You are an eight-year-old boy all tucked in for the night. Your little sister is sleeping in the bed next to you. Suddenly, you hear a crash of thunder, and through the window, you can see the big, old, growling tree in the lightning. It seems to be, well, to be making faces at you! But, you are a big boy. Nothing scares you. Nothing at-BANG! WHOOSH! The tree comes to life as it tumbles through the window, grabbing you with its pulsating, hairy roots from your bed. As you scream for Mommy, the closet door slowly opens and an invisible, windlike presence kidnaps your sister. Your nice, cozy dreamhouse turns into a living hell. Watch out! "They’re hee-re!"

In June 1982, producer-director-writer Steven Spielberg defined "horror" with a new word: Poltergeist. At first and final glance, Poltergeist is simply a riveting demonstration of a movie’s power to terrify. It creates honest thrills within the confines of a PG rating, reaching for shock effects and the forced suspension of disbelief throughout the movie. Spielberg wrote the story, coproduced it, and supervised the final editing. The directing credit goes to Tobe Hooper, best known for his cult shocker The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which probably explains Poltergeist’s violence and slight crudeness

Nevertheless, Poltergeist cannot be classified in the same horror category with such movies as A Nightmare on Elm Street, where a deformed psychotic slashes his victims with razor-edged fingernails. Unlike most horror flicks, Poltergeist works! Its success is due to excellent characters, music, and special effects-and to the fact that the story stays within the bounds of believability.

The movie takes place in a suburban housing tract. Steve (Craig T. Nelson) and Diane (JoBeth Williams) Freeling have just purchased a new home when their adorable five-year-old daughter, Carole Anne (Heather O’Rourke), awakes to odd voices coining from the snowy TV screen that Steve falls asleep in front of during the late movie. She calls them the "TV people," and with the help of special-effects producer George Lucas and his Industrial Light and Magic, these people abduct little Carol Anne, provoking turbulence and misery for this once-happy family.

A mere synopsis simply cannot give a real feeling for the story. As Steve Freeling says to the parapsychologists who have come to see the house, "You have to see it to believe it." Each character possesses a unique personality, which contributes to the overall feeling the audience has for the story. The characters are represented to be as normal and American as bologna sandwiches -- Dad sells houses, Mom sings along to TV jingles. Spielberg likes these characters, illustrating their go-with-the-flow resilience. When things get suddenly hectic toward the climax, these people can display their fear and anger as well as summon their inner strengths. This is particularly evident when Tangina, the parapsychologist the Freelings hire, instructs Diane to lie to her daughter in order to lure Carol Anne into the light and save her.

"Tell her to go into the light," Tangina instructs. "Tell her that you are in the light!"

"No," Diane replies with betrayed emotions.

Tangina immediately puts everything into the proper perspective. "You can’t choose between life and death when we’re dealing with what’s in between! Now tell her before it’s too late!"

Such scenes clearly illustrate that Spielberg’s characters are, in a sense, the ordinary heroes of the movies.

A horror movie, however, cannot rely on terror, anger, and disbelief to hold its audience for two hours. Something needs to accompany these emotions, equally expressing the full extent of the characters’ fear and anger. Music composer Jerry Goldsmith contributes his share of eeriness with his Academy Award winning sound track. The basic theme is a lullaby (entitled "Carol Anne’s Theme") that soothes the watcher, providing a cheerful childlike innocence to the picture. The inverse is the ghost music that accompanies the abduction of Carol Anne and forces our stomachs to writhe. The music brings a straining, vibrating tone that is responsible for 60 percent of the audience’s terror. When the clown doll’s hand wraps around Robbie’s (Oliver Robbins) neck, the sudden blaring of Goldsmith’s orchestra is what makes viewers swallow their stomachs. Without it, the scene would never slap our face or give our necks a backward whiplash. Goldsmith matches the actions and emotions of the characters with the corresponding instrumental music, enabling the audience to parallel their feelings with those delivered on the screen.

If a horror movie has a well-developed plot with superior actors and an excellent score to accompany their emotions, then it should be a sure winner at the box office, right? Looking back at such movies as Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and the original Psycho, one would obviously agree. Poltergeist, however, doesn’t stop here. It goes even further by providing its audience with a special treat. With the help of Star Wars creator George Lucas, Spielberg and Hooper whip up a dazzling show of light and magic. There’s an eerie parade of poltergeists in chiffons of light marching down the Freelings staircase to the climactic scene as a huge, bright, nuclear-colored mouth strives to suck the Freeling children into their closet. Hooper’s familiarity with film violence surfaces in a grotesque scene in which one of the parapsychologists hallucinates that he is tearing his face. Such shocking hair raising scenes as this make a huge contribution to horrifying the audience. Many horror films never achieve such reactions. Poltergeist’s precise timing with such effects makes it completely unpredictable as far as what is to come. From the first sign of a ghostlike hand jumping out of the TV to the staggering scene of dead bodies popping out of the half dug swimming pool, the special-effects team draws every bit of energy out of the audience, dazzling them and forcing them to believe in the horror on the screen.

There have been many movies that possess superior ratings in all of the above. Such movies as John Carpenter’s The Thing and David Croneberg’s Scanners won raves for superior acting, background music, and special effects. Why was Poltergeist accepted at the box office more than other such movies? Every movie is forced to set up boundaries of believability through certain actions and concepts and at one point these boundaries will be accepted by the viewer. In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg distinguished boundaries within which Indiana Jones defined his heroic stunts. Spielberg, however, unfortunately crossed his boundaries during a scene in which Indiana Jones jumps from one track to another with a moving train cart. From previous observations of Indiana Jones’s capabilities the audience is unable to accept this, nodding their heads with a "give me a break" expression.

In Poltergeist, Spielberg and Hooper remain within their established boundaries. Unlike most horror movies that have unfeasible killers who are incapable of dying or monsters that pop out of people’s stomachs, Poltergeist focuses on the supernatural -- a subject with very wide boundaries. Because of our lack of knowledge in the area, we are "at the mercy of the writers and directors," as Alfred Hitchcock has phrased it. The boundaries can be greater than most horror movies because of Poltergeist’s subject matter. The characters’ disbelief of their surroundings encourages the audience to accept what is in front of them. Hence, Poltergeist successfully stays within its limits, taking them to their maximum, but luring the audience to believe the characters’ situation.

Poltergeist reflects a lot of the fears that most of us grow up with: seeing scary shadows from the light in your closet, making sure your feet are not dangling over the bed, forming scary images of the objects in your room. As Spielberg’s E.T. reminisces about our childhood dreams, Poltergeist surfaces our childhood nightmares. With its characters, music, and special effects, and its clearly distinguished boundaries of belief, Poltergeist is able to capture its audience with its unique thrills, allowing viewers to link their most inner-locked fears to those on the screen. Poltergeist: It knows what scares you!