50 Fun Facts About Poltergeist

Steven Spielberg produced and co-wrote Poltergeist, but who is its credited director?

Tobe Hooper holds the sole directing credit, but the Directors Guild investigated whether Spielberg was undermining it, and Spielberg published an open letter praising Hooper's work.

Poltergeist's child lost in another dimension echoes 'Little Girl Lost', an episode of which TV series?

The Twilight Zone: in 'Little Girl Lost' a girl slips through her bedroom wall into another dimension, heard but not seen by her family, and its writer, Richard Matheson, noted the resemblance himself.

Poltergeist grew from a scrapped horror sequel Spielberg planned to which of his films?

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: the follow-up, Night Skies, would have had hostile aliens terrorising a farm family, an idea Spielberg took from a 1955 UFO scare in Kentucky.

What is the name of the planned California community where the Freeling family lives?

Cuesta Verde exists only on screen: the Freelings' street is a real one in Simi Valley, California, and the storm that tears through it was staged on soundstages in Culver City.

Through which toy do the spirits first reach Carol Anne in Poltergeist II?

A toy telephone: it rings in the night after her grandmother's death, and when Carol Anne answers, spirits burst out of the receiver and the other toys in her room come to life.

Carol Anne first communicates with the spirits through which household object?

The television set: she talks to the static after the station signs off, and in the film's final shot her father pushes the motel-room set out onto the balcony.

What two-word line does Carol Anne deliver as the family is shaken awake by a quake?

"They're here." The American Film Institute ranked it 69th among the greatest movie quotes, and the sequel had Carol Anne answer it with 'They're back', the line on its poster.

During the thunderstorm, Robbie is dragged out of his bedroom window by what?

The backyard tree smashes a branch through the window and tries to swallow him, and while the family runs out to save him, the bedroom closet takes Carol Anne.

Which four-word verdict does the medium pronounce after Carol Anne's rescue, only to be proved wrong?

"This house is clean." Soon after, as the family packs to leave, the attacks return worse than before and the whole house implodes.

Beatrice Straight, Poltergeist's Dr. Lesh, won an Oscar for which 1976 film?

Network: Straight plays the wife who confronts William Holden over his affair, and about five minutes on screen were enough to win her Best Supporting Actress.

What is the name of the diminutive spiritual medium Dr. Lesh calls in?

Tangina Barrons, played by Zelda Rubinstein in all three films, is killed in the third and still comes back from the dead to hand the family her necklace.

What does the medium call the demonic presence holding Carol Anne captive in Poltergeist?

The Beast, she says, is using Carol Anne's life force to stop the other spirits from moving on; the sequel gives it a human past as the leader of a doomed cult.

In Poltergeist, the spirits' dimension is entered through the children's closet; where is its exit?

The living room ceiling: a rope thrown into the closet drops out of it, so Diane ties herself on, goes in after Carol Anne, and the two fall out downstairs coated in ectoplasm.

Popular memory puts Poltergeist's haunted estate on a Native American burial ground; what does Steve's boss say it really covers?

A former cemetery: the developers moved the headstones but left the bodies, which burst out of the swimming-pool pit and the lawn in the finale.

Which of Robbie's toys grabs him and drags him under the bed in Poltergeist's finale?

A clown doll wraps its arms round his neck, and when Diane runs to help, an unseen force drags her up the wall and across the ceiling.

Poltergeist received three Academy Award nominations and lost every one of them to which film?

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial opened a week after Poltergeist and beat it for score, sound effects editing and visual effects, so Spielberg's own film defeated the one he had produced.

Who composed the score for Poltergeist?

Jerry Goldsmith said he shaped the music with producer Spielberg alone and that the film's director took no part, one more spark for the row over who really made it.

The MPAA first gave Poltergeist which rating, before the filmmakers had it changed on appeal?

R was softened to PG after Spielberg argued the case in person, and he went on pressing for a rating in between, which arrived two years later as PG-13.

Which studio released Poltergeist on June 4, 1982?

MGM/UA sold the film on its producer, printing 'A Steven Spielberg Production' twice as large as the director's name in its trailers, and an arbitrator made the studio pay him $15,000.

Zelda Rubinstein's turn as the medium in Poltergeist won her which award for Best Supporting Actress?

A Saturn Award, the prize for science fiction, fantasy and horror: she won it for the first film, then drew Golden Raspberry nominations for playing the same part in both sequels.

Which actor played Steve Freeling, the father, in Poltergeist?

Craig T. Nelson had walked away from a comedy career in 1973, built his own house in the northern California mountains and lived on odd jobs for five years before he returned to acting.

JoBeth Williams, Poltergeist's Diane Freeling, made her film debut opposite Dustin Hoffman in which film?

Kramer vs. Kramer: Williams plays the woman Ted Kramer brings home, who is quizzed by his small son when he meets her walking naked to the bathroom.

In Poltergeist, the shot of Diane dragged up the wall and across the ceiling was achieved how?

A static camera in a rotating set: the bedroom turned with the camera fixed to it, the same trick that let Fred Astaire dance up the walls in Royal Wedding.

Which animated series spoofed Poltergeist in 'Bad Dream House', a segment of its first Halloween special?

The Simpsons moved into a house built on a Native American burial ground in 1990's first 'Treehouse of Horror', a nod to Poltergeist even though the 1982 film has no such burial ground.

Poltergeist cases are popularly said to centre on which kind of household member?

An adolescent, usually: sceptics point out that the disturbances tend to stop when strangers are watching and that many cases turned out to be a child's hoax.

Which artist was commissioned to design the creatures for Poltergeist II?

H. R. Giger, the Swiss painter behind the monster in Alien, sent drawings from Zurich for others to build, and later blamed his absence from the set for the disappointing results.

In Poltergeist II, the family's tormentor is revealed as the spirit of an insane 19th-century preacher named what?

Henry Kane led a religious sect into the desert in the 1800s, and his followers died with him in a cavern beneath the ground where the Freelings' house was later built.

What is the subtitle of Poltergeist II, the 1986 sequel?

The Other Side is the limbo the Freelings enter through a cavern under their old home, where Steve drives off the monster with a charmed spear from the shaman Taylor.

In Poltergeist II, Steve becomes possessed after drunkenly swallowing what?

A mezcal worm at the bottom of the bottle carries the villain into Steve; when Diane fights him off he vomits it up, and it swells into a tentacled monster.

Will Sampson (Poltergeist II's Taylor) was best known as Chief Bromden in which film?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was the first acting job for Will Sampson, a painter and rodeo rider, and he died in 1987, a year after playing the shaman Taylor.

Poltergeist III (1988) is set in an apartment in which real skyscraper?

Chicago's John Hancock Center: the film was shot in and around the real 100-storey tower in spring 1987, trading the first film's quiet suburb for a crowded high-rise.

Which two actors play Carol Anne's aunt and uncle in Poltergeist III?

Tom Skerritt and Nancy Allen play Bruce and Pat Gardner, a building manager and a gallery owner who take Carol Anne in without knowing what her family has been through.

Through what does the villain primarily attack in Poltergeist III?

Mirrors and reflections: director Gary Sherman designed the effects himself and staged nearly all of them live on set, with reflections that move apart from the people in front of them.

Which actor plays the father, Eric Bowen, in the 2015 remake of Poltergeist?

Sam Rockwell's Eric Bowen stays behind at the portal: in the remake it is the young son, Griffin, rather than the mother, who goes in to bring his sister back.

After Poltergeist, Heather O'Rourke had a recurring role as Heather Pfister on which sitcom?

Happy Days wrote Heather O'Rourke into its tenth season, months after Poltergeist opened, as the small daughter of Fonzie's new girlfriend, Ashley Pfister.

Dominique Dunne, who played eldest daughter Dana, was fatally strangled in 1982 by whom?

Her ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney, attacked her in her driveway and was convicted only of manslaughter; sitting through the trial turned her father, Dominick Dunne, into a crime writer.

Zelda Rubinstein, the medium of the Poltergeist films, later spent two seasons on which David E. Kelley series?

Picket Fences cast Zelda Rubinstein as police dispatcher Ginny Weedon, answering to a sheriff played by her co-star from the third Poltergeist film.

The director of Poltergeist was hired largely on the strength of which 1974 film he had made?

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre made Spielberg want its director for a science-fiction horror film; by the director's own account, he turned it down and suggested the ghost story instead.

Which horror director produced the 2015 remake of Poltergeist?

Sam Raimi produced it with his Evil Dead partner Rob Tapert and hired Gil Kenan, whose first feature, the animated Monster House, had Spielberg as an executive producer.

In the 2015 remake, Jared Harris plays Carrigan Burke, who has what job?

Host of a paranormal TV show: Carrigan Burke, the lead investigator's ex-husband, ends by walking into the portal himself to lead the spirits to the light, and returns to his programme.

Poltergeist: The Legacy, the 1996 TV series sharing only the title with the films, premiered on which network?

After three seasons Showtime cancelled it and the Sci-Fi Channel picked it up for a fourth. Its hero, Derek Rayne, runs a secret society house on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.

The word 'poltergeist' comes from German words meaning what?

Noisy ghost: poltern means to rattle or make a noise, because this kind of spirit is heard rather than seen, knocking, banging and hurling objects; the word reached English in 1838.

The Enfield poltergeist case of 1977-79, dramatised in The Conjuring 2, centred on sisters with which surname?

Hodgson: British investigators studied the Hodgson sisters for more than a year, while the Warrens, the heroes of the film, turned up only briefly.

The Bell Witch poltergeist legend tormented a farming family in which state from 1817 to 1821?

Tennessee: the Bell farm stood near present-day Adams, and the tale has Andrew Jackson himself coming to investigate, only for his party to be frightened away.

Poltergeist's score sets its terrors against 'Carol Anne's Theme', written in which gentle form?

A lullaby: the composer wanted a childlike tune for the little girl and her quiet suburb, and he brought it back four years later for the sequel.

Which company created the visual effects for Poltergeist?

Industrial Light & Magic did the work under supervisor Richard Edlund, who then left to found Boss Film, the company that made the effects for the sequel.

Which 1943 Spencer Tracy film about a pilot's ghost plays on the Freelings' bedroom TV?

A Guy Named Joe: Spielberg screened it for Poltergeist's future writers, hoping they would script a remake, and later remade it himself as Always, swapping wartime bombers for aerial firefighting.

What crawls across the kitchen counter in front of the investigator Marty in Poltergeist?

A raw steak: it creeps along the counter and erupts into something rotten, and moments later Marty hallucinates tearing the flesh from his own face at the bathroom sink.

Who produced Poltergeist alongside Steven Spielberg?

Frank Marshall, fresh from producing Raiders of the Lost Ark, is the 'Doctor Fantasy' welcomed by a sign in the final scene: he is an amateur magician who performs under that name.

Which technique makes the hallway seem to stretch as Diane runs toward Carol Anne's room?

A dolly zoom: the camera pulls back while the lens zooms in, a trick devised for Hitchcock's Vertigo and so tied to Spielberg's use of it in Jaws that it is also called the Jaws effect.