The "Authorship" of Poltergeist

I was in 5th grade when I first saw Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist. I have very vivid memories of that day. It was Halloween. The entire school (3rd-5th grade) were brought into the cafetorium to watch a scary movie. The year before, it was The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Since Poltergeist is rated PG by default, no families were contacted for permission and none of us were warned. It didn’t take long for the meltdowns to start. Some teachers tried to stop the tape, which only further upset the students. There was no winning in this situation. The film would be finished and the school would have to brace for impact from rightfully outraged parents.

What do I mean by “rated PG by default,” you ask? Poltergeist came out in 1982. PG-13 didn’t exist until July of 1984. That means any film that didn’t cross the threshold all the way for an R or higher rating had to be labeled G or PG. Other PG by default horror films include Twilight Zone: The Movie, It’s Alive, The Legend of Hell House, and Jaws. Most of these films would be PG-13 if not R nowadays, as the PG-13 rating created an intermediary step in the system and lowered the threshold for what constituted an R-rated film.

Poltergeist is the story of the Freeling family. They move into their dream house, only to discover they might not be alone. Objects can move on their own and their youngest daughter claims that someone else has arrived. Soon enough, every member of the family is living out their worst nightmares, unable to escape whatever secrets lie within their new home.

The big question that always surrounds Poltergeist is essentially an authorship debate. Tobe Hooper, a horror director best known at that point for incredibly violent B-movies like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Eaten Alive, was chosen to direct Poltergeist by producer/screenwriter Steven Spielberg. Spielberg already had a reputation for directing blockbuster pictures that could be enjoyed by a wide audience, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Jaws.

Things get twisted because of studio contracts. Spielberg was contractually not allowed to direct Poltergeist because he was already set to direct E.T. Spielberg approached Hooper after seeing The Funhouse and asked him to take on the project, which was originally a darker spiritual sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Hooper suggested Spielberg rework the story to be a haunted house tale instead, and Spielberg agreed. Spielberg was on set for Poltergeist a lot and, as always, was a very hands on member of the creative team. He wanted the film to be the best it could be and had a very high standard of what props, makeup, and effects were acceptable for use in a film with his name on it.

This led to a legal battle through the DGA. Spielberg was allegedly claiming a lot more credit for the film than he was given by the production. It’s rumored that he was telling everyone he could that he actually directed Poltergeist, explaining exactly what he did on set everyday and why Hooper didn’t really direct the film. The marketing for the film gave Spielberg’s producer credit greater billing that Hooper’s director credit against the requirements of DGA contracts at that time. The dispute was sided in Hooper’s favor for a $15000 fine; however, this gave the media all the material they needed to sensationalize the story.

It’s a question that comes up again and again over time. Zelda Rubinstein, who stole the film away from everyone else as psychic Tangina, claimed in a 2007 interview that Spielberg directed her all six days she was on set for Poltergeist. Even then, she admitted that Hooper set up all the shots, worked with the crew, and planned the day while Spielberg would hop in to adjust small details in an incredibly technical studio production. A few years later, the surviving cast members unanimously denounced the claims that Spielberg actually directed the film, crediting Hooper with everything.

The authorship debate is one I’ve never understood on an honest level. It’s based in the critical bias against horror pictures and B-movies. Hooper did not have the luxury of working in the big studio system for most of his career; Spielberg did. Spielberg’s films had bigger budgets and larger marketing departments to sell sci-fi, horror, and adventure films as prestige pictures worthy of Best Picture prizes around the world; Hooper did not. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre achieved critical acclaim in spite of a system built to devalue independently made genre films. Both directors have made some incredible films that get treated with a great amount of respect now; back then, Spielberg had the luxury of studio system support to get his films seen by a wider audience.

Directors like Hooper were the biggest beneficiaries of the invention of BetaMax and VHS tapes. Until the video rental model existed, there were very few ways to actually see a film. You could see the film in theaters on its original release or a rerelease. You could catch a significantly smaller percentage of those films on an occasional televised broadcast. If you had the resources, you might be able to purchase a physical copy of the film reel printed for a smaller home format like 16mm or Super8. This is how schools could show movies, and even then, most films longer than an educational short were cost prohibitive.

We’ve lost so much of cinematic history to the limitations of distribution and storage. Traditional filmstock is a highly volatile medium. The film in film reels is combustible and entire libraries of catalogued features have been destroyed because of this. The recordable media used in television was often erased and filmed over to save money in the early days of television because no one anticipated a demand for the preservation of these art forms. Films that didn’t do well at the box office very well may have been destroyed to avoid the cost of storage.

So much of the stock in those early rental stores was the lower-grossing B-movies. Distributors and producers saw a potential to earn money and ran with it. Soon, the straight to video release was born and became a new distribution model for the kind of film directors like Tobe Hooper fought to get released in theatres for years.

What does this have to do with Poltergeist and the authorship question? Access. Anyone in America could see Steven Spielberg’s films with relative ease. Tobe Hooper’s films did not have as wide a release. Films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre had a reputation for being violent and depraved, though that reputation was far wider than the actual reach of the film in theaters.

I don’t know who made the decision to put Spielberg’s name bigger than Hooper’s in the early marketing of Poltergeist. It was clearly an intentional decision. Spielberg could draw an audience. Audiences knew and  trusted Spielberg. They saw the story of a family fighting against evil as something Spielberg could do and do well.

This same audience wouldn’t be as familiar with Hooper. Hooper’s thumbprint is all over Poltergeist. It features his signature themes of the family vs the outsider, adapting to unexpected rules of a different society, and the decay of the all-American dream. It also features many specific camera shots that he innovated, like the careful editing of incredibly gory footage to not actually show the injury occur. He also loved him a good contemplative mirror shot leading to a brutal scare and long shots of something terrifying emerging with no signs of stopping in the distance. But to an audience in 1982 that couldn’t readily access his catalogue of films, there was no greater context for this.

In recent years, I’ve come to the conclusion that Tobe Hooper is my favorite American horror director. Why? I enjoy his investigation of his themes. I think his camera shots are excellent and the editing is unreal. While it’s possible that someone else could have directed the Spielberg, Michael Grais, and Mark Victor screenplay of Poltergeist and done it well, I have a hard time imagining anyone else directing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or Eaten Alive, or The Funhouse, or the original Salem’s Lot miniseries, or Lifeforce or Night Terrors or countless other film and television projects he directed. His signature style is as clear as John Carpenter’s, Guillermo del Toro’s, and, yes, Stephen Spielberg’s.

I remember a letter going home from the school after Halloween that year. They apologized for any children who were not mature enough to appreciate the assembly. They also said the decision was made to show Poltergeist because it was a Steven Spielberg film. They did not anticipate it being so violent and would be removing it from the rotation of films to use at assemblies. With the physical tape in their hands, a school could not correctly identify who directed Poltergeist. Even if they knew who directed it, Steven Spielberg was the safer choice to blame for their mistake.

Poltergeist is currently streaming on Netflix.