Word: poltergeists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...work. But it is the first appearance of Spielberg himself on the cover. For a 1975 account of the making of Jaws, his first megahit, the cover honors went to Bruce, the mechanical great white shark. A second, planned cover, in 1982, heralding E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Poltergeist, was bumped at the last minute when British troops landed on the Falkland Islands, though a long story ran inside. In the three years since E.T., notes Senior Writer Richard Corliss, who wrote both this week's cover story and the 1982 piece, Spielberg has become even more successful and influential...
...films. Close Encounters was born one night when young Steven's father woke the six-year-old and drove him to a large meadow to see a meteor shower. E.T. and The Goonies find their wellsprings in the need of a young outcast for a playmate, real or imagined. Poltergeist, which Spielberg describes as being "all about the terrible things I did to my younger sisters," also emerged from a spooky encounter (ethereal figure, shivery bedroom, car that wouldn't start) that the filmmaker experienced in 1972. Each picture has allowed him to remake his own childhood, then to generalize...
...Talisman, as Spielberg films go, will very probably be a Poltergeist rather than an E.T., the Extraterrestrial. Which is to say, a succession of whiz-bang special effects without a memorable story or character to hold them together...
...Billy's mom, and her head flew down the Starrs. It was kind of grim." In its final form Gremlins is "soft" enough to have won a PG rating. Says Spielberg, who has managed to make three horror or science-fiction movies (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Poltergeist, E. T.) in which not a single person dies: "I'm not sure if anybody really dies in this one either. I never saw the gremlins as homicidal, psychotic, maniacal killers. Perhaps they are the dark side of the founding father of creatures great and small: they...
Snaking through the movie is a familiar Spielberg theme: the disappearance, and then the welcome return, of children. It illuminates his three most personal movies (Close Encounters, Poltergeist and E.T.) and affirms his belief in movies as a Mechanized Fountain of Youth. Toward the end of Temple of Doom, Indiana leads hundreds of enslaved Indian children out of an underground quarry and into the light. Spielberg means to be another kind of Pied Piper: leading grownups into the darkness of a moviehouse to restore, for a couple of hours at least, the innocence of childhood in all its wonder...