Poltergeist
Sorry Tobe Hooper, but this thing has Spielberg written all over it; no way he was *just* a producer on this. Like E.T., this movie makes me weirdly nostalgic for 80s suburban home life -- just the way things looked or were lit, the layout of the home, toys on every surface, food in the bed! Now, as for the movie itself, I was surprised and glad to see how quickly it just jumped into its haunted house plot, and how quickly the characters just bought into it. There are ghosts, they're real, they're fucking with us, let's go to work. It was paced nicely, JoBeth Williams is great (everyone else is fine but their characters feel pretty thin), and the practical effects were astounding. I dug it.
7/10
House on Haunted Hill
Just bad. Sometimes comically bad, usually boringly bad. Would've been a great MST3K episode. On its own merits, I didn't really enjoy it at all, though I'll give a point for Vincent Price who is charismatic and fun to watch or listen to as ever.
4/10
Sorry Tobe Hooper, but this thing has Spielberg written all over it; no way he was *just* a producer on this. Like E.T., this movie makes me weirdly nostalgic for 80s suburban home life -- just the way things looked or were lit, the layout of the home, toys on every surface, food in the bed! Now, as for the movie itself, I was surprised and glad to see how quickly it just jumped into its haunted house plot, and how quickly the characters just bought into it. There are ghosts, they're real, they're fucking with us, let's go to work. It was paced nicely, JoBeth Williams is great (everyone else is fine but their characters feel pretty thin), and the practical effects were astounding. I dug it.
7/10
House on Haunted Hill
Just bad. Sometimes comically bad, usually boringly bad. Would've been a great MST3K episode. On its own merits, I didn't really enjoy it at all, though I'll give a point for Vincent Price who is charismatic and fun to watch or listen to as ever.
4/10