Buying DVDs is such a strange concept to me. Surrounding oneself with copies of movies you will only watch one or two more times (Teen Wolf excluded) just to see it on your shelf 80% of the time. Some you love, some you use as coasters, some you wish you never bought, and some are mandatory films for any collector to have just to impress his/her friends. One that falls into the last category is Tobe Hooper’s 1982 masterpiece: Poltergeist.

I feel almost stupid for reviewing a movie you have seen 1000’s of times, (and if you haven’t then YOU should feel stupid), but here goes…

Shortly after the Freeling family breaks ground to build a pool in their backyard, strange stuff starts happening, chairs are moving; mosquitos are eating the family up faster than I eat my girlfriend’s mom’s lasagna, and the TV is on the fritz…That is until the youngest daughter, Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) gets “sucked” into it. Mom and Dad Freeling (JoBeth Williams and the always-high Craig T. Nelson) contact a group of psychics who perform all sorts of wacky tests on the house, and determine Carol Anne is there…somewhere. Enter pint sized Tangina (a super psychic played by Zelda Rubinsten) who helps the family get Carol Anne back from the spirits that took her. You think it’s over, more chaos ensues, we sort of find out why this happened in the first place, and one of the spirits is really into Williams’s panties. It’s all rip your face off and watch meat explode kind of fun.

Now, I know that was a real condensed summary, but really, when something is THAT good, it really doesn’t do it justice for me to go on and on about every scene. I could tell you that Craig T. Nelson looks exactly the same now as he did 25 years ago, I could tell you about all the gore that I am surprised exists for a PG rated movie (rumor is writer Steven Speilberg pulled some strings for said rating), and I could tell you that Hooper did an amazing job directing every single scene (ANOTHER rumor is Tobe was a victim of Speilberg’s back seat directing), but why bother with such trivial bullshit when the movie stands on it’s own as a classic and truly deserves the title of “masterpiece”?

At this point, my only complaint with Poltergeist is the way it has been handled on DVD. If it’s not on some weird double sided disc with the less than stellar sequel, or a bare bones release from MGM that came out years ago, then your best bet was to just watch it on TV, since it is PG barely anything is cut from the version that used to air all the fucking time in the 80’s. In fact until the 25th anniversary release that just came out (again with no special features worth talking about except a couple of shitty, and I mean shitty, documentaries about ghost hunters…wtf?) I was more than content with my dodgy VHS copy…that said I did pick up the 25th anniversary solely for the excellent transfer and re-mastered audio. If that stuff doesn’t do anything for you, stick with the version you taped off TV years ago…Either way you NEED a copy of this in your collection in some format or another.

Charlie “They’re here” Brown