I left the lights on the night I saw it. Because this does not take place in some classic looking haunted house, with some scary mythology attached to it. This happens in a modern house in a typical suburb. It looked like a house in my neighborhood. That nobody could afford to own at the time because of 18% interest rates in 1982, but that's another story.

It involves a typical family. The wife is a homemaker. The husband sells new houses in the same neighborhood that the family lives in. It must have been a slow work day for him because who could have afforded these houses in 1982 with 18% interest rates? But I digress. There is a teen daughter from some unmentioned first marriage because she only looks 15 years younger or so than Jo Beth Williams who plays the mother. There are two kids age 7 and 6 that belong to the second wife. The youngest, Carol Ann, was born in the house.

So the horror starts with harmless stuff like the kitchen chairs rearranging themselves when you're not looking but escalates quickly. And the movie tag line "It knows what scares you" turns out to be so true. Remember when you were a kid. What scared you? Lightning storms? Big leafless trees that looked like some kind of being with lots of arms? Clown dolls with macabre smiles? It all plays into it.

Stephen Spielberg "ghost" directed this one. You could always tell by the preponderance of wind machines and seemingly meaningless close ups - hallmarks of 80s Spielberg.

The one thing that really dates this - The poltergeist originally gets into the house when the husband falls asleep in front of the TV late at night, the Star Spangled Banner plays, the channel signs off, and then there is no signal. Cue the poltergeist. Today, channels never sign off. There is always some infomercial, with the set dressed like the old CNN Larry King Live show to add credibility, yelling at you how you can have product X for only 19.99 a month. The poor poltergeists of today are trapped listening to this nonsense, waiting for a chance to escape that will never come! Oh the humanity.

It doesn't hit me like it did when it first came out, but it is still good enough with a very shocking ending that it is still worth a a look.

Sometimes to judge a film fairly you really need to consider the time at which it was made and what film-making technology existed at that time. This was the first big budget film to really tackle the subject of paranormal investigation, and at the time it was made it was seamless and sleek. It would be easy for people today to put it down for some of the early 1980's effects, but let's flip this perspective around and consider that no CGI what-so-ever was used. But at the same time, "Poltergeist" has a strangely family-friendly vibe. It was directed by Tobe Hooper, but it has the unmistakable fingerprints of producer/writer Steven Spielberg all over it. It focuses on an ordinary, harmless suburban family living their usual lives (their biggest problem is the death of a pet bird),which is suddenly thrown into chaos by outside forces. And unlike most horror movies, there isn't even a lot of violence... well, except for one grotesque hallucination.

Don't expect the usual gore and typical shocks you see in all modern horror films these days, Poltergeist is not about that. With all of the elements of visual effects, sound, acting, directing (Tobe Hooper) and writers (Steven Spielberg) this is one film that achieves everything you want to see in a motion picture. Anyway, Jo Beth Williams and Craig T. Nelson are great in this film. They have real chemistry. You believe they love each other and are a team. The kids are pretty great, too. It's actually quite a thoughtful movie and even has an odd warmth to it. Though there are a few scary moments. The final fifteen minutes are played out to such effect, that one could call it pure horror.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

The Spielberg-produced haunted house horror POLTERGEIST is one of those perennial favourites, one of those classic 1980s films that survives down the years, my appreciation growing as each decade passes. It's one of those films I saw and loved as a kid, although I found it very frightening; THAT bathroom scene has to go down in history as one of the most purely disgusting ever put on screen. It's highly stylised, and Hollywoodised with it; if you're looking for something more realistic and disturbing, go check out THE ENTITY instead. This one's all about the spectacle, a fairground ghost train ride put on film.

Elsewise, POLTERGEIST works very efficiency. There's the slow, creepy build-up, kept realistic and almost-believable, especially the effective stuff with the sliding chairs; intrigue builds upon intrigue, with some nice comic relief inbetween, and then everything lets rip for the pyrotechnic shriek-show in the second half. This latter stage is a masterwork of special effects technology, from miniatures to superimposed imagery and prosthetic effects work; I don't usually care for films that rely on FX too heavily but I'll make an exception for this one.

And what a cast, too! Heather O'Rourke must be the epitome of the innocent young American girl caught up in a world of evil, and both Nelson and Williams excel as the exasperated parents who gradually become more deranged as the tale progresses. Of course, Zela Rubenstein's scene-stealing medium is remembered for a reason, and there's a nice little cameo for RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD's James Karen, too. Come the ending, with those graves popping out of the ground, well just wow: this truly is a great little film, that stands proud among the rest of the classics of the '80s.