‘Poltergeist III’ Is The Scariest Bad Movie Ever

Tobe Hooper’s 1982 film Poltergeist is truly one of the most frightening films ever made, a slow-burn horror film that turns the haunted house genre on its head, serving as a simultaneous comment on early Reagan-era economics (in the form of crooked land developers building a soulless planned community over a cemetery). The success of Poltergeist brought two sequels (and a remake as equally uninspiring as the suburban setting of the original), bringing in the very first — and perhaps the only — horror movie franchise rooted in the evils of real estate development.

What makes the Poltergeist franchise so spooky is not the locations where each of the films are set, but rather the notion that young Carol Anne Freeling (played by Heather O’Rourke) was unable to avoid her connections with the other side despite leaving the original scene of the crime. O’Rouke and her cast mates returned for the first sequel, Poltergeist II: The Other Side (with the exception of Dominique Dunne, who was murdered by her boyfriend just after Poltergeist‘s release), which introduced us to the terrifying character of Henry Kane, an insane spirit who is released when the Freelings’ home is excavated following the events of the first film and embarks on a mission to find Carol Anne in her new home in Phoenix. The film’s poor release and moderate box office success didn’t prevent the second sequel, Poltergeist III, but it did, perhaps, keep co-stars Jobeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson from the project, which took Carol Anne to Chicago, where she lives with her aunt and uncle in the famous John Hancock Center.

Poltergeist III is, unquestionably, a bad movie. It’s also the kind of movie that was in heavy rotation on HBO when I was a kid, meaning that I saw it several times before even seeing its predecessors. It scared the hell out of me as a seven-year-old, and those repeated viewings during those formative years means that I still get chills whenever I see the skyscraper on visits to Chicago — and still dread the notion of the villainous Kane popping into my head.

Part of the reason the film is so unsettling is that O’Rourke died just months before it was release — making her the second actress associated with the ghostly franchise to die at a tragically young age. She became ill between filming Poltergeist II and Poltergeist III, and a misdiagnosis of Crohn’s disease and a subsequent treatment involving prednisone drastically altered her appearance, leaving her face puffy and almost unrecognizable. Plus, you know, her death was obviously a little unnerving considering the subject matter of her final film in which a maniacal preacher stalks her all over an apartment complex in an effort to drag her to the other side.

But having said that, there are plenty of ridiculous things about the movie, such as the preposterous amount of times that other characters should Carol Anne’s name:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcFreRqABXk]

“Carol Anne” suddenly becomes a phrase that is inexplicably hard to say over and over, right? Carol Ann. Callahan? Caallaannn. Caarllonnnnn? Caaaahhhhannnn. Something like that. Like, even the actors gave up on enunciating after a while.

But even despite the campy qualities of the video above, you can see how, as a kid, the movie made all of the following terrifying: pools, mirrors, fog, footie pajamas, Tom Skerritt, and parking lots. These are all normal things that aren’t supposed to be scary, yet this crappy movie ruined them for me forever. Oh, and it also made me terrified of portals capable of transporting a screaming Lara Flynn Boyle from the floor of a parking deck inside the suddenly mummified body of Zelda Rubinstein.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GlVV_IACjg]

WHAT IS THAT? It is terrifying, is what it is.

As a grown-up, I know that the film is pretty much garbage, full of effective scares and gags that are terrifying in an otherwise insipid and bizarre horror movie sequel. But I didn’t have my critic’s eye as a kid — I only had my myopic sense of wonder, one that paid less attention to smart writing and character development as much as it did that creepy preacher. And it’s why, even today, the true sight and sound of terror is, to me, everything contained in Poltergeist III‘s 98-minute running time.

 

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Photos: MGM; Courtesy Everett Collection