the living room. And the way they prove it is by writing on tennis balls and throwing them to the vortex. And then they come down in the living room. So they realize if they pour rope into the vortex and tie someone to the rope and send them in, like it turns out to be Jo Beth Williams, she can grab the kid and come out through the chandelier.

This is the point where I am just completely loving this movie because I love like a great heist movie where it's like, okay, now it's time to lay out the plan. It's like a military campaign, you know, assault on how we're going to take the beach, how we're going to pull out the heist, how we're going to pull out this rescue. It's like you've got these characters who all have a part to play and have different expertise and skills and whatever. And basically it's like it's a very simple, we're going to rescue your daughter. And this is how we're going to do it. And then following along how they're going to execute it. And it is so perfectly geographically, conceptually communicated with such clarity. Follow it step by step. It's just a perfect clockwork and a puzzle construction.

I'm so excited about this. I'm literally flapping my arms. It's like the thing they do, like the monologue is all emotional. It's all about ghosts, their relationship to the living, how they feel, why they have Carol Anne. There's a dark energy over there. It knows what scares you. She doesn't lay out the plan in the monologue. You see it as they're sort of hatching it. And you see a little bit of it just enough to get you to understand that there's tennis balls and rope. And then it's sort of as they're doing it, you see the preparations happen. And it's sort of like a Heist and a Mission Impossible movie, but it's almost like the one where they don't want to go through the motions of explaining everything, but they want for you to understand that they're doing it and they all know what they're doing. It's phenomenal, Paul.

And it all makes sense. And you're invested in every step of the way. I just think this entire rescue sequence is so ingenious and gripping, and it all comes down to a very simple, immeasurably powerful idea, which is the depth of a mother's devotion for her daughter. And that at this moment, like JoBeth Williams steps up and she is, she's Ripley.

She's Ripley, yeah.

She becomes, I think, one of the great heroes of genre cinema as she decides, I'm going to go in. I'm going to find my daughter and save her and pull her out.

It broke my heart, but it broke my heart.

And Grady Nelson chooses to back her play. And is there to hold the line and to support her in being the hero. Now he does find that incredibly magnificent.

But he does volunteer to go, like a good dad, he says, I'll go. And then the daddy heartbreak to end all daddy heartbreaks, which is you can't go rescue your daughter. This has to become a Valentine to Mother's love because you're the only one strong enough to pull the rope. And it's almost like in a weird way, like, I mean, the family is so equal. And obviously they all love each other and all of that. But it's such a like encapsulation of the lot of a father, which is, you know, like as a dad, you're always stepping back and letting the mother's love be the guiding force because it, you know, it's more powerful, but every time you're reminded of it, it breaks your goddamn heart. And I hope my daughter hears this podcast in 30 years because it'll explain a lot to her.

Yeah. Yeah. And again, the archetype of the heroic male riding to the rescue, you think, oh, he's going to be the dad. He's going to be the brave one. He's going to jump in and do that. That is what would be typical for the genre and for the period. And the fact that this movie is like, no, we're not even like, yes, we're acknowledging that there's that impulse, but we're going this other way. I just think it's so meaningful and it's so powerful. And it's just edge of your seat, you're totally in it. And then...

The greatest... Go ahead, you go ahead, you do tell it.

And it works and they come out and my notes are the goo!

The goo!

So much goo!

The ectoplasm in this movie is so good.

Oh my God.

The best ectoplasm in cinema. Absolutely. Straight up No Chaser, right?

Where do you even source that quantity and quality of goo?

That is a lot of gelatin, a lot of caro syrup, and a lot of shit from a butcher shop. That cannot have been an easy day on set. That must have smelled like ass.

It is just amazing. It just gobsmacked. When you see them emerge, and of course, she's got her. She's gripping her daughter tight as she can, tumbling down to the floor. I do wonder why didn't they put a mattress there to catch them or something? That seems like a rough landing. Maybe they should have thought of that. But okay, whatever. Craig T. Nelson carts them into the tub.

Starts washing off the slime and then they wake up.

But also the suspense. And of course, we know they're okay. They have to be okay. This movie is not going to let either of them die. And it's this great heroic victory.

When JoBeth Williams finally breathes, and then the daughter wakes up and she says...

Yes, but it's also disgusting.

Yeah. By the way, the thing I want to point is that it leads to the greatest end of a sequence line ever, delivered by Selda Rubinstein. Do you want to say it or shall I? Selda Rubinstein, they have video cameras everywhere because the Ghostbusters are recording this. You can tell that she's kind of media savvy. So she turns to one of the cameras, she takes off her glasses, which are huge and a big part of the character, she straightens her hair, and she says straight into the camera... Oh my God, Becky, wow.

To clarify for the listeners who may not have made that out, that was not his ass is clean, that was this house...

Is that what you took out of it, really? This towering performance by a marginalized actor who probably would never... And you got this ass is clean, really?

I just want to make sure there's no misunderstanding from people hearing it without the imagery to...

Understood.

To make it absolutely clear. But yeah, no, it is the perfect heroic family reunion. They won. Zelda has declared the house clean. We're at an hour 33. It is the perfect ending, the perfect running time for a movie. Yeah, we're done. Yeah. And it's like...

I left. I turned the TV off. I left at this point. Did something else happen?

I mean, it's perfect. But then here's the crazy thing. The movie is not over.

They top the shit out of this climax in a way that is...

And you're sitting there watching them and it's like, okay, now, okay, there's a coda. They're moving out of the house now. Good for them. Finally, they got to move. But they got the family together. They're safe. They're moving out. But you're wondering, you're like, why are they... Why are we still here? Why is the movie not over?

Yeah. And... And then Craig T. Nelson makes the biggest strategic mistake ever, which he says, We're gonna sleep at the holiday today. But, you know, while I'm out wrapping up my work and finishing quitting my job and telling my boss to fuck off, if the kids conk out, just let them conk out on the bed. It's gonna be fine. Just let them go to sleep on their beds, and then we'll just go to the holiday after I get home. Yeah. Bad idea.

Yes. And then you have this bedtime, bath time... Mm-hmm... .sequence of suspense.

Can I point out two things before you say that? There's two things... There are two incredible grace notes in this movie that I had never noticed. Okay, so as you know, the older sister, the Dominique Dunn character, has played as a little bit of a sex bot. Though not much. It's not particularly... But you get the sense she's got a boyfriend and all that stuff. And of course, at the end of it, she does have like a massive hickey on her neck when she comes back from her boyfriend's house and the climax of the film has happened and she wasn't in it. When Craig T. Nelson says, we're going to stay at the Holiday Inn on I-74, Dominique Dunn's character is passing by and she goes, oh, I remember that place. And she gets a smile on her face like, what the fuck happened on Prom Night, kid? And the other one is when Jo Beth Williams puts the kids to sleep in the room, Heather O'Rourke is gnawing on a Luke Skywalker action figure, which if you remember the 70s and early 80s, there could be no greater sacrilege than chewing up a Star Wars they were so hard to find.

That shot did pain me. And on the other side of her, she's sleeping with a decapitated doll that she's sort of plumsily positioning the head onto. And then of course, at the foot of Bobby's bed is the scary clown that's still there and finally, finally gets its moment. Long overdue.

Yeah, he tries to pull him under the bed, which is first on top of the bed, then he's not near the bed and he looks under the bed, which we're not supposed to do. Never do that.

Why are you doing that? Yeah, you know, he's never seen a movie.

The clown's ropey fabric hands reach and grab. Grab him and start pulling him under the bed.

Yeah, like tentacles of doom. And now shit gets crazy.

Now we get our second gimbal room, which is really interesting, because this is Jo Beth Williams. She's just taking a bath. You think she's going to get attacked in the bath. Of course, she doesn't. But she goes to bed. And then she starts getting dragged across the walls. And it's, again, another one of these shots where the room's in a gimbal. So it's a very easy, practical effect. But wow, her physical performance is wonderful. She's really, I mean, it's all her.

Yeah, yeah. And it does sort of foreshadow, I think Sigourney Weaver and Zool.

Yes, it does.

Ghostbusters. Yeah, it's just when you thought everything was okay. Of course, things can't be okay. And Zelda was not quite correct.

The house is not clean.

Oh, there were limits to her expertise as well, it turns out.

It's funny, though, because she's so good and so convincing that when she says this house is clean, you are convinced that the credits are going to start rolling, you know?

And they won. They're back and they got all the goo. Yeah, I think there could have been a whole scene of how to get all that goo down the back of the drink. And I also do think, to your earlier point, we could get a whole side sequel, Dominique Dunn's Teenage.

She was in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. That's the movie she went to.

I feel like there's a whole other movie where we could have followed her character during a lot of these events. But then part of what the fear is here is that Craig T. Nelson is not there. And that Jo Beth Williams is alone. And now dealing with an escalating situation that is worse than what we've seen and then a full, just, no-holds-barred reveal of the main signature Poltergeist monster showdown that is not going to let her in her kid's room.

She finally gets out of her room. She goes to the kid's room, and the monster appears at the door. And the monster, it's really interesting because he's shown in full light. The monster is white. So it's not one of these things where they're hiding the monster. And forgive me, Paul, I'm sure you know this. You read Sin Effect, just like I did. But the way they did the monster effect, they had this fuzzy monster puppet that they shot in a water tank and then composited it onto the scene so that the monster's fur appears to be floating in the ether. And the monster looks kind of like a human skeleton with outsized arms and legs and a massive horse head. I mean, it's insanely disturbing.

It's one of the great monster designs, I think, of genre cinema. It's just iconic. And again, it comes out of nowhere. It's like, we've not seen this. It's just something new, and it's a holy shit. What the heck is that now?

And it is now that Craig D. Nelson's boss is giving him a ride home that we learned the dirty secret. Because in a previous scene, the boss had revealed that there had been some cemeteries that they'd moved. But it's okay. It's not ancient burial grounds. It's just people. But as all hell is breaking loose and JoBeth Williams falls into the pool, the corpses start... Oh, it's a mud pit.

It's not a pool.

It's a mud pit, right? It's a flooded mud pit, yeah. Corpses start popping up from the ground in their coffins, and suddenly the entire house, like, every time she tries to go... Like, she tries to rescue the kids, a coffin literally pops up in her way, and it opens, and a corpse falls out of it. So it's literally like... It's like corpses popping out of the ground.

Real skeletons, by the way.

Oh, really? Paul, I have a question for you about this part of the movie, because it is...

About the stalactite of coffins...

Are they stalagmites? The stalagmite coffins of death.

No, it's actually about...

It's about the drama in the film, okay?

Yeah.

And I'm certain that some of this was put in in ADR, but the monologue, Craig T. Nelson does say the monologue, to the actor who plays Craig T. Nelson's boss, a man named James Caron, who you see him, you've seen him in everything. He was one of the great character actors. So the corpses are popping off, and Craig T. Nelson grabs his boss, and he gives this monologue where he's shouting. Now, he should be helping his family get out of the corpse house, but instead, he grabs his boss and says...

You son of a bitch, you left the bodies and you only moved the headstones! You only moved the headstones!

So, now what you miss if you're only listening to this is my mouthing the performance like a lip-syncing drag queen because it's the greatest monologue ever. It's also, as an enlightened moviegoer, I get that from the previous scene, so they have Craig T. Nelson explain what's going on. Now, here's my question, Paul, because this performance has never left me since I saw this movie. It's a man, it's a dad, and he's screaming hysterically, and he's pissed, but he's also scared shitless, and he's also yelling an expository monologue that is clunky as fuck, okay? Yeah, yeah. Here's my question. Is Craig T. Nelson a great fucking actor or what?

Go on. So, oh, so many thoughts.

It's hard to say. I mean, I don't think he sells it at all, but he sells it, because it's unsellable, but he still sort of sells it. It's weird.

It is, it is, because it is this kind of erratic escalation into high melodrama that does feel, on the one hand, well, inevitable, like, oh, of course, that explains this, and, oh, the real monsters are real estate developers. Yes. Like, that's really the message of this movie, is that real estate developers are evil, and that they're the true monster. And it's also like this contrast, where we're finally outside the claustrophobic confines of this house that we've been stuck in for almost the whole movie, into this, you know, vista overseeing this sort of idyllic suburban development, but that is overlooked by...

Let me throw in a little, you know, Stanley Kubrick was apologizing for faking the moon landing theory about this, okay? Now, this movie came out in 82, which means it was written in the 70s, right? The characters are clearly have some 80s, you know, sort of late boomer influence. They smoke weed, you know, they watch SNL. They're not squares, right? And yet, as they've gotten older and had kids, they've bought into the yuppie life. They live in a cookie cutter house. The father has sold out. He is the salesperson for Cuesta Verde. He's responsible for 42% of the sales at Cuesta Verde. So he sold more houses than anybody. And he lives in the best house. He's been offered the best house in Cuesta Verde. In a weird way, just when you said the real enemy is real estate developers, it actually kind of is. Because this is, at the end of the day, a movie about how you shouldn't sell out. Because this family, this entire family of sort of free-thinking 60s people becomes a nuclear American family in a suburb.

Right. Well, I think you hit the nail on the head with one word that is not uttered in the movie, but is central to it and of the time of 1982, which is yuppie. And a lot of contemporary listeners and audiences will not really know what that means, but that was a whole thing in the 80s of this sort of young urban professional sellout scum that are buying into the Reagan era capitalist American dream. And that really is where we find this family at the beginning, where it's like, oh, they're yuppie champions. They have won the American dream, but it's like, oh, at what cost?

Nelson is literally smoking weed and reading a book about Ronald Reagan while he reads a book about Ronald Reagan. That's what the movie is really about.

Yeah, yeah, it is this sort of vicious attack on that whole yuppie culture and ideal and tearing it down by saying it's built on the bodies of the dead.

Yeah, because the whole narrative for the yuppies, even though, look, boomers talk about the 60s, like everybody went to Woodstock. It was all 50 billion of them who went to Woodstock. It was like 300, right? But they all loved to talk about the 60s like they were there. So what's interesting about that to me is that the narrative in the 80s was the hippies became the yuppies. The hippies all sold out and they became the yuppies. The truth of the matter is people just became yuppies because that's who they were, whatever. It's not like the hippie. But the narrative was hippie sellout led to yuppies. And I find that if you were in your 20s and the 60s, then in the 70s, you got into your 20s, you got into your late 20s, early 30s, you had the kids and fuck it. You stopped protesting Vietnam. All of this, however, leads to one of the greatest visual effects of all time.

As Craig T. Nelson is racing back to the house and we get some really spectacular effect sequences. I mean, one, the in-camera, the extending hallway. JoBeth Williams then has to try to traverse to get to her kids. And then there is the just really disgusting biomorphic closet.

The closet becomes a colon leading to hell. And you realize at the end of that vortex is sort of like this colon. Like it's not leading to heaven anymore.

A colon but with like a tentacle appendage that is reaching out to try to pull them in. And she is trying to create a human link chain with her son Bobby and then with Carol Ann to try to rescue them and pull them out of the room on her own without help. And this is after she's emerged from the mud pit of skeleton nightmares. It's really great. And then he's, Craig D. Nelson is racing back and we get prior to The Great Effect, the other immortal meme of this movie.

When Dana, the older sister, arrives in her boyfriend's transam.

Yes. And she has not been witnessed to any of the things that have been happening. She's been blissfully unaware.

She has a hickey the size of Ohio on her neck.

Exactly. In the comfort of her late night phone calling boyfriend.

Yeah.

And she utters the immortal line. What's happening? Which is, again, one of the great memes that has, stands alone. And I think that most people on the Internet who see that probably don't even know that this is where it's from.

Now, Paul, we're like entering the third hour of our podcast, so we should probably get to that. But would you like to do the honors and explain how they made the house implode entirely into a black void of nothingness without any CGI?

It's such a beautiful effect, and it is chronicled wonderfully in the ILM documentary on Disney+, which I recommend everyone watch if you haven't already. But they build this just beautiful, immaculate scale model of the entire house, this just labor of craftsmanship that took...

Out of balsa wood.

Out of balsa wood that took months or something to build and make, very, very delicate, and then rigged and with drink or fishing or fishing line, I think, on the interior at different points and then tilted on the side with a sort of vacuum.

Yeah, they used an industrial vacuum pump that they hooked it up to.

At the end and then filmed it basically with them pulling then all these lines and then activating the vacuum and the entire scale model implodes and gets sucked into this thing.

They shot it in ultra high speed so that you can actually because an industrial vacuum pump literally just like when you see the shot without the slow motion and the house is gone. But yes, the house begins to buckle and that's the strings. And then suddenly it just implodes and it goes into nothingness and the ingenuity of, hey, let's make a Balsa wood house, stick it on an industrial vacuum pump and shoot it in such high speed that you can actually, it looks real and it looks like something that has weight and it looks like something, even though it doesn't, it looks like something that exists in the real world. It's just magisterial.

And it's a payoff of all these establishing shots that the film has given us of that house, of that exterior, where we know that house, we accept it as a real house that we've seen them go in and out of and that model is just perfect. My only complaint in that sequence is that Craig T. Nelson's evil real estate developer boss bears horrified witness to it, but is not also sucked into the vortex with it.

Well, but the last shot of the scene is him putting his hand on his face like, oh my God, what have I done? So you know that he's also, I might add, doesn't like when the spectra lights it and his suit sort of turns white, doesn't it? Or it's like a whole thing.

I don't quite recall, but I know, like, yeah, I'm going to go with the fact that he is forever traumatized.

Yeah.

But whether he does anything to right his ways, who knows? I kind of felt like he was deserving of some sort of existential...

Yeah, maybe he should have put his hand to his head, what have I done? And then get sucked in the vortex.

And given the shots like of Paranormal Investigator guy ripping his face off, I did, that was the one thing I felt like, and I don't know if it was a budget or schedule, I just create a thing, but I just felt like, oh, that was one last...

They cut his comeuppance out, dude...

.best death and comeuppance that I felt like the movie may be left on the table.

Now, Paul, I'm going to leave you to describe the incredible last moment of the film, but I want to describe another moment that happens, which is that as all of this hell is breaking loose, the house is imploded, it's before that, literally light shooting out of the house, James Caron has been the best director of light, corpses flying everywhere, everybody piles it to the family truckster, because Craig T. Nelson can get them the fuck out of there, and there is about a ten-second shot of Craig T. Nelson's ass as he's fishing his jeans pockets for his keys, and it is the tensest shot in movie history. It is literally like, fuck your fucking jeans, your jeans, Jesus Christ, man, it's amazing. So yeah, I've never been so traumatized by a man's ass before. It's amazing.

So many thoughts. That, yeah, that sequence of just sheer unadulterated panic as they're trying to escape and as, again, coffins with erupting and exploding with skeletons under the hood of their car and they're trying to get out of there. And then again, yeah, the daughter shows up and they're...

And then the most mundane things happens that only adds to the horror, which is what's great about this movie, you know?

Yes, yeah, that he's fumbling with his keys in the dark in panic, trying to get the damn car started so they don't all die. Yep. And it just comes down to that. And yeah, it's a little bit of a... It goes on maybe a scooch long.

I don't know. It worked for me the whole time. I'm like, back pocket's in the back pocket, it's in the front pocket.

It's phenomenal. It's really, really good.

And then we have one of the greatest...

And thankfully, they escape.

And then they get to the Holiday Inn at I-74. They check in. They're going into the room. The last thing you see, Craig D. Nelson goes to the... It's one of those motels that has like a hallway in front, but it's an open air motel.

Yeah.

And he looks out past the railing of the little balcony, the little mezzanine in front of him. He goes in his room, closes the door, and then...

There's a beat, and the door opens again, and he shoves the TV out onto the balcony patio, walkway, whatever, and goes back into the motel, shuts the door. And this is all as the camera continues to kind of pull back.

The camera pulls back.

In one of the greatest product placement scenes for any hotel chain ever, I don't know why Holiday Inn didn't build a whole campaign around it, which is like, what do you do? What do you need? Where do you go after being tormented by Poltergeists and your house imploding? You need a Holiday Inn.

Yes, you do.

And that's where we leave our heroes in just shell-shocked exhaustion and dismay and then role titles to Kathleen Kennedy's first producing credit on a film.

Oh, wow. She did okay, right? Things worked out for her, right?

After this, your next one was producer on ET. So she's a social producer on this, which is her first producing credit.

We haven't heard much from her recently. She's not really earning or anything now, is she?

Yeah, who knows what she ended up doing. She's probably enjoying life on a beach somewhere.

I hope so. I hope so. Why would you want to work so hard, you know, after you've done all this?

On Scariff or Narcina.

I don't think you want to vacation on the beach in Scariff, man. There's some shit going on there.

Depends on when you go. It's a seasonal thing. Yeah, it's a great punchline and it's a great coda. But at the same time, I still go back and think, like, this movie would also be perfect if it had ended at an hour 33. But it reaches this whole other level by adding a second, third act, essentially.

There was a professor that I studied under at USC who used to say, you have the joke, then you have the topper. But then he said, sometimes, if you're lucky, you can have the topper of the topper. And I think this is one of those instances where they just got, not lucky, I mean, they had the talent obviously, but it's like they really created a topper of the topper that worked incredibly.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of other examples of where that's really been done, and I'm drawing a blank, and I'm sure there are many.

Yeah, but because the podcast has now go on at least an hour and a half, and producer Brad is going to have to edit enormously, let's talk about what we're doing tomorrow, Paul, because we had this debate.

Oh, my gosh.

It's Friday night. We've been to the multiplex to see Poltergeist. We're going to see if our parents can give us a little more allowance, aren't we?

So this was just the warm up of another film that also does have some pretty remarkable horror moments and elements to it. And yeah, we're not settling for one movie this weekend, as great as Poltergeist was. So there is the inevitable.

It couldn't be helped. It had to happen.

Yes.

Star Trek II. The Wrath of Khan.

The Wrath of Khan.

The Wrath of Khan. So guys, thank you for listening to our podcast and we will join you next week for our double header Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. And we will see you in line at the multiplex.