Mick Garris’ House of Horrors kicks off this week at Trailers from Hell, with director Garris introducing Tobe Hooper’s 1982 film, “Poltergeist.”
“They’re he-eere!” Hooper’s fifth feature was his biggest to date, produced
on a grand scale by co-writer Steven Spielberg the same year he made ET. Its
critical and boxoffice success was undercut by persistent rumors that Spielberg
had co-opted the film much like Howard Hawks did with Christian Nyby (on The
Thing) and shadow-directed, a claim both filmmakers denied. The untimely deaths
of several people connected with the production gave rise in some quarters to
the claim the franchise was somehow “cursed”. Followed by Poltergest
II: The Other Side and Poltergeist III, neither of which involved Spielberg or
Hooper.
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