Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 01/08/2008 Run time: 114 minutes

What a combo! Tobe Hooper, the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, teamed up with family-oriented producer Steven Spielberg to make Poltergeist. The film is about a haunted suburban tract home in a development very much like the Arizona one in which Spielberg was raised. (Because it came out the same summer as Spielberg's E.T., it was tempting to see both movies as representing Spielberg's ambivalent feelings about childhood in suburbia. One was a fantasy, the other a nightmare.) Spielberg also cowrote the screenplay, which taps into primal, childlike fears of monsters under the bed, monsters in the closet, sinister clown faces, and all manner of things that go bump in the night. At first, some of the odd happenings in the house are kind of funny and amusing, but they grow gradually creepier until the film climaxes in a terrifying special-effects extravaganza when 5-year-old Carole Anne (Heather O'Rourke) is kidnapped by the spooks and held hostage in another dimension. Though not nearly as frightening as Hooper's magnum opus, or the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, which came along two years later, Poltergeist is one of the smartest and most entertaining horror pictures of its time. --Jim Emerson

It could have been a much better movie without Spielberg's industry fingers.
Hooper is well known for his gore and free style. Seems like he was being hold at all times in this family-terror flick.
Seeking for a real Tobe Hooper mood, like Lifeforce or Spontaneous Combustion, you will understand my point of view.

This is an all around good scary movie. It scared me as a kid and I still like watching it.

The movie came just in time to wrap for a present for my daughter. She was very surprised and pleased!

The remastering of the film is great, but for a 25th Anniversary Edition it's a bit lack luster. I've had the movie on VHS forever, so being able to get a remastered version on DVD was fine for me. If you are a bonus feature person, you will be disappointed. Maybe the 30th Anniversary Edition will pack more features.

A GOOD FILM OF THE EARLY 80'S. I'M GLAD IT ESCAPED AN 'R' RATING AFTER AN APPEAL. THERE'S NO WAY IT'S AN 'R' RATED MOVIE. CRAIG T. NELSON ACTING IS REAL GOOD AS WELL AS THE REST OF THE CAST. INCLUDING THE LITTLE GIRL THAT PLAYS CAROL ANN ) I CAN'T SPELL HER NAME BUT, SHE DIED BEFORE FILMING OF POLTERGEIST III WAS FINISHED; THE ACTRESS THAT PLAYED THE OLDER SISTER WAS MURDERED DURING POST-PRODUCTION.