It had been about ten years since my last viewing of Poltergeist; the inferior sequels had soured my desire to revisit the original. Recently, I toyed with the idea of purchasing a discount LaserDisc version, or the widescreen cassette. Now that I can watch DVDs, the decision was made--what better way to test the merits of a new video format than by spinning an older title? Would it rekindle my appreciation for a 1982 horror film? Would they carefully master a movie that, I'm presuming, is not in great demand?

Poltergeist has become more famous for the offscreen weirdness surrounding it. Co-star Dominique Dunne (who played daughter Dana) was murdered by her jealous boyfriend shortly after the film's theatrical release. In 1988, young, iconoclastic O'Rourke (Carol Anne) died on the operating table, mere months before MGM unveiled the (unintentionally) hilarious Poltergeist III (a movie barely redeemed, in fits and starts, by its inventive use of mirrors). And, of course, Craig T. Nelson suffered through years of ABC's "Coach".

What amounts to eerie coincidences may enhance the pop-cultural appeal of Poltergeist, much in the way Brandon Lee's unfortunate death rescued The Crow from box office oblivion. Luckily, Poltergeist is also, like The Crow, a good movie, in no actual need of behind-the-scenes curse rumours to enhance its creeps and scares.

Consider the opening sequence: "The Star-Spangled Banner" ends a TV station's evening broadcast. Steve Freeling (Nelson) is asleep in his living room chair. His dog bounds up the spiral staircase and visits the other Freelings in their bedrooms: Steve's wife Diane, son Robbie (Oliver Robins), and daughters Dana and Carol Anne. The sound of broadcast static stirs five-year-old Carol Anne awake. She gets up and heads downstairs to the living room, soon to be followed by the rest of her family, for Carol Anne begins a loud conversation--with the television--that disrupts their sleep. Her answers to unheard questions are cryptic: "I don't know...I don't know..." The family stares on, faces flush with bewilderment.

Though O'Rourke's character is a portrait of preschool naivete, the image of Carol Anne at the television set, lit only by the strobing screen, is an indelibly haunting one (it sparked the movie's memorable poster and ad campaign)--we're wary of her from the outset. What follows is a non-stop ghost tale in which Carol Anne is sucked, physically and spiritually, into another dimension. Steve (so self-referential a name (Steven Spielberg co-wrote and produced the film) that I'm not convinced it was intentional) and Diane (JoBeth Williams) hire a set of serious-minded spirit busters to help "clean" their idyllic house and rescue their daughter. Credit the writers with continuing on after their all-too-pat pseudo-resolution, and for throwing a suitably frightening clown doll into the mix.

MGM's DVD presentation of Poltergeist is outstanding. It was my first time seeing the film in widescreen (a 2.35:1 Panavision image which is enhanced for 16:9 TVs); this is a horror picture with scope. In the past I have criticized cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti's dark and muddy images, but in this context they have luster: his tendency to underexpose lends even the sunny daytime scenes an ominous gloom. The sound is another vast improvement over my previous viewings. The Dolby Digital 5.1 remaster is clear, with delightful separation effects and surprising range, considering the film's age. Perhaps a bit more bass would have been welcome at the big shocks. I noticed no M-PEG artifacts, though there are slight shimmering effects, occasionally. Otherwise, the video quality of this disc is akin to wiping the windshield after a sandstorm; perhaps DVD's biggest advantages over LaserDisc is an absolute absence of video noise and more stable, richer colours. Poltergeist fares better on DVD than some of MGM's recent THX'd LD titles. The disc also includes a theatrical trailer (in 2.0), letterboxed at about 1.85:1. A pan-and-scan version for black-bar-phobes is available on side B.

There is, disappointingly, no commentary track to settle the old debate: whether or not it is Hooper or Spielberg who directed this movie. According to legend, Spielberg helmed the majority of the film after Hooper's footage was deemed unsatisfying, but that because of E.T.'s family appeal, Spielberg refused the credit, lest his directorial association with a disturbing supernatural story hurt E.T.'s success. Certain sequences in the film are unmistakably his, and the mother figure presented here is one of his strongest. I'm sure its harried Freelings would disagree, but Poltergeist is definitely worth revisiting.-Bill Chambers