Daryl and Kevin Walker (Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier) are brothers who grew up idolizing Batman, watching the 1960’s show and dressing up and playacting crime fighting. As their neighborhood deteriorated around them, Kevin became a cameraman. Daryl may be a simple man-child, but he excels at repairing and inventing things. And he may have never given up on his dreams of being a superhero.

He finally gives in to his dreams after his grandmother (Lynne Thigpen, the Chief on TV’s Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?)  is killed by a mobster. Despite nearly getting killed several times, Daryl becomes the media sensation known as Blankman.

He even gets a love interest — Kimberly Jonez (Robin Givens) — whose kisses reduce him to a quivering mess. However, not everything is easy. Minelli’s gang attacks a bank and takes the mayor hostage, tying him up and rigging the building with explosives. But Blankman can’t stop every bomb and is forced to run, causing him to give up on his superheroic dreams and going to work at McDonald’s.

Kevin’s boss Larry Stone (Jason Alexander) uses Kimberly to get an exclusive interview with Minelli. But the mobster takes over the station, so Kevin convinces Blankman to come back and stop the man who killed their grandmother. Kevin even gets his own superheroic identity as the “Other Guy.” And, of course, they save the day.

Blankman has really inventive set design, as Daryl’s inventions are string together pieces of junk that somehow work. This film is kind of/sort of a spinoff of the In Living Color superhero that Wayans played named Handi-Man. That character was as un-PC as you can get and Blankman softens down the very rough edges.

This is a time capsule of the 1990’s and worth digging up to enjoy. You can find it relatively cheap in used DVD stores and streaming on Brown Sugar.

This was the last movie of a long weekend of drive-in fun. But eight movies in two days can be a test for your endurance and Becca just wanted to hear home. Luckily, I watched the beginning and finished via video in the days following!

Also known as Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn or The Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn to cash in on Alien, it was co-written by director/screenwriter Douglas McKeown and producer Ted Bohus (John Dods and Tim Sullivan are also credited).

We first learn of the Deadly Spawn when they kill two campers, then begin moving toward the home of Sam (James L. Brewster, who also shows up briefly in Maniac) and Barb. Also home are their children, college guy Pete and monster kid Charles. Oh yeah — Uncle Herb and Aunt Millie are also visiting. All seems safe and secure until the parents are devoured minutes into the film.

No one knows that yet — Pete is too busy setting up a study date with Ellen, Frankie and Kathy. Meanwhile, Uncle Herb thinks Charles is nuts, so he decides to interview him. Aunt Millie? Well, she’s going to a luncheon.

When an electrician arrives to check on the basement, why shouldn’t Charles put on a monster costume and scare him? Charles soon discovers a variety of Deadly Spawn feasting on the electrician and his mother. Realizing they react to sound — and beating A Quiet Place to the punch by nearly 40 years — he silently escapes.

The study date kids find a dead Spawn that looks like a tadpole. Instead of, you know, throwing it away, they decide to dissect it. And they at the retirement luncheon at Bunny’s house, the Deadly Spawn attack, only for a gaggle of geriatric grandmas to grandly grind them into gore! This is my favorite scene in the movie, just moments of pure mania as these old ladies go buck wild and blend, slice and stab these beasts into nothingness! And the dialogue in this scene!

Bunny: Do you know what I’ve always wanted?

Aunt Millie: What?

Bunny: A really handsome gorilla.

Aunt Millie: A WHAT?

Bunny: A gorilla! But, they don’t seem to make fine ceramics of the great apes, for some reason. They are our nearest relations, you know, the great apes. But they never left the proverbial Garden of Eden like we did. Did you know he’s a vegetarian?

Aunt Millie: Who is?

Bunny: The gorilla! No eating the flesh for him, no sir. He’s peace loving, and adorable!

Aunt Millie: Good Lord. Mother, you’re crazy.

The science buffs try to get Uncle Herb’s opinion, but he’s already being eaten. They run through the house, one step ahead of the Spawn until one bites Ellen’s head clean off her body and tosses her body away! Charles ends up saving the day with a prop head filled with flash powder and soon, the town begins to mobilize, killing every Spawn they can find.

Later that night, one lone cop is outside the house. Everyone is confident that the Deadly Spawn have been wiped out, but that’s when a gigantic one rises from the ground to end the film!

Charles was played by Charles George Hildebrandt, which may seem like a familiar name. That’s because his father is fantasy illustrator Tim Hildebrandt. The film was shot in their house and Tim was an executive producer.

Courtesy of https://timhildebrandt.net

Courtesy of https://timhildebrandt.net

There’s an official site for the film and you can find the Synapse edition for sale at Diabolik DVD. There’s also an Arrow Video release that’s pretty hard to find now. This is worth tracking down — I’d compare it to Dead Alive favorably. The acting isn’t great, but we’re here to watch monster devour peoples’ faces, right? Right!

We start in an asteroid prison, where the Krites hijack a spaceship and escape to Earth. The warden hires Ug (Terrence Mann) and another shapeshifting bounty hunter to follow them.

As they study Earth transmissions, Ug takes the form of rock star Johnny Steele and the second remains blank. You will hear the song “Power of the Night” so many times in this movie that you’ll be able to sing it yourself.

Meanwhile, in Kansas, the Brown family is enjoying rural Earth life. There’s father Jay (Billy “Green” Bush, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday), mother Helen ( Dee Wallace Stone, The Howling, Cujo, Popcorn) and their kids April and Brad. As the kids go to school, Jay waits for mechanic Charlie (Don Keith Opper, who is in all four Critters films) to show up. Once a major league prospect, he started getting messages from radios and possibly even UFOs through his fillings and went insane.

That night, the Krites ship crash lands. Thinking it’s a meteorite, Jay and Brad check it out only to catch one of the monsters eating its way through a cow. They cut all the power to the farm, take out a cop and shoot Jay with one of their tranquilizing quills.

While all this is going on, April is horizontally dancing with NYV transplant Steve (Billy Zane!) who gets eaten almost immediately. Her brother saves her with some firecrackers. Just then, the bounty hunters come to town, with one of them continually changing shape to become different townspeople.

Everything works out well, with the Krites being wiped out. The bounty hunters even leave behind a device to call them in case of a sequel as we see eggs that are about to hatch.

There’s a funny scene with a Critter plays with an E.T. doll, a film in which Dee Wallace Stone also starred. And I almost forgot — genre vet Lin Shaye (the Insidious films) shows up too!

The character design of the Critters is probably the best part of the film. The Chiodo Brothers also worked on Ernest Scared Stupid, Team America: World Police, Large Marge in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, the “mousterpieces” in Dinner for Schmucks and, of course, Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

Depending on when you grew up, Critters is either silly fluff or a treasured part of your childhood. I tend to the former while Becca is definitely on the latter choice. Director Stephen Herek also directed plenty of her other favorites like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter is Dead and The Mighty Ducks.

Watch it for yourself and decide! There’s a really inexpensive compilation DVD that has all four films and it’s available to rent or buy on almost every major streaming service.

It’s the same story we told about The Shadow. After Burton’s Batman, Hollywood wanted tentpole movies that could make sequel after sequel. So why not turn to men’s paperbacks, like The Destroyer, a series of 152 books written by the team of Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir (as well as some ghostwriters) that have 30 million books in print?

Sam Makin (Fred Ward, The Right Stuff) was a tough New York City cop who died in the line of duty before being resurrected as Remo Williams, now the CURE organization’s front man in the war against the enemies of the United States. Now with a new face, no fingerprints and training in the assassination skill known as Sinanju from the Korean martial artist Chiun (Joel Grey, who is not Asian and is actually a Jewish man from Cleveland), Remo is ready to battle corrupt weapons dealers and save Kate Mulgrew’s military officer character.

I’ve been begging Becca to watch this movie for years and she responded to it by asking, “Was this a real movie or one of those ones you like that no one knew about?” It was an actual movie. Maybe people didn’t care as much as me, because in 1985 I was fully into The Destroyer thanks to Marvel publishing a black and white comic book version.

Watching this film years later, it’s weird how little happens. “Are they ever going to do anything or is this the entire movie?” my wife asked. “This is his origin story,” I tried to say, but she’s right. For all the amazing things Remo learns to do, he gets to do very little of them.

But hey — Wilford Brimley is great as Remo’s boss, Harold Smith. And Michael Pataki is always a welcome face in a film. There’s enough to like in this one, like cameos by Reginald VelJohnson (Die Hard) and William Hickey (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation).

This was intended to be a blue-collar James Bond. Which makes sense, once you realize that they used Bond screenwriter Christopher Wood (The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker) and Bond director Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun).

Sadly, there was a 1988 TV spinoff of the movie that never made it past the pilot stage, starring Jeffrey Meek as Remo and Roddy McDowall as Chiun (who was British and also not Asian).

The original DVD of this film is out of print, so you’ll probably pay $10-15 for a used copy. Arrow Video did release it awhile back, but not in a U.S. friendly format. There’s a limited edition at Diabolik DVD that you can hurry up and get, too. You can also find it on the VUDU streaming service for around $3.

There are moments in horror movies where even the most jaded of us can be upset at a visual or idea. In Alligator, there’s plenty to be disgusted by, but for me, the dead dogs being floated down a sewer were the closest I’ve come to being grossed out by a film in some time!

Somewhere in Florida, a young girl watches as an alligator nearly devours a man at a tourist trap. So of course, she asks to have an alligator of her own. Ramon the alligator and the young girl live happily together, as he becomes her best friend. But her drunk father comes home and flushes him down the toilet. It’s these kinds of beginnings that lead to animal massacres like we’ve about to watch. Fathers, don’t flush your daughter’s animals down the commode, I implore you!

Years later, a lab is working on a growth formula intended to make livestock bigger. So puppies are, of course, needed for the experiments. The discarded puppies end up in the sewer and Ramon is there, having survived for over a decade. Now, those dead puppies have turned Ramon into a 36-foot long monster who can’t stop eating.

David Madison (Robert Forster, The Black Hole) is on the case, along with his gravel throated boss Chief Clark (Michael V. Gazzo, who wrote A Hatful of Rain and almost won a Best Supporting Oscar for his acting in The Godfather Part 2) and reptile expert Marisa Kendall. Coincidentally, Marisa turns out to be Ramon’s childhood owner! What are the odds, you may ask? What are the odds indeed.

Turns out that nearly all of David’s partners die, a fact that comes true when Kelly (Perry Lang, The Hearse) gets torn apart while they’re in the sewers. No one believes David that there’s an alligator. And Slade (Dean Jagger, who was in King Creole with Elvis, a film written by the above mentioned Gazzo) is going to make sure that it stays that way, because his company is working on the hormones that have made Ramon into a monster.

That all changes when tabloid reporter Thomas Kemp takes photos of Ramon eating him, Yep, he makes the front page at the cost of his own life. Everyone is hunting the monster, even if David can’t catch him and gets suspended. But Ramon is on the prowl and soon kills a cop and then a young boy at a party. Even big game hunter Colonel Brock (Henry Silva, Megaforce, Escape from the Bronx) can’t handle the gator and dies. The cops screw up again and Ramon goes wild at a wedding at the mayor’s (Jack Carter, The Glove and Catskil in Heartbeeps, because he was a Catskills comedian) house. The mayor, Slade and the groom, who was the lab guy conducting the experiments, all become apertifs for Ramon, who is wedding crashing like a champ. Chomp? Champ.

Finally, Marisa and David remember how Jaws ended and blow Ramon up real good, just in time for another baby alligator to get flushed down the toilet.

Lewis Teague (Cat’s Eye, Cujo) directed this from a script by John Sayles (Piranha, Battle Beyond the Stars, The Howling) that is filled with strange humor, like the first victim, a sewer worker, being named Ed Norton. Quentin Tarantino was inspired by this movie and Robert Forester is in Jackie Brown because of that fact.

This is a film that isn’t afraid to show you plenty of chewed up body parts. Or dead dogs. Nope, it’s going to go for your throat like it’s titular beast.

Some claim that this Ideal Toy game was based on the movie, but I’ve seen no evidence. It does line up well with the Jaws tie-n game that they made. Which would make sense, because Alligator also recycled Jaws‘ theme music along the way!

If an old man tells you to not open the old mine, you should just leave the old mine closed. No one tells you these sorts of things without a reason. After all, there could be turtle creatures lurking in there, ready to kill everyone.

Our friends at Jensen Farley Productions took a break from In Search of Historic Jesus and The Outer Space Connection to produce this film that is a strange mix between 1950’s science fiction and a slasher. It’s also filled with one of the horniest male characters in the history of 1980’s horror and that’s saying plenty.

Awhile back, a silver mine closed after everyone in it but one person died. Brian Deering (John Crawford, The Towering Inferno) and Dan Ostroff are in town to make it happen, along with two young guys, Roger Lowrie and Mark Kinner. They’re making the closed mine modern and also find tons of bones, but no one complete skeleton. It’s at this point that I would move on to the next mine. But I’m not in The Boogens. I’m just a viewer. And I’m also a viewer who was five beers in at the drive-in while watching it.

Roger and Mark are soon joined by Mark’s girl Jessica (Anne-Marie Martin, Prom Night, the TV version of Dr. Strange) and another girl named Trish (Rebecca Balding, Silent Scream). While this is all going on, the landlady comes to open up their house, hits a deer, goes into a ditch, walks to the house in the freezing cold and then gets pulled into the basement and killed by what we can only assume is a Boogen.

Roger has, by now, been the horniest dude ever and mentioned how many times he’s going to have sex with Jessica and how long it’s been since they have had sex (twelve days, trust me, I heard it a hundred times). Through whim of fate, Mark and Trish also hook up and we’re treated to some heavy petting. But as Dr. Dealgood once told to the fine folks of Bartertown, “Dying time is here!”

Also: Greenwalt (Jon Lormer, who gets his cake in Creepshow) is sneaking around and it’s revealed that his father was the lone survivor of the mine. He’s gonna blow up the mine real good to get rid of the Boogens.

The last fifteen minutes finally being the energetic fun that Stephen King’s blurb about it promised. That is, if you find turtle monsters scary. Or whatever that are. But you know, I’ve fallen in love with this strange movie the more I’ve watched it.

Director James L. Conway also directed Hangar 18, as well as numerous TV shows (he’s currently working on Orville and The Magicians, was a producer on Charmed and even married Rebecca Balding during the filming).

If you want to check out The Boogens, you can grab the DVD or blu-ray at Olive Films.

This movie seems like it’s going to be a slasher, yet much like Eaten Alive, it exudes a level of real fear, sleaze and menace that few films reach. Yet it has a heart and joy to it that makes me love it. It’s also one of Becca’s favorite childhood films!

We open on Amy (Elizabeth Berridge, Amadeus) as she showers, but the killer isn’t a killer. It’s her little brother Joey, which is troubling on a few levels. He’s a horror film fan who loves practical jokes. And he goes along with Amy and her boyfriend Buzz, Liz and Richie to a traveling carnival.

They don’t follow any of the rules as they go to the event. Of course, they smoke weed. And then look at naked women. And heckle Madame Zena (played by Sylvia Miles, who was the original Sally on The Dick Van Dyke Show and earned Oscar nominations for Midnight Cowboy and Farewell, My Lovely before becoming close pals with Paul Morrissey and Warhol). And then sneak in and spend all night inside the Funhouse.

They decide to ride into the funhouse when they watch a man in a Frankenstein mask have sex with Zena. He comes too fast and then tries to get out of paying, at which point Zena makes fun of him. He goes crazy and murders her as the teens are trapped. And Richie is dumb enough to steal money from the carnival after all of that!

It turns out that the man in the mask is really Gunther, the son of the owner Conrad Straker. He’s hideously deformed, with long fangs and white hair. He’s played by The monster was played by Wayne Doba, a professional tap dancer and former mime who was also the otherworldly Octavio the Clown in Scarface.

His father riles him up and he kills Richie and goes after the rest of the kids. Liz is killed with an industrial fan. Buzz kills Conrad, but Gunther offs him. Finally, Amy is able to kill the monster with two gears. She barely escapes with her life as the robotic fat lady laughs at her. After all, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.

There’s a book version of the film by Owen West (Dean Koontz) which adds plenty of back story. As the film was delayed in post-production, it came out a long time before the movie.

Interestingly enough, Hooper would Tobe Hooper reuse several props when he directed the music video for Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself.”

My favorite scene here is the reveal of Gunther. And I almost forgot that William Finley from The Phantom of the Paradise shows up as a magician! This is a near-forgotten piece of horror film that is worth you finding and watching for yourself. You can grab a copy from Scream Factory or the Arrow UK import at Diabolik DVD.

Between Hollywood Shuffle and his HBO specials, Robert Townsend was a major force in comedy in the 1980’s and 90’s. This early attempt at showing what an African-American superhero would be like is sorely overlooked.

Jefferson Reed (Townsend, who also directed, produced and wrote the film) is a high school teacher who dreams of playing jazz, stuck in a neighborhood ruled by the Golden Lords gang and drug lord Anthony Byers (Frank Gorshin, the Ridder from the 60’s Batman TV show). After he stops them from raping a girl, the gang, led by Simon Caine, chases him into a dumpster. That dumpster is then hit by a meteor. Days later, he awakes in a hospital where his major injuries have already healed.

The meteor also gives him powers, like x-ray vision, flight, improved strength and hearing, super speed, invulnerability, telekinesis, dog communication and the power to absorb the knowledge of books. His power set totally seems like someone rolled him up at random in the old Marvel Super-Heroes TSR role-playing game.

With the help of his parents (Benson‘s Robert Guillaume and The Jeffersons’ Marla Gibbs) and neighbor (James Earl Jones in a hilarious, wigtastic performance), Meteor Man stops 11 robberies, destroys 15 crack houses and brings the Crips (Cypress Hill!) and the Bloods (Naughty by Nature!) together. He even plants a garden in the middle of the food desert that his neighborhood has become.

The Golden Lords learn who Meteor Man is, as well as the fact that his powers are fading. The community even wants him to leave to keep the gang from attacking them, but he takes the fight to the gang, despite the fact that he has no powers. He’s saved by Marvin (Bill Cosby), a homeless man who has also found part of the meteor.

Meteor Man finally defeats the gang, but not before his dog is fatally hurt. Marvin comes and uses the last of his powers to save the dog. Then, a gang of hitmen all attack the community — led by Luthor Vandross, no less — before Cypress Hill and Naughty by Nature come back to save everyone. Sometimes guns really do solve everything!

The film is packed with stars, like Eddie Griffith as one of our hero’s friends; Sinbad; Another Bad Creation as the Junior Lords; Big Daddy Kane; Don Cheadle; Tiny Lister (Zeus from No Holds Barred and Deebo from Friday); Biz Markie and Wallace Shawn (The Princess Bride).

Meteor Man even got a six-issue series from Marvel where he’d meet Spider-Man and Night Thrasher (who at the time was one of Marvel’s most prominent African-American heroes). The comic used the original ending of the film, where Jeff discovers a larger part of the meteor in Arizona, as a plot point.

I wouldn’t say this is a great film, but it’s entertaining and the runtime flies by. Numerous re-writes led to a script filled with plotholes and subplots that go nowhere, like Jeff being in love with his ex-girlfriend Stacy, as well as his numerous phobias. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying this slice of pop culture from the early part of the 90’s.

If a movie is a great film, does it matter who made it? I come from advertising, where it’s hard at best to figure our credit and uncouth to loudly demand it. So the controversy about this film — whether Spielberg or Hooper directed it — doesn’t really matter to me Because the important thing is that it’s a great movie.

Steven and Diane Freeling (Craig T. Nelson from TV’s Coach and the voice of Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles and JoBeth Williams, Stir Crazy) are living the American dream. After all, Steve is a successful real estate developer. They have three great kids. And they’ve recently moved into a planned community called Cuesta Verde. Sure, the newer houses in the plan look much better. And you can’t even watch a football game without losing what channel you’re on because the houses are so close together. But it’s the American Dream, right?

That TV is the fixation of America in this movie, starting with the National Anthem and continuing with the people inside the TV that fascinate their youngest daughter, Carol Anne (who would sadly die at the age of 12 of cardiac arrest and septic shock caused by a misdiagnosed intestinal stenosis). The connection between the hand that emerges from the TV and the young girl is so powerful that it shakes the entire town before she announces the film’s best-known line, “They’re here.”

All hell breaks slowly loose over the following day. A glass of milk breaks out of nowhere, drenching daughter Dana (Dominique Dunne, daughter of writer Dominick and brother of Griffin, she would be killed by her stalker ex-boyfriend John Thomas Sweeney at the age of 22). The son, Robbie (Oliver Robins, Airplane 2), has his silverware twist and turn after he uses it. Furniture slides and rearranges at will, even in front of more than one person.

Here’s the beauty of this film. These teases start slow and you expect the Val Lewton jump scare model, where the pressure will be let off after a minor scare. But once a tree emerges from the backyard to crash through the window and pull Robbie outside, the movie jumps onto a rollercoaster track. While saving their son, Carol Anne disappears into the closet and can only be heard through the TV set.

They turn to parapsychologists Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight, Chiller), Ryan (Richard Lawson, Scream Blacula Scream, Sugar Hill) and Marty, who discover that there is more than one ghost. That info is confirmed when Steven finds out from his boss Lewis Teague (James Carren, The Return of the Living Dead, Invaders from Mars) that Cuesta Verde was built over an Indian cemetery.

Dana and Robbie are sent away and Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinstein, Teen Witch, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon), a spirit medium, is called in for help. She explains how they have to get Carol Anne back from spirits that are not at rest. There’s also another ghost, the Beast (which uses the same sound effect as the MGM lion roar), who has their daughter restrained. Diane enters a portal to the beyond to bring her daughter back and they both emerge covered in ectoplasm as the house is said to be clean.

Steven believes that it’s anything but, so he gets the family ready to move. On their last night there, he goes to quit his job while Dana goes on one last date before leaving town. The Beast attacks, turning Robbie clown doll into a demon and pushing Diane all over the walls of her room before throwing her into the backyard hole that is due to be a swimming pool. The bodies of the dead begin to explode from the ground, some in coffins, some just covered with filth and rot. Steven screams into his boss’s face that he may have moved the cemetery’s headstones, but the bodies were left behind. Finally, the house collapses within itself as the family drives away. As they stay in a Holiday Inn, unsure of their future, the TV is pushed outside.

Alright. Let’s get into that discussion of who really directed this film. Going the whole way back to a 1982 Fangoria article, there were rumors that the film wasn’t really Hooper’s. And Spielberg didn’t help Tobe’s case when he said, “Tobe isn’t a take-charge sort of guy. If a question was asked and an answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming, I’d jump in and say what we could do. Tobe would nod agreement, and that became the process of collaboration. I did not want to direct the movie-I had to do E.T. five weeks after principal photography on Poltergeist. My enthusiasm for wanting to make Poltergeist would have been difficult for any director I would have hired. It derived from my imagination and my experiences, and it came out of my typewriter (after re-writing the Grais/Victor draft). I felt a proprietary interest in this project that was stronger than if I was just an executive producer. I thought I’d be able to turn Poltergeist over to a director and walk away. I was wrong. If I write it myself, I’ll direct it myself. I won’t put someone else through what I put Tobe through, and I’ll be more honest in my contributions to a film.”

The Directors Guild of America investigated the film, checking to see if Hooper’s official credit was hurt by Spielberg’s comments, which seemed to claim some level of ownership.” Frank Marshall, the co-producer, told the Los Angeles Times that Spielberg was the creative force of the film and designed every storyboard. Plus he was on the set for all but three days.

Finally, an open letter from Spielberg to Hooper was sent to The Hollywood Reporter, which stated, “Regrettably, some of the press has misunderstood the rather unique, creative relationship which you and I shared throughout the making of Poltergeist. I enjoyed your openness in allowing me… a wide berth for creative involvement, just as I know you were happy with the freedom you had to direct Poltergeist so wonderfully. Through the screenplay you accepted a vision of this very intense movie from the start, and as the director, you delivered the goods. You performed responsibly and professionally throughout, and I wish you great success on your next project.” He also sent a letter to Time where he stated, “While I was creatively involved in the entire production, Tobe Hooper alone was the director.”

Over the years, this controversy has gone back and forth. Zelda Rubinstein claimed that Spielberg directed every day that she was on set, with Tobe working almost as a DP who would set up the shots.  Assistant cinematographer John R. Leonetti (who would go on to direct Annabelle) reported that due to an upcoming strike, he was trying to get every movie he wanted to film done (he was also working on E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial at the same time). Hooper was happy to be there, had some input but it was basically not his film.

Jo Beth Williams stated that “Steven was there every day. He had very clear and strong ideas about what he wanted done and how he wanted it done. Even though Tobe was there and participating, you felt Steven had the final say on everything. Sometimes Steven would tell us one thing and Tobe another. But they soon realized that was doing us more harm than good, so they stopped. Later on, whatever discussions Tobe and Steven had, they held in private and then came to us with their decisions.”

At the time of filming, Hooper said, “I don’t understand why any of these questions have to be raised. I always saw this film as a collaborative situation between my producer, my writer, and myself. Two of those people were Steven Spielberg, but I directed the film and I did fully half of the storyboards. I’m quite proud of what I did. I can’t understand why I’m being slighted. I love the changes that were made from my cut. I worked for a very good producer who is also a great showman. I felt that was a plus, because Steven and I think in terms of the same visual style.”

He’d grow tired of the controversy in later years, claiming that “the genesis of it came from an article in The L.A. Times: When we were shooting the practical location on the house, the first two weeks of filming were exterior, so I had second-unit shots that had to be picked up in the front of the house. I was in the back of the house shooting Robbie [actor Oliver Robins] and the tree, looking down at the burial of the little tweety bird, so Steven was picking those shots up for me. The L.A. Times arrived on the set and printed something like, “We don’t know who’s directing the picture.” The moment they got there, Steven was shooting the shot of the little race cars, and from there the damn thing blossomed on its own and started becoming its own legend.”

Composer Jerry Goldsmith and casting agent Mike Fenton claimed that they worked directly with Spiegberg as if he were the director.

However, others were more upset than Hooper let on. Craig T. Nelson said, “Tobe gave me a lot of direction. It’s not fair to eliminate what Tobe did. He gave me a tremendous amount of support because he’s a warm, sensitive, caring human being. Tobe was simply pushed out of the picture after turning in his cut.”

You can read even more in-depth analysis in the three articles I referred to for this article, “Who REALLY directed Poltergeist?” at the Poltergeist Fan Site.

The film did get an R rating, which was eventually changed to PG. It would have definitely got an R if the original draft was filmed, where Carol Ann was going to get killed in the first act and subsequently haunt the house in the second. As it stands now, only one death occurs in the film: the bird who gets buried in the beginning.

Poltergeist is really a must see horror film. It sets up so much so effectively and does a great job of paying off each scare. It’d be followed by two sequels and a TV series, which we’ll definitely be getting to.