Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6197 in VHS
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Dolby, PAL, Surround Sound
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 110 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
What a combo! Tobe Hooper, the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, teamed up with family-orientated producer Steven Spielberg to make Poltergeist. The film is about a haunted suburban tract home in a development very much like the one in Arizona 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 co-wrote 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 five-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 earlier magnum opus, or 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

Synopsis
A host of other-worldly forces invades a peaceful suburban home. It starts with just the odd strange occurrence or two, but soon the house is turned into a swirling, supernatural nightmare, causing terror and confusion for the occupants.

Customer Reviews

Tobe Hooper + Steven Spielberg = Poltergeist
I just want to make one important comment before I comment any further so I don't mislead anybody who has never seen this before, it is not a blood and guts type of horror movie but still has every right to be classed as a horror movie. It is mostly about a little girl called Carole Anne (Heather O'Rourke who tragically died at a very young age) that disappears through a television and the suffering and helplessness of the rest of the family.

This is a superb horror film and I genuinely can't remember the last time this was shown on terrestrial TV or even freeview, so if it has been shown in the last few years then I must have missed it, even more amazing is the fact this has not yet been released on region 2 DVD but it has been out for years on region 1, I just cannot understand why.

I was very young when I first saw this Tobe Hooper directed (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) and Steven Spielberg produced gem in the early 1980's but if you have never seen this then don't expect it to be like the film I have just mentioned otherwise you will be extremely disappointed. Overall this has the feeling of a cosy bedtime ghost story type horror movie. It is about a family that moves into a nice but normal looking house on a normal street full of houses (not an isolated type house) and everything seems fine until suddenly little things start to happen for example, imagine you are at home on your own in your kitchen, you then go out for about ten seconds, you go back into the kitchen and there in front of your very eyes, all the kitchen chairs are stacked on the table. This is not exactly what happens but it is a similar sort of thing that happens in this, certainly in the first half of the film and at times it is incredibly creepy. But my only personal criticism of this film and it is probably just me but I have always loved the first two thirds a lot more than the final third. Like I have said the first two thirds is all about ghostly things slowly starting to happen and the family then bringing in a team of paranormal investigators, there is one scene in particular involving one of the team (I think it is the camera man) that always sticks in my mind when I think of this film, which is truly horrible.

About roughly the final third of this film is just too over the top in my opinion (enjoyable, just not as creepy), with more of the feeling of a mainstream hollywood blockbuster (love the final scene though), which is a shame as this could have been even better than it already is, but anyway, this is still an essential movie of it's type and I still give it five stars overall. A HAUNTED HOUSE CLASSIC.

poltergeist
I agree with the viewer from Cambridgshire; release of this film on DVD is long overdue and I am sure their are many other people who would wish to buy the DVD version to add to their collection of great Spielberg Movies.

Why oh why is this film only on DVD on region 1?
This is one of my favourite films- (the sequels weren't very good though)
Along with The Thing, The Fog, Halloween and Alien, this is a proper scary horror film!! Yet another Spielberg classic!
I wish someone would release it on DVD other than region 1 though- perhaps someone will read this and get it released!