When my agent said, “We have a script called Poltergeist”, my response was: “Is it horror? I’m not interested.” Then he said: “Well, Steven Spielberg is producing.” So I read the script, which Spielberg had also written, and loved the family in it, and the fact that there were so many strong female characters: Diane, Dr Lesh, Tangina the psychic. Zelda Rubinstein, who played Tangina, was a dynamo. Spielberg was busy prepping ET, so even though he was often on set, Tobe Hooper, who made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, directed. I’d never seen that because when it comes to horror, I’m a nervous Nellie.
We’d all do improv to give the sense of a real family life – sometimes they’d just roll a camera while we were chatting and telling jokes. Craig T Nelson, who played my husband, had been a standup. Where we’re smoking pot in the bedroom, he improvised the “before/after/before” routine with his stomach. Little Heather O’Rourke, who played my youngest daughter, Carol Anne, was just five at the time, but very intuitive. If I cried in a scene, she’d cry too. When we were covered in cold goop, she was shivering and shaking but never complained. She was such a trouper.
Early in the film, the camera follows Diane across the kitchen after she’s just straightened some chairs. When she turns back, they’ve been silently stacked on the table, impossibly fast. It was all done in one uninterrupted take, with crew members rushing on while out of shot to remove one set of chairs and put the pre-stacked tower in place. They were like a herd of elephants – the sound was re-dubbed afterwards. My biggest problem was trying to keep a straight face.
Later, I get dragged across the bed, up the wall and across the ceiling by an invisible force. That was filmed on a rotating set called a gimbal, like the one that allowed Fred Astaire to dance on the ceiling in Royal Wedding. The cameraman, Dennis, was strapped to the set and had to go round and round like he was on a ferris wheel. After a few takes, bless his heart, he had to get off, because he was nauseous.
The skeletons that surround Diane after she falls into the pool were all real – though I didn’t learn that until I ran into one of the special effects guys later. I’d have been even more disgusted had I realised they weren’t just props, but at the time I was more concerned about the lights and the huge fans creating the wind effect. I was terrified one would fall into the water and electrocute me. Spielberg actually waded in up to his waist and said: “If you get electrocuted, it’ll kill me, too.” That was reassuring.
Poltergeist was my first movie and I got to act with Beatrice Straight, who I worshipped. She’s exquisite in the role of Dr Lesh, the parapsychologist who investigates the house. Richard Lawson and I played her assistants and I guess it’s because my character is the sceptical one that, as Tobe put it, the house hates me. The steak Marty sees crawling along a kitchen countertop like an inchworm was operated by a guy underneath poking a couple of chopsticks up through a track disguised as the grouting between the tiles. When Marty throws the chicken leg he’s eating on the floor in disgust and we see it covered in maggots, there were handlers on set to scoop them up and ensure none of them came to harm.
