‘If I had known skeletons were real I would have been more disgusted’: How we made Poltergeist | film

JoBeth Williams, played by Diane Freeling

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 also wrote, and I loved the family in it, and the fact that there were so many strong female characters: Diane, Dr. Leech, and the psychic Tangina. Zelda Rubinstein, who played Tangina, was a dynamo. Spielberg was busy preparing for ET, so although he was often on set, Tobe Hooper, who made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, directed the film. I’ve never seen that before because when it comes to horror, I’m a nervous Nellie.

We were all improvising to give a sense of real family life – sometimes they would move the camera while we were talking and telling jokes. Craig T. Nelson, who played my husband, was a stand-in. When we smoked pot in the bedroom, he would improvise a “before/after/before” routine with his stomach. Little Heather O’Rourke, who played my youngest daughter, Carol Ann, was only five at the time, but she was so intuitive. If you cry in a scene, you’ll cry too. When we were covered in cold goo, she would shiver and shiver but never complained. She was a trooper.

At the beginning of the film, the camera follows Diane through the kitchen after she has just straightened some chairs. When she turned back, she was silently piled on the table, impossibly fast. It was all done in one continuous take, with the crew rushing out of the shot to remove one set of chairs and place the pre-stacked tower in place. They were like a herd of elephants – the audio was then redubbed. My biggest problem was trying to keep a straight face.

Later, I’m dragged across the bed, up the wall, and across the ceiling by an invisible force. This was filmed on a rotating set called a gimbal, like the one that allowed Fred Astaire to dance on the ceiling at the royal wedding. The cameraman, Dennis, was tied to the set and had to spin and spin as if he were on a Ferris wheel. After a few takes, bless his heart, he had to get off because he was feeling nauseous.

The skeletons surrounding Diane after she fell into the pool were real – although I didn’t know that until I met one of the special effects guys later. I would have been more disgusted if I realized they weren’t just props, but at the time I was more concerned about the lights and huge fans creating a wind effect. I was afraid that someone would fall into the water and electrocute me. In fact, Spielberg waded up to his waist and said, “If I get electrocuted, that will kill me, too.” That was reassuring.

Martin Casella, played Dr. Marty Casey

Poltergeist was my first film and I got to star in it Beatrice Street, whom I worshiped. She’s great as Dr. Leech, the parapsychologist investigating the house. Richard Lawson and I played her assistants, and I think it’s because my character is the skeptical one who, as Toby said, is hated by the house.

The steak, which Marty sees crawling along the kitchen countertop like a worm, was operated by a man underneath poking a pair of chopsticks through a track disguised as padding between the tiles. When Marty throws away a chicken leg, he eats it on the ground in disgust and we see it covered in maggots, with handlers ready to scoop it up and make sure none of it gets hurt.

They made a full upper body dummy of me the moment Marty hallucinates scratching his face in the bathroom mirror. I asked how much it cost and they said, “Oh, the wig alone was $10,000.” Remember, this was 1981. This will be one unrepeatable shot, where I lift myself out from under the doll and tear off its cheeks to free the half-baked jelly and pockets of blood underneath. “There’s no way I can do this,” I thought. Stephen lit up when I told him – those are his hands you see in the movie! He’s only wearing my ring. I could never tear that face off with the same joy of life.

Later, I had to go back and shoot some more shots of me getting my real face. By then I was acting in a play I had written and had my hair cut off, so luckily they had saved the wigs from the doll. It took three hours to outfit my face with prosthetics filled with stage blood. Only when I got to the soundstage did someone realize that the makeup guy was working from the image in the mirror and had everything on the wrong side.

There was no PG-13 rating at the time. This was not introduced until the second Indiana Jones film two years later. Poltergeist ended up being rated PG, but until Stephen talked to the ratings board, that scene meant they wanted to make it rated R. Another scene of mine was cut, in which Marty is lifted into the air and bitten by a giant ghost. They fitted me with explosives filled with liquid detergent, which represented saliva, but the first time they tried it, the guys joked that it looked like ghost semen.

That wasn’t the reason she had to go, though. Stephen told me that it cut the scene in which Diane felt her daughter trapped on the other side and said, “It went through my soul.” It’s a testament to JoBeth’s amazing performance that he couldn’t do without it.