♪♪♪
- We hear a lot about cursed films
around horror productions.
It's definitely a curious thing that people gravitate to.
You know, crazy things that happened
on the set of "The Exorcist"
or "The Omen".
You know, I remember watching "Poltergeist".
And I remember my parents telling me,
Oh, that little girl died.
And I was like, Oh my God.
- Hello!
- I remember hearing the stories about "Poltergeist".
The lore was introduced to me long before the film was,
and so I almost felt like I had seen the movie
because I had heard about all of the kind of cursed things
that had happened on set.
- Most people when you hear of "Poltergeist" probably think,
oh yeah, that's that film that was kind of cursed.
And then you enter the internet into that and forget about it.
It's off and skyrocketing and it has a life of its own now.
It will never go away.
- There's a series of mishaps that happened
that believers will say,
uh, mean that there's a Poltergeist curse.
For example, on the set of the film, the little boy,
when he's being strangled by the toy clown,
the mechanism malfunctioned
and he claims he was actually being choked out.
[Creepy laughter]
- [Screaming]
- Agh! Agh!
- One of the stories to come out of...
the original Poltergeist,
which you had a lot of tragic stories surrounding it
and a lot of deaths,
was JoBeth Williams in a...
muddy pool full of skeletons.
- [Screaming]
- If you need skeletons to come out of a muddy pool, what do you do?
Well, get some real ones, I guess.
- Some people think maybe the skeletons in the pool
at the end of the movie were actually real skeletons
from India. [Woman screams]
- The Poltergeist curse
is often attributed to these rumours
that they used real skeletons from India.
And this is blasphemous,
and they've desecrated these bodies
and it led to a curse.
- Whether that's true or not, I don't know.
I tend to believe that it is true
because those skeletons do look pretty good.
- Ahh! Ahh!
- There are a number of crazy things that happened
throughout the making of the three Poltergeist films,
but there are two primary reasons
why people believe the films were cursed.
- Now I lay me down to sleep...
- The deaths of Heather O'Rourke
and Dominique Dunn.
- Oh brother!
- Dominique Dunne was the daughter of Dominick Dunne,
who was a very famous writer for Vanity Fair.
But he made a name for himself
covering many of the famous murder trials
of the 1990s.
Her older brother was Griffin Dunne
who had made a number of movies.
[Howling]
- Did you hear that?
- Dominique Dunne was in a relationship with John Sweeney,
who was the sous chef for Wolfgang Puck.
One evening, Dominique had been beaten up by John Sweeney
and so she...
broke off the relationship.
- [Screaming] What's happening?
- Poltergeist had already been released
and was a big hit.
And John Sweeney showed up
at her house in Los Angeles,
and got into a fight with her
and began to strangle her.
He did not, at that time, kill her.
She then remained in a coma
for four or five days
and then she was taken off life support.
Dominick Dunne had the idea
to write about his daughter's murder
and the subsequent trial for Vanity Fair.
The judge ruled against the prosecution
in almost every way possible.
For example, John Sweeney had beaten up a girlfriend
previous to Dominique Dunne
and that was not allowed in court.
It looked as though John Sweeney,
under some kind of a plea bargain,
would get 10 years in prison.
That would have been better
because he ended up spending two and a half years in prison.
- So, after Poltergeist,
Dominique Dunne is murdered by her boyfriend.
I think that doesn't pick up
a lot of cursed heat at the time,
but then, in "Poltergeist 2",
Will Sampson, an actor in the film,
who was also a Shaman,
was allowed onto set after hours to perform an exorcism
to try to rid the production of its demons.
- Two years after the release of "Poltergeist 2",
Will Sampson, that same actor who performed the exorcism,
died of kidney failure and malnutrition at age 53.
Okay, that one, he's young; that could be a curse.
- ♪ God is in... ♪
- And then to add to this list,
Julian Beck, who played the cult leader,
the old scary man that they used
in a lot of the marketing for the film -
even if you haven't seen the film
you're probably aware of this guy. Ahhhhhhh!
- You are gonna dieeeeeeeee!
- He died of stomach cancer as well.
- Sorry to see...
you're still unconvinced.
- When I accepted to do "Poltergeist 3",
I was aware of the fact that there had been deaths
on the previous two films.
I think the only thing that brought about
any feelings of a curse or anything
was we had to recreate one of the characters in the film
because the actor Julian Beck had died
and we wanted to bring back the character of Rev. Kane.
So they used a death mask of um...
Julian Beck,
to make the prosthetics for Nate Davis
so that Nate would look like Julian.
They called it a death mask.
Whether the casting was done while Julian was alive
or after he died, I'm not sure.
It was a little creepy.
- I'm Matthew Hutson.
I'm a science writer and I'm the author
of "The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking:
How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy and Sane."
Magical Thinking is basically belief in the supernatural.
Things like luck, destiny, mind over matter,
life after death
or the belief that objects carry essences.
This is the law of contagion.
It's the idea that mental properties like personality
or good and evil can be transmitted through contact.
So, a great example of this is the story of the Red Sox jersey
buried under Yankee Stadium.
- Following a lengthy curse
that hung over his beloved Red Sox baseball team,
a Boston fan hatched his own devious plot:
bury a Red Sox jersey in the foundation
of the new Yankee Stadium.
- He went to the construction site for Yankee Stadium
and brought with him a jersey for David Ortiz
who was a star on the Red Sox.
And he put this jersey in the wet cement,
thinking that he would curse the stadium.
And the next year the Yankees found out about it.
And, so, people were calling for this thing to be removed
and they had to jackhammer it out of two feet of concrete.
- They ripped the concrete apart today
at the new Yankee Stadium,
and there it was, wedged in there.
Yup, that's it, the infamous Red Sox jersey
buried by a construction worker.
- They pulled this jersey out of the cement
and held it up under the flashing bulbs.
It was like a magical rite, like a cleansing ceremony.
It felt very tribal.
[Subway rattles]
[Creepy music]
- We infuse inanimate objects with agency,
and our brains are just really good at that.
We know from research by cognitive psychologists
that if you offer subjects the opportunity
to wear Hitler's jacket,
they don't wanna do it.
There's evil in the object itself.
Almost as if the evil is floating in the ether
and it just infuses into a body, a person,
a jacket, an article.
Anything associated with a horror film -
the house, the set, a prop -
of course, it's gonna have that kind of sense
like there's something evil lurking within -
in the walls or in the object.
- There's something therapeutic
about owning the things that frightened you.
I just am a fan of the art.
You know, some people collect paintings.
I collect props.
So this is my toy slash prop room.
This is years and years of collecting right here...
and a few bucks as well.
[Chuckles]
A lot of screen-used masks,
various Halloween films.
It's very important for me to have screen-used stuff
versus just replicas.
The screen-used stuff, I mean it's so rare
and you're like one of a small portion of people
that may have one.
They only did one of these Frankenstein masks
and I have it.
It is kind of crazy to think who has handled these things,
who's worn them, who's touched them.
The legacy they carry, it makes them special
and it also gives them some sort of mystique.
But my crown jewel of my collection,
the thing that creeps out pretty much everybody
that comes into my house,
is the Poltergeist clown.
Many people look at that Poltergeist clown
and they think I'm completely out of my mind
for having it in my house.
That thing terrified them as a child.
It terrified me.
- I don't necessarily like collecting
some of the objects from horror films,
even though I'm sure many people do,
but I am a little bit addicted to going to the locations.
Not just for the horror education that you get from it,
but also for the history as well.
And sometimes real-life history does intersect
with the making of the movie.
A place takes on a certain kind of personality
just because a movie was shot there.
- Okay, Rob, that thing almost killed me.
- There's so many homes used in a horror film
and then a buyer kind of unwittingly gets this home.
And maybe they weren't aware of the fact
that there were going to be so many people
who come to their house almost like a pilgrimage, you know?
This is, it is almost like a religion.
- Hello. This is Ethan from Nubby Vision
and I am standing in front of the Freeling house,
which was featured in Poltergeist,
my favourite horror movie of all time.
- Who knew that a regular residential area
could turn into a horror film tourist location?
- The person that lives in that house now
was the original owner,
but they shot the film there before anybody had moved in.
It was a brand-new construction.
And so, when they bought it,
I don't think they knew right away
that that was the house from the film. Or maybe they knew
and they just didn't think it'd be a big deal.
Who would ever find out?
- Reason why I'm whispering
is because I am at the Poltergeist house
and the garage door is open.
There's a guy literally in his garage right there,
so I'm trying to be quiet.
- When you visit these places,
you feel like it's a house you grew up in
'cause in your mind it's a memory.
So I just became obsessed with it.
My friend Darren and I found the street
where the Myers' house was.
Hi, I'm Sean Clark.
Today, I'm at the Myers' house in South Pasadena, California.
That started my obsession with filming locations.
Hi, I'm Sean Clark
and today I'm standing in front of the house from Poltergeist.
We're in Cuesta Verde, California -
which is actually Simi Valley, California -
where the house from the film Poltergeist was located.
It's still here. It didn't get sucked into the ground
like you saw in the film.
The swimming pool was shot on a soundstage at MGM,
but, you know,
this house doesn't even have a swimming pool.
The interior of this house wasn't actually used.
It was all sets.
And just the exterior is what they used in the film,
and it's just a regular house.
There's nothing scary about it. It's just suburbia.
Hey, how you doin'? [Chuckles] - Hi.
- Now I'm with Richard Hallman. He's the next-door neighbour.
So, tell me, when did you move in
and when did you first find out
this was the house from Poltergeist?
- I moved in in 2010, about 8 years ago.
It's fun. I love the people coming by and checking it out.
Everybody's friendly, so it's great.
- I do believe they shot at least the scene in the kitchen,
'cause-- looking into the backyard,
when they were supposedly making the swimming pool.
- 'Cause they did that. They made a pool.
- There is a pool? - Yeah, so...
- There is a pool. Okay, mystery solved.
So I wonder if they did shoot that infamous scene
with all the skeletons here, if that--
- That was here. - It was here?
- No, it was here. - Okay. So...
- It was done here. - ...the curse could be real
and it might actually be this house.
- So yeah, like there's some weird things that went on
as far as like how many, you know, people,
actors, things like that-- - That passed away, yeah.
- Things like that. That's scary.
- Did you know there was rumours that they used actual...
some actual skeletons in that scene
and that might be part of the reason of the curses.
So, who knows? I mean you say this guy is the original owner.
Nothing's happened to him yet, as far as I know, so...
- No, he's still here, still going.
- The curse of Poltergeist is really fascinating
because it's kind of this meta curse.
Because it is mirroring what you're seeing in the movie
and that does have a bigger impact.
The house in the film is not only the source
of all the supernatural troubles
that haunt the Freeling family,
but it's also the source of the problems
faced by these real-life homeowners,
thanks to a bunch of curious Poltergeist fans.
And the same thing with the skeletons
that are rising up from underneath the house.
If those are real, perhaps the people who are making the movie
are making the same mistakes
that the people in the movie are making,
then it has this meta credibility to it.
- You son of a bitch! You moved the cemetery
but you left the bodies, didn't ya?!
- The thing is, if you talk to anyone
who's around that tragedy,
it's, it's real
and it's something that we forget.
We try to mythologize it
but we forget that there are real people affected.
- I had an amazing relationship with Heather.
I absolutely adored that little girl.
I think it was after the first or second day of shooting,
she came up to me and said: You know what, Gary,
I really like the way you direct,
and I, you know, I'm gonna be a director when I grow up,
so I would like to study how you work.
[Laughs]
I think Heather had a ball with the practical effects.
It was like an amusement park ride for her.
And especially that mirror - you know,
when she locks fingers with her image in the mirror.
- We're back!
- And she loved it.
She just thought that was the most fun in the world,
of riding up and down on this mirror.
[Chuckles]
Heather had been ill before we started shooting
and her parents had been taking her to doctors.
She was diagnosed as having Crohn's Disease,
and they were treating her for Crohn's Disease.
So she was on steroids
and I guess the only side effects
were the chipmunk cheeks that she would develop sometimes.
But, unfortunately, they were treating her for...
something that she didn't have.
We got a call one morning
that we were gonna have a conference call that afternoon
and the conference call was...
Heather's agent telling us
that she had passed away that morning.
My first reaction to hearing that Heather passed away
was just total sorrow.
Um, I-I just... I-I couldn't believe it.
- The mother of the star of the three Poltergeist movies
has filed a wrongful death suit against the hospital
and medical group that treated Heather.
- What they thought she had was a bowel inflammation.
What she actually had was an obstruction.
- There was a congenital birth defect
and she had an abscess in her intestines
that had been collecting fecal matter
and, and, and other toxic matter
that had been growing in like this balloon on her intestines,
and that morning...
um, it exploded.
And basically, she went into toxic shock
and that was...
that was the end of it.
And Alan Ladd Jr., he said, "Gary, get on a plane.
You gotta come back, we gotta have a meeting.
We have a film that we have an ending that we're unhappy with.
We were gonna shoot a new ending and..."
So I flew back to Los Angeles.
And I wanted to be there anyways for the funeral,
where I had been asked to be a pallbearer.
We just decided in that room that day,
the day before the funeral,
that we were not gonna finish the film.
Film's over.
I can't go back into the cutting room
or watch this film
with this dead 11-year-old in it.
Afterwards, the board at MGM just said to us,
you're gonna finish the film.
We got a lot of money invested in the film,
you're gonna finish the film.
- You don't need Carol Ann!
I can lead you into the light.
I have the knowledge
and the power!
- So they said, we'll have to come up and do an ending
that... won't involve Heather.
So, we came up with the idea for the stupid ending
that's on the film now
and used a double for Heather.
That was the creepiest thing
I've ever gone through in my life -
having this little girl dressed up as Heather,
keeping her face away from camera.
I really just did not want to finish the film.
None of us would go along with the studio
and do any publicity for the release of the movie.
None of us wanted the movie released
and ah...
but it was.
I don't think any of us thought finishing the film
would be a memorial to Heather.
The only thing we did was...
at the end of the film
there is a single card that says:
In Memoriam to Heather O'Rourke,
which just makes it sadder. [Chuckles]
- In other showbiz news,
as "Poltergeist 3" opens around the country,
the memory of Heather O'Rourke continues to make headlines.
- With the death of Heather O'Rourke,
and several other stars in the Poltergeist films,
supermarket tabloids immediately began running
stories of the films being jinxed.
- Following Heather's death,
I was attacked by the...
by the tabloid world.
They were outside my door.
I couldn't pick up my phone
without it being somebody from...
the National Inquirer or some other rag like that,
wanting to know uh...
you know, asking me questions about Heather's death
and about the curse of Poltergeist.
I actually moved and changed my phone number.
Zelda Rubinstein got so fed up
with people asking her to talk about it,
she finally went on camera and did an interview.
- Zelda Rubinstein is in "Poltergeist 3".
We asked what she thought of the jinx stories.
- Heather died because of an undetected...
congenital anatomical defect.
And Dominique Dunne died at the hands
of an extremely ill-directed,
passionate boyfriend.
I think that it's pretty much a courtesy
to put to an end
this superstitious um...
crap.
- You know, it's possible, if I had to do this all over again,
that I probably wouldn't have made the movie.
Um, I uh...
But I don't think it had anything to do with a curse.
I think people are always fascinated
by the unknown.
The fact that some people wanna connect that
with Poltergeist and skeletons...
to each his own.
- I'm Craig Reardon and I work in special makeup effects,
and in 1981, I worked on "Poltergeist".
But the subject of the skeletons
that were used in Poltergeist, to my utter amazement
has created sort of an online mythology,
and not a pretty one.
Apparently, there's a contingent of people out there
who, uh, believe that the fact
that real human skeletons were used
are some kind of pretext to "explain" - air quotes -
why two actresses
that worked in the film subsequently died,
which is not only...
just conceptually ridiculous,
but, uh, is personally offensive to me.
Here's something I guess they don't know,
and that's the fact that human skeletons
have been used in movies for years and years.
William Castle, who's a kind of a beloved figure,
well, he makes a movie called House on Haunted Hill,
and at the end of that movie,
Vincent Price makes a skeleton emerge
from a vat of supposedly acid.
The skeleton wobbles toward his virago of a wife.
Well, that was a real skeleton too.
It was a skeleton rigged up as a marionette.
There's a scene at the beginning
of the 1931 movie, Frankenstein,
where Fritz the Hunchback runs into a skeleton.
- Agh! Oh!
- I mean, you know, I hate to disillusion you,
those were real human skeletons
because no low budget B film is gonna pay anybody
to sculpt a human skeleton
when all you had to do was go to a biological supply house
and get a human skeleton.
You know, wake up and smell the budget.
That's really the way it worked.
The idea of having a few of them on the set of Poltergeist
and killing two lovely young girls
is a pretty pernicious idea.
It's an insult to the memory of a very sweet little girl,
Heather O'Rourke,
and it's worse than that to Dominique Dunne,
who was strangled to death by her boyfriend,
which had fuck-all to do with a skeleton.
- Life is full of really...
terrible tragedies and accidents.
I think it's easier for people to try to explain away
the kind of fragility of life and death
if they can come up with some kind of larger reason for it,
some kind of conspiracy theory
that helps justify why this person is suddenly gone.
I think it helps people cope in some ways too,
if they can't accept the reality of it.
Because the reality is that anyone can leave us at any time
and that's sometimes too difficult
to wrap our heads around.
[Rain patters, keys jingle]
[Door bangs shut]