Inside the real-life curse behind one of the world’s scariest movies

‘Poltergeist’ was inspired by a true haunting of a suburban home, but Annabel Nugent discovers it was also beset by terrifying behind-the-scenes chaos, both during and after filming. Here, she asks, was it all a morbid coincidence or was something scarier at work?

Stranger than fiction: the real-life events surrounding Tobe Hooper’s release were more harrowing than the film itself (Shutterstock)

Over four decades since its release, Poltergeist remains a Halloween go-to. Come spooky season, horror devotees in search of sure-fire scares inevitably reach for Tobe Hooper’s movie about a picture-perfect family tormented by malevolent spirits. Between the swimming pool of skeletons, a cackling clown doll, and a portal in the closet, there are plenty of frights to go around. Dodgy CGI notwithstanding.

Off camera, though, murder and illness led to real-life deaths far scarier than anything seen on screen – and before the cameras even began rolling, tensions were reportedly running high.

The nature of Hooper’s involvement in the film has been debated since its 1982 release. Many have claimed that Steven Spielberg had a hand in directing the movie that his official credits – as co-writer and co-producer – don’t account for. While the question of directorial authorship is yet to be answered (after the film’s release, Spielberg published an open letter publicly crediting Hooper for his work and thanking him for his “openness”), such reports of a power struggle on set only fed rumours of the film’s gruelling production, which involved accidents, tragic cast deaths and the use of actual human remains. The fact Spielberg apparently based his harrowing story on real-life events did not help to dispel rumours of a so-called curse on the film.