80sfilms

In 1982, a film came out that, frankly, scared the you-know-what out of me. That film, Poltergeist, also fueled the imaginations of many kids growing up in the 80s, turning closets and stuffed animals into the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Creepmaster Tobe Hooper directed the film, teaming up with writer Steven Spielberg to create this big-budget MGM motion picture about a haunted house and its inhabitants, the All-American Freeling family.

While Poltergeist will go down in history as one of the scariest supernatural films of all time, what happened off screen captured just as much recognition.

Dominique Dunne, who played the oldest daughter of the Freeling family (the main characters) in the film, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney, just 19 days before her 23rd birthday and the same year Poltergeist came out. And little Heather O’Rourke, who played the youngest Freeling sibling, died in 1988 of cardiopulmonary arrest and intestinal stenosis at the age of 12.

Poltergeist was one of the best, most suspenseful horror films of the 80s–luckily, it didn’t ruin television for me for very long.

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