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  • 2017-10-31 (xsd:date)
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  • Were Real Skeletons Used in the Making of 'Poltergeist'? (en)
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  • Spooky legends have long haunted the 1982 horror classic Poltergeist, including a creepy backstory that periodically reappears about human skeletons being used as props in one of the original film's sequences. In the movie, Diane Freeling (JoBeth Williams) is dragged into her family's swimming pool by a supernatural force identified as the Beast. She escapes to rescue her children, but not without being confronted by the skeletons of people that, unbeknownst to her and her family, were still buried in the ground under their home. In an interview that aired on entertainment channel VH1 in December 2002, Williams said: Williams expanded on the remark in a separate interview, aired as part of the TV Land show TV Land: Myths & Legends in 2008: A spokesperson for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film's original production company, could not confirm the claim. We also contacted current distributor Warner Brothers Pictures and co-producer Steven Spielberg's own company, Amblin Entertainment, seeking comment. The movie's director, Tobe Hooper, died in August 2017. But other reports concerning the Poltergeist curse cite Bruce Kasson (who is identified as the film's assistant prop master) corroborating Williams' account: However, Kasson's page at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) does not list Poltergeist among his various film credits. Similarly, the page for the movie does not list Kasson as a part of its crew. Special effects makeup artist Craig Reardon, however, said under oath that the skeletons used for the scene were real. In late 1982, Reardon was deposed as part of a lawsuit filed against Spielberg by screenwriters Paul Clemens and Bennett Michael Yellin. The duo claimed that an Amblin employee acted as a ghostwriter who took portions of their own script and submitted them to the Poltergeist production team as their own ideas. Clemens and Yellin's suit argued that there were 67 points of similarity between Spielberg's film and their own. The suit was reportedly settled out of court, but during his deposition, Reardon said: Williams also said that the use of the skeletons created such an unease around the Poltergeist set that it carried over into the making of the sequel, Poltergeist II: The Other Side. She added that co-star Will Sampson, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, performed an exorcism on the set of that film. Samson, who was perhaps best known for playing Chief Bromden in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, died in 1987. (en)
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