Clip of the day..... The Poltergeist Curse: Released in 1982, the movie Poltergeist, was an instant success. The film focuses on a middle-class family whose life is upturned when a number of paranormal and vicious events occur in their home and their daughter Carol Anne is abducted through her bedroom closet by a group of ghosts who are under the control of a monster demon. The original Poltergeist was so successfully horrifying that two other instalments followed: Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) and Poltergeist III (1988). With Poltergeists success came a creepy mystique that the classic film is shrouded in tragedies that some interpret as a curse. Deaths of four cast members during and soon after the filming of the series. Two of these tragic deaths were highly unexpected, leading many fans to speculate on the trilogy’s eerie implications. Carol Anne Freeling, the young focal point of the series, was played by Heather O’Rourke. Only six years old when the first Poltergeist film was released, O’Rourke captivated audiences. Sadly, however, she was misdiagnosed with Crohn’s Disease in 1987. The following year, O’Rourke fell ill again, and her symptoms were casually attributed to the flu. A day later, she collapsed and suffered a cardiac arrest. She died during an operation to correct a bowel obstruction, and it was later believed that she had been suffering from a congenital intestinal abnormality. Dominique Dunne, who played the original older sister Dana Freeling, met an equally tragic fate. In 1982 Dunne separated from her partner, John Sweeney. In November of that year, he showed up at Dunne’s house, pleading for her to take him back. When she refused, Sweeney grabbed Dunne’s neck, choked her until she was unconscious, and left her to die in her driveway. The other two cast member deaths were not as mysterious. The evil preacher Kane from Poltergeist II was played by Julian Beck. In 1983, Beck had been diagnosed with stomach cancer, which took his life soon after he finished work on the second instalment of the series. Will Sampson, who played Taylor the Native American shaman in the same movie died after undergoing a heart-lung transplant. Other peculiar and creepy legends surround the film franchise. JoBeth Williams, who played mom Diane Freeling in the first two films, claimed that director Steven Spielberg insisted on using actual human skeletons as props in an attempt to save money. Williams’s claim has never been verified, but it persists to this day in the lore surrounding the films’ curse. Will Sampson, the real-life medicine man who passed away due to circumstances mentioned above, performed an authentic exorcism after shooting wrapped up one night. One can only imagine how this made the other cast members feel. Cursed or not, the Poltergeist trilogy is a hallmark of American horror.
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 07:48:26 +0000
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