The movie "Poltergiest" is based on the supernatural. The movie begins in Cresta Verde -- a suburb where the Freeling house looks like most other homes in the neighborhood, and was built on a cemetary by a developer (Freeling's boss) who fails to have the bodies relocated before approving the construction of several new homes. Freeling later learns about the cemetary from his boss. When his five year old daughter, Carol Anne (Late Actress Heather O'Rourke) hears voices coming from their television, voices that belongs to unrested, and angry spirits caught between the physical and spiritual world, terrorizing the family out of their home. Can Diane (Actress JoBeth Williams) and Steven Freeling (Actor Craig T. Nelson) get their abducted little girl back from the paranormal? Or will her soul stay among the living dead forever? Find out for yourself when you perchase this movie on DVD or VHS.

Steven Spielberg doesn't just make great family films and moving dramas. He also can help make a great horror movie. Of course, he had some help from famed horror director Tobe Hooper. However, make no doubt the hand of Spielberg is all over POLTERGEIST and the movie wouldn't be the classic it is without his guiding vision.

The movie is about the Freeling family, a typical suburban family living in an above average suburbs. Everything about the Freeling's life seems normal. That is until the youngest daughter, Carol-Anne. (Heather O'Rourke) starts hearing voices late at night from the television. She wakens the family late one night to announce that, "They're heeere." From there the Freeling's lives are slowly turned upside down as small ghostly pranks such as moving chairs and breaking glass snowball into more and more frightening incidents until young Carol-Anne is kidnapped into the neatherworld by forces from beyond.

JoBeth Williams pulls off a wonderful performances as the distraught mother and Craig T. Nelson is a joy to watch as the family's patriarch.

POLTERGEIST is a horror movie that is remininscent of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, but with an extra heaping of Spielbergian special effects. The movie is full of suspense, yet actually contains very little violence, hardly any foul language, and no sex. If the film wasn't so frightening, it could be a family film.

"Poltergeist" is the result of an inspired pairing of Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg, who brought out a scary shocker of a horror movie. It's the story of the Freeling family, living a solidly upper-middle-class life in a solidly upper-middle-income tract suburb that just happened to be built over a cemetery plot that houses the remains of some very disgruntled ghosts. Funny things start happening, innocuous at first; remote TV signals get scrambled (the guys are sitting around watching the football game and find Fred Rogers singing "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood" at them instead), then chairs start zipping around on their own and floating in the air, and it's all great fun for a little while. But then the "TV people", as little Carol Anne calls the spectral figures that seem to inhabit the family Sony, get nasty, and Carol Anne is kidnapped and transported to an otherworldly dimension. Time to call the neighborhood ghostbusters. A trio of parapsychologists enter the premises from the local university, only to have the pants scared off them by the ghostly invaders. An expert is needed, and arrives in the pint-sized form of Tangina, a medium who is more than a match for any old ghost. Carol Anne is rescued, and the ghosts vanquished...or are they? Papa Freeling wisely decides to get his family out of there, and calls in the movers, but unwisely, they decide to spend one last night in the house, and hoo-boy... turns out those ghosts were just biding their time. The resulting shenanigans literally raise the roof. Hooper knows how to work the horror to the max, and sometimes it gets not only hair-raising but stomach-churning (witness one of the trio tearing his face off over the bathroom sink) but ultimately we know it's all in fun. The actors are very good indeed and the three Freeling children, played by Dominique Dunne, Oliver Robins and Heather O'Rourke, are excellent. But the biggest delight is Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina, a born ham if there ever was one. "Poltergeist" has sense enough not to take itself too seriously; it's a delicious concoction of shivers and laughs all mixed up into one great fun package.

If you're not one of those sad creatures (like me) who likes to linger around after movies to catch all the credits, this little number may convert you. At the very least, you'll want to give the credits an extra hard look the next time you view the old classics to see if you spot a "Westmore" in the Make-Up Artist spot.

Just a terrific take on the life of the film industry from the perspective of the make-up artist. From the days before there were professionals dedicated just to making up stars up to the point where it became a real science.

This was one of those books that made me smile not only for the subject matter itself, but because it made me think "I'm so glad that a publisher had the guts to say 'You know, I bet there are a lot of people out there who would really find this stuff interesting.'"