Has there ever been anything creepier then this seemingly innocuous clown doll from Poltergeist? I wonder how many nightmares that scene has caused and how few clown toys have been sold since the movie came out 25 years ago.Well, I don't have an answer for that, so you'll just have to be satisfied with this collection of trivia about arguably the best haunted house movie ever made:
- The word poltergeist comes from the German polter, meaning to make noise, and geist, meaning ghost.
- Drew Barrymore originally auditioned for the part of Carol Anne in this movie, but was cast as Gertie in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial instead.
- Shirley MacLaine was offered a role in this movie, but took another one instead. That movie was Terms of Endearment.
- At one point, horrormeister Stephen King was asked to write the script.
- In an early scene, the movie A Guy Named Joe is playing on the television. Producer Steven Spielberg would later direct a remake of that movie, titled Always.
- Spielberg had a "hand" in filming the scene where Marty pulls the skin off his face in the bathroom -- those are his hands doing the pulling.
- The skeletons in the pool were actual skeletons, unbeknownst to JoBeth Williams until after the scene was filmed.
- A lot of ghosts, skeletons and other scary stuff appear in this movie, but there are actually no deaths at all.
- The film was nominated for three Academy Awards: Sound Effects Editing, Visual Effects and Original Score. It lost all three to E.T.
- Heather O'Rourke and Zelda Rubinstein are the only cast members to appear in all three Poltergeist movies.
A new print of Poltergeist will be screened as part of the Academy's "Prime Tech" series Thursday, October 25 at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. A 25th anniversary panel discussion will follow.
Click here to purchase the Poltergeist: 25th Anniversary Edition
DVD from Amazon.com.Links via Imdb.com, EOnline.com and Oscars.org.
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