Spielberg Symposium
THIS GHOSTLY HOBBY:
MEMORY AND DUAL AUTHORSHIP IN
POLTERGEIST
by Neal Block

During the stretch in 1982 when Steven Spielberg was in production on E.T., he was under contractual obligation not to direct any other films. Poltergeist, which was to become one of the defining horror works of its period, was a pet project of Spielberg’s that he brought to MGM during the first pinnacle of his career. Following E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it completed a loose trilogy of the suburban landscape, a territory Spielberg would revisit again and again in subsequent films. Spielberg, as writer, producer, and uncredited editor, hired horror director Tobe Hooper to helm what was essentially his film. Impressed with the visceral and eviscerating The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hooper’s only exceptional film to date, Spielberg rescued the man from a future of Psychotronic Video Guide footnotes and brought him to the lush world of studio productions.
Throughout the two intervening decades, Spielberg and Hooper have remained quiet on the details and structure of their partnership. The making of Poltergeist has become a sort of mythic collaboration, a piece of Hollywood apocrypha still debated. Some fans assert that Hooper’s direction was entirely his own, that Spielberg gave him creative control over shots, scenes, and actors. Though some contest, it’s the consensus that Spielberg kept his hired hand on a short leash, and was almost constantly present on set. Producer Frank Marshall claims that Spielberg would swoop in and get behind the camera during moments when he felt Hooper was making bad choices.

Aside from being a fun bit of trivia or fodder for online message boards, the debate over Poltergeist’s authorship is a central question to understanding the film; each director brought something personal to the production. At the time when Poltergeist was being shot, Spielberg had already developed a sense of his own art and philosophy. It was scattered, and not fully focused (and still may not be), but Spielberg was on his way to becoming this generation’s great chronicler of middle-class values, fears, dreams, and faults. Spielberg took his camera into the home and showed us what our life was like in Reagan’s America. Hooper, on the other hand, had fashioned himself almost as the anti-Spielberg with Massacre, thrusting middle-class teenagers into a horrifying world they had never been equipped to deal with. Where Spielberg forced his audiences to swallow an idealistic image of the American family (loving parents and attentive, imaginative children), Hooper relished in perverting that presupposition, setting his own version of the middle-class family unit—a sad group of decrepit cannibals—at the dinner table. Will the middle class gnaw away at itself until it disappears into its own salivating maw? Does Hooper think so, and does Spielberg agree? Both men seemed bent on exposing the same deep fears of comfortable living: Spielberg carefully constructed his ideas around the introduction of an unknown and ultimately harmless Other; Hooper crystallized suburban fears into a murderous, cannibalistic demon.

So what did Spielberg see in Hooper’s work that he thought would translate well onto his haunted house story? The film, which documents a family’s struggle with an unfriendly spirit that has taken up residence in their home, was Spielberg’s most overt tackling of the potential for disruption lurking at the heart of a seemingly comfortable existence. Perhaps Spielberg thought that Hooper would be an easy kid to boss around, a novice so enraptured with the novelty of the high-budget Hollywood production that he’d listen to whatever Spielberg said. But there’s no doubt that Massacre was a different breed of horror film, one that the general public had not been exposed to, and one that a crafty Spielberg could exploit to his advantage. Another possibility is that Spielberg just didn’t know how to turn his story into something viably horrifying, and needed the input of someone who had done it perfectly.

The result was a strong fusion of disparate styles, a film full of successes that wound up being more notable than its failures. And there were failures: B-grade horror flourishes that feel like unnecessary additions, such as that human face rapidly decomposing into a mess of fat and blood (a Hooper mistake?), and a pat conclusion (burial ground! burial ground!) that sucked much of the mystery from the events of the film (a Spielberg mistake?). But Poltergeist has an undeniable energy that’s still frightening today, and it owes much more to Spielberg than it does to Hooper. The family unit—pot-smoking parents, liberal but respectful teenager, bickering but loving younger boy and girl—is a Spielberg creation that Hooper wouldn’t have known how to deal with if left entirely alone. They are Spielberg’s vision of normalcy, and it’s his burden to test them. How much of the unknown world must one family internalize before they fall apart?

What really distinguishes Poltergeist as a formidable entry into Spielberg’s auteurist oeuvre, and not Hooper’s, is how, twenty years later, the film is a part of the collective memory of a generation of moviegoers. The same case can be made for Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but that film is recollected as a series of images, of shocks, of Leatherface lurching down the street, awkwardly swinging his oversized weapon. The way that Poltergeist lingers in the mind is different—the passing of years restructures the film into a wholly personal collage of experiences. There are films like Poltergeist for every generation, and they’re wildly different. But Spielberg has a grip on childhood, he makes movies for kids that are more than just movies for kids. E.T., aside from being the perfect two-hour Reese’s Pieces commercial, was, for a lot of current twentysomethings, an introduction to the kind of profound and unforgiving sadness the world can offer. The Goonies, another Spielberg production, is the blueprint for what an action movie should always contain (it should, apparently, always contain large deformed men forming friendships with fat children). And Poltergeist, for many, is the definition of “fear,” boiled down to two words uttered by a little girl: “They’re here.”

Why does Poltergeist linger longer than other horror films of that period? Halloween was more cerebral, Nightmare on Elm Street, with its be-clawed and deformed dream-stalker, more overtly frightening. But Poltergeist hit home especially hard because it targeted a younger audience, and gave children (considerably younger than the teenagers populating Crystal Lake and Haddonfield) characters they could relate to. For boys, Robbie Freeling was us; the maniacal clown doll perched upon his chair was the same unwanted, menacing toy that we all had hidden somewhere in our rooms, out of plain sight. Only in Poltergeist, Spielberg took it out of the closet and put it right in front of our faces. For girls watching the film, they had two characters to associate with (Carol Anne and Dana), and they could easily put themselves into Carol Anne’s position as the little girl lost inside the television. While Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and the Friday the 13th films used teenagers as knife fodder; Poltergeist showed prepubescents that bad things could happen to them, too. (Poltergeist, along with another Spielberg film, the grotesque, parent-terrorizing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was one of the films that led the MPAA to create the PG-13 rating; despite drug references, cursing, and gore, it was given a PG.)

Poltergeist, basically, is a horror film that’s both more and less than a horror film. Slasher movies are easy to digest and forget; their structures are all generally the same. But Poltergeist provides two things: time and a sense of safety. Before things become violent in the Freeling house, we’re treated to a leisurely glimpse into how this family lives. By positioning the poltergeist’s initial manifestations as comic relief, Spielberg allows his audience to get comfortable with this Other presence. Even though we sense the danger, like the family, we try to rationalize it. Spielberg’s focus on routine (breakfast table, remote control cars zooming down suburban streets) forces us to identify with his characters, and we’re just as frightened as the family is when Carol Anne disappears and her detached voice echoes through our living room. Poltergeist’s barrage of terrifying images—bedroom closet turned into soul-sucking void, swimming pool refashioned as floating skeleton depository, tree animated into vicious child-swallowing arboreal savage, clown doll strangling its owner, coffins popping up from manicured front lawns like whack-a-moles from hell—are mainly associated with childhood fears.

Here’s where the partnership between Spielberg and Hooper works best—when Hooper’s keen sense of the morbid blends with and helps elucidate Spielberg’s delight in introducing larger-than-life obstacles, both real and imagined, into the mundane worlds of his characters (particularly to his children). When, during one stormy evening, the large, groaning tree reaches through Robbie’s window and grabs the boy in its wooden grip, Spielberg is there to dictate how the boy reacts and Hooper is there to control how the violence escalates. Robbie cowers in bed, fearful of the menacing oak outside his window. Counting the seconds between lightning and thunder, Robbie literally constructs the sequence’s suspense tactics. Then Hooper bursts into the room, as the tree shoots through the glass, bringing a mess of rain and leaves into the bedroom, this comfortable nest of suburbia. Spielberg is Robbie, Hooper is the tree, and together they work to create one lasting and frightening image.

Could Hooper have made this film without the guidance of Spielberg? Probably not. Could Spielberg have made this film without the assistance of Hooper? Probably, but the end result would have lacked the gut punch Hooper delivers with such ease. Spielberg needed the edge that Hooper could provide. (They have worked together since—most recently, Hooper directed an episode of the Sci-Fi Network’s Spielberg-produced miniseries, Taken.) The balance of power, the assignment of fault or praise to one or the other denigrates what was an important partnership in Eighties American film. Poltergeist didn’t just emphasize Spielberg’s talent at showing us who we are and what we fear, it reimagined the horror genre as something so threatening that it came into our homes rather than lurk out in the woods.

Poltergeist is remembered for the way it made you feel the first time you watched it, and the way it became a part of your childhood, especially after repeated viewings. Spielberg’s approach to middle-class anxiety—the fear of encroaching political and economic turmoil, of an inevitable breakdown in family communication, of an end to the Boomer-era self-delusions of infinite stability regardless of social change—created a new subset of nightmares. Poltergeist was real. Its characters were real, its snapshot of ridiculous suburban sprawl was very real, its depiction of family togetherness, though exaggerated for dramatic effect, was also very real. Twenty years later, this reality has changed, the relationships have changed, the fears have become more tangible and the anxiety much greater, but the memories of Poltergeist are still fresh and relevant. Chalk that up to Spielberg’s strong understanding of his audience and the society in which they (and he) live. ++