The 1982 Poltergeist is an American supernatural horror-thriller film directed by Tobe Hopper, written and produced by Steven Spielberg. Steven and Diane Freeling (Craig T.Nelson and JoBeth Williams) with their children Dana (Dominique Dunne), Robbie (Oliver Robins) and Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) live a quiet life in an Orange Country, California planned community called Cuesta Verde.
During the past few years, the film Poltergeist has not been achieving a lot of fame. The remaking of the movie Poltergeist 2015 had some unexplained unusual experiences faced by the people on the set.
How is the movie cursed?
The original trilogy had no less than four actors die in the 6 years between the three films released, which is the curse that many people refer to while talking about the movie.
Well, almost all of the character died, in reality! The young actress who played Carol Anne Feeling, Heather O’Rourke dies four months before the 1988 release of Poltergeist III. The cause of her death was because she had Crohn’s Disease in 1987, but actually had congenital stenosis of the intestine. She died during her surgery as the doctor tried to repair an acute bowel obstruction caused by her illness. Gary Sherman the film director had to use a body double when the studio forced him to reshoot the film’s ending.
Dominique Dunne who played Dana Freeling in the first Poltergeist film was strangled by her boyfriend just four months after the film was released in 1982. After slipping into a coma, it was declared that she was brain dead and her mother removed her from life support.
The best known evil preacher Kane in Poltergeist II: The Other Side, Beck died because of stomach cancer diagnosed in 1986, eight months before the film was to be released in May 1986.
Will Sampson had a wide variety of roles over the course of his career, he is well known as Taylor the medicine man from Poltergeist II. Sampson suffered from scleroderma and died from kidney failure after an attempted heart and lung transplant. It has been reported that Sampson performed an exorcism on the set a night after shooting had been completed, because of the fact that real skeletons were used in the shoot.