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Carol Anne Freeling: They're here.

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Trivia

Near the beginning of the movie when Dana leaves for school, we see Carol-Ann watching a channel with static. When her mother says, "It'll ruin your eyes" or something, she changes it to a channel that has a war movie on. If you watch for about 5 seconds, you'll hear the Wilhelm scream. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

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Poltergeist (1982) - 72 mistakes

starring Beatrice Straight, Craig T. Nelson, Dominique Dunne, JoBeth Williams, Oliver Robins (add more)

Genres: Horror, Thriller

Mistakes
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Other: When the chair moves across the kitchen floor, Craig T. Nelson goes to investigate it (after it has stopped moving). He goes up to the chair and flips it over. If you look closely, Craig almost hits the camera with the chair's legs. You can tell this has happened because the camera moves up very quickly and Craig looks straight at the camera crew with very big guilty eyes. This is more easily visible on the widescreen version of the film.

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Continuity: Likewise, when Carol Anne is being sucked into the closet vortex she clearly lets go of the white wicker headboard of her bed. In the next shot, the child (actually a dummy or a stunt double) is seen sailing into the closet, grasping a sizeable section of the now broken headboard.

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Visible crew/equipment: In the breakfast scene when Robbie's milk glass spontaneously shatters from the bottom. Watch closely, you can see a string coming out of his cereal bowl and attaching to the bottom of his glass. Robbie just needs to give the glass a little tug, and splash. Watch in slo-mo a couple times, then it's really obvious at regular speed.

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Continuity: As Diane brings the freshly-washed flask to Dr. Lesh, who's sitting at the kitchen table, the flask jumps from one hand to another.

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Continuity: At the start of the film, the dog is seen going from room to room looking for food. Just before he goes into Dana's room, someone can be seen through the crack in the door, moving from left to right.

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Continuity: The wicker headboard of Carol Anne's bed is ripped apart when she holds onto it to try to keep from flying into the closet. Towards the end of the movie, when her mom tucks her into bed,the headboard is intact and has had no repairs.

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Visible crew/equipment: Near the end of the film, when she lands behind the stairs. If you look in the right hand corner, underneath the stairs, you can see tennis shoes running by.

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Continuity: When the men are watching football, they are reacting as if they are watching live action. However, the images shown on the TV are clearly in slo-motion.

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Other: When the father tucks Robbie in and Robbie says "I don't like the tree, dad." the camera shot begins rolling to the left. Robbie flinches when reacting to someone telling him to lean back more so he's not blocking too much of the father's face. The father also improvs a solution by gently pushing Robbie's shoulder back a bit as well.

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Continuity: In the opening sequence while the kids are in bed, the toys on Robbie's headboard keep changing. The Rams football helmet is always there, but next to it, you will see a Star Wars droid, a race car, or a dinosaur, depending on which shot it is.

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Visible crew/equipment: Near the end of the movie, when Diane falls down the stairs and runs towards the door, she grabs the door knob. When she gets thrown backwards, you can see the cable that is attached to her shirt, pulling her back, in the first couple of frames in slo-mo.

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Continuity: Toward the end of the movie, as the family gets in the car and leaves, the garage door is closed on the house. But when the house begins imploding, suddenly the garage door is wide open.

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Continuity: When Robbie wakes up to cover the clown, his grip on the jacket and the position of his head (crouched neck against breast vs raised neck) changes between one frame and the other.

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Continuity: After the chair moves, Steve is in awe, his left hand on the counter. A frame later, on the close-up shot, it's on his thigh.

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Continuity: After Diane places the chair to show Steve how it moves, the chair swaps from being parallel to him to slightly skewed. Also, its position on the floor changes: First the right legs aren't touching the brown lines, and a frame later they are.

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Continuity: A few seconds before Robbie looks at his clown toy, you can see a Rubik's cube near his head. When the camera angle changes, the cube is gone.

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Continuity: Toward the end, when Diane and the kids are trying to escape, they start into the kitchen only to see 2 coffins come up through the floor. The initial shot shows the coffins quickly shooting up to almost the same height and then stopping, but in the next shot, in which the coffin on the right opens, the one on the left is a couple of feet lower and is still slowly rising.

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Revealing: When the TV is turned off and Diane insists it's left on, the picture rolls and color bars are visible before the picture stabilises again. The 'static' is a video signal being fed to the TV, not true static.

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Continuity: After Carol Ann's been abducted, her family walks upstairs and places one mattress on top of another. A few seconds later they are arranged in a different way.

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Continuity: Robbie watches the tree and gets in bed. Next to him there's a yellow comic book underneath a Darth Vader bust. When his mother arrives the comic book is completely different.

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