Check Your Pulse … NOW! – – ‘Poltergeist’ [1982]

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H A U N T I N G S

SNEAK PREVIEWS

It’s always a challenge to pick that perfect horror film for Halloween night. Hoping to get the most narrative for your nickel, you might opt for the 1982 anthology film Creepshow. It’s not a bad choice at all — this cinematic compendium of frights might be the precise treat on Halloween night. Like the act of trick-or-treating itself, if at first not satisfied with your booty at one doorstep for the night, an anthology film asks you to be patient, because the night could be full of surprises. Instead of sugary, waxed candy corn at one doorstep, perhaps you’ll find a full-size 3 Musketeers chocolate bar at the next.

Alternatively, you might opt for John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher classic Halloween. Starring one of the genre’s most recognizable villains, it too isn’t a poor choice but may be a little too obvious for Halloween night, clad as it is in the trappings of foreboding anonymity, of merciless doggedness, of invulnerability.

Imagine, then, that you’ve spent the evening doling out candy to trick-or-treaters, and they’ve retreated to their homes to take stock of their treasures. Perhaps you’ve spent the night serving adult beverages to raucous costumed adults, and they’ve ambled away — they will likely resemble zombies at work tomorrow.

However you’ve spent Halloween, it’s now time to settle in for some spooky cinema before the coffin is finally closed on this holiday.

But don’t forget: Halloween doesn’t officially conclude until midnight, so before you blow out the candle in your Jack-O-Lantern, cozy up to any of the sinister films featured under this banner – Check Your Pulse … NOW! – across the Pickwick’s marquee.

Because you’re in luck: the Pickwick has curated a single film from some of the most popular subgenres of horror, letting you know precisely when the horror might finally relent, allowing you the “best night’s sleep” that you’re likely to have in your condition.

There are horrific motion pictures here with humor, heart, humanity, and horrid gore.

There’s a little bit (and pieces) for everyone. Any one of these films could be the perfect fit for you this Halloween night – the perfect costume to crawl into, so to speak, as you finish your annual creepy night of carousing.
Simply select any of these mortifying films, press PLAY at the precise time when you’re instructed to do so, and you’ll soon be met with the final bone-chilling moments of Halloween as the clock strikes midnight – just as the ghosts & goblins retreat to their graves for another year – and just as you’re invited to sleep soundly (or unsoundly), having survived another Night of the Dead.

But choose wisely … and never accuse the Pickwick Drive-In of never having told you to do so …

SYNOPSIS

***

Family has always been everything to me. But so has the home. Growing up, I lived in a handful of houses, each of which demonstrates one or more very important moments in my life.

My first house? It still gives me nightmares. It stood a city block away from a local cemetery, but from my window from the uppermost bedroom of this three-story home, the headstones and the history and the hobgoblins were always closer to me than I would have liked.

My second home had pleasant memories. Mom was able to crawl out from under some debt, and I recall a separate TV room where we watched weeknight sitcoms, as well as a “man cave” in the basement that Mom allocated only for me. That was where I waged wars as plastic G.I. Joes, where I traversed electric race car tracks that I always took too fast, on the corners. It was a big house, bigger than we needed. And I spent some elementary nights sleeping on the floor of Mom’s bedroom — the house was just a little too big for my small mind, and I took comfort to sleep by the heat register where I would embrace the warmth of the furnace and the gentle lullaby of my mother’s breathing as she slept.

And there were two more homes that don’t require much more explanation here, so I will simply write that family (even as small as it was — me & Mom) has always been a force for me, as small as it was.

And the home? If even for a moment or two, it was the skin that held my tiny family together, as small & frightening as it sometimes felt, as large & comforting as it could sometimes feel.

Similarly, in director Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982), the house appears to hold the family together …

… Until it no longer could.

After the disappearance of the family’s youngest daughter (Heather O’Rourke), the Freeling family will turn to any number of experts to explain her supernatural abduction. *Photo courtesy of MGM.*

In a film that defied producer Steven Spielberg’s otherwise family friendly film fare, the Freeling household is a thing to behold: a loving mother (JoBeth Williams) & father (Craig T. Nelson) and three wonderful children. Dad is brokering the sale of homes from Ground Zero of the most ambitious community housing project in decades, and they’re even installing an underground pool in the backyard.

It’s Heaven on Earth.

But when young Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) is apparently transported into & trapped in the house’s TV set, the Freeling home becomes Hell on Earth as the family looks to many individuals expertised in scenarios such as these. As the supernatural phenomena multiply in intensity, theory upon theory begins to suggest that Carol Anne is a conduit in a home that sits atop an unopened doorway between the living and the dead and Hades itself.

***

This is why Poltergeist (1982) is important to Halloween …

In the climactic moments of *Poltergeist* (1982), the Freeling family goes to no lengths to discover the otherworldly location of little Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) — including the property’s unfinished swimming pool, overflowing with rain water & the long-buried corpses of the dead. *Photo courtesy of MGM.*

Early on in my horror movie viewing, I always sensed a connection between the palpable sense of horror and the possibility that that horror could somehow reach me.

And – for the most part – I was right in that regard.

Werewolves led to vampires and then to zombies and then to skyscraper-tall lizards and so on. I understand better now that horror once existed on a dark island where its people paid reverence to the monstrous, love-lorn ape that ruled there (King Kong, 1933). Later, horror existed at an off-interstate motel managed by a timid young man named Norman Bates devoted to his mother’s every demand (Psycho, 1960). Then, at a rural country farmhouse home near a dilapidated slaughterhouse (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 1974), and – later still – at a campground meant to entertain young people for the summer (Friday the 13th, 1980).

So — for a little while — I was safe from horror. In my imagination, the spookies were a world away, incapable of reaching me in my family home. Literally, they were trapped inside my TV set, harmless. If I needed to get away from horror, all I had to do was turn off the television set.

That is, until Poltergeist.

Quite suddenly, the terror that was in my television set could get to me – terror could infiltrate my very home. Suddenly, horror was not some alien thing that took shape at least 10 states away from my home, maybe 10 hours away, maybe even 10 minutes away.
Now, horror was something capable of sleeping under the bed, capable of being as close to me as my next sleeping family member, a bedroom or two away.

But that’s what also heartens me about the petrifying terror of Poltergeist.

Salvation from horror is as close as a bedroom or two away. Salvation from the next mortal terror was also as close to me as those nearest & dearest to me.

Perhaps what makes films like Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Friday the 13th so terrifying is the absolute understanding that family is absent from those protagonists fighting for their lives. Poltergeist remains one of the great PG-rated family horror films, demonstrating that the home is the heart of all good things, even if it ever appears to be the root of all evil.

And all homes – like the Freelings’ home – can be cleaned.

***

WHEN TO PRESS PLAY

10:11 p.m.

In order to save the soul of little Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke), the Freeling family will have to confront their every fear, including that of the Beast Himself. *Photo courtesy of MGM*.

And as the smoke clears on Cuesta Verde, it will be important to note the faces & names of the motion picture’s survivors – there can be no greater thesis than this, for a motion picture like this one. Families survive, Poltergeist tells us, and that’s the best viewers can glean from a film like this one.

The Pickwick wishes to extend to you the very best during this Halloween season.

Extinguish that Jack-O-Lantern, and be sure to check your candy.

Film at 11, and the feature may include some advertising interruptions.

It’s only TV, after all.

***

Poltergeist (1982) is streaming on HBO Max.

Late-Night at the Pickwick Drive-In

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