Poltergeist

Poltergeist (1982)

85 mistakes - chronological order

(6 votes)

Factual error: Robbie is grabbed by the big, gnarly tree outside his bedroom window during a severe thunderstorm, and Steve rushes outside to save the boy as a full-blown tornado passes overhead. The tornado sucks up the tree (which certainly weighs several tons); yet, completely defying physics, Steve and Robbie remain unaffected by the powerful updraft, even though the two are directly beneath the tornado vortex.

Charles Austin Miller

Visible crew/equipment: Near the end of the film in Carol Anne's bedroom, after the medium calls "Give me your hand" the edge of a giant fan is visible on the extreme right of the picture. (Maybe widescreen version only).

Revealing mistake: 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.

Continuity mistake: During the big-throat scene, Carol Anne's feet alternate between rapid up and down movement, still or just slightly up and down.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Steve's high on pot and tells Diane he loves her, he has his hand raised. A frame later it's down by the blanket.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When the big throat is menacing the kids, Carol Anne's position swaps from being left or right to Robbie randomly between shots.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When the ghostbusters team goes upstairs with Steve for the first time, Ryan takes his bag off twice.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Robbie is trapped by the tree and Carol Ann is about to be abducted, his bed cover keeps changing back and forth from messy to perfectly folded.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: In the pool, Diane is surrounded by at least 4 bodies floating together; however, when she grabs the hose to climb up, half a second later, the overview of the pool shows just 2 bodies quite a distance each away from each other. In the next close-up, the 4 bodies reappear.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Diane falls in the pool, the distance to the floating corpse on the left increases or decreases randomly depending on the shot.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: After Carol slides through the kitchen floor, Steve rests with his back against the wall, over a brown line. When the angle changes, a frame later, he's resting half a meter to the right of the line.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: While Diane faces the creature and demands it not to touch her babies, she is resting against a long flat wall, but from the angle behind, half of her body is resting against a corner.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: The night the clown attacks Robbie, when he turns off the light the lamp and the Darth Vader bust swap positions between shots.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: From the outside, Robbie watches the tree and walks backwards to his bed, made and with a green cover on. When the angle changes, the sheets are different and the bed is unmade.

Sacha

Carol Anne Freeling: They're here.

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Trivia: The scene where the ghosts stacked the chairs on the kitchen table was filmed in one take with no cuts. As the camera followed Diane Freeling to the kitchen sink, the crew members rushed to the table, put an already built pyramid of chairs on the table and then took away the individual chairs.

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Question: Why was only the Freelings' house sucked into the vortex? Since it was discovered that the developer only moved the headstones but left the bodies, shouldn't other houses that were also built over the cemetery have also been dragged in?

Answer: It seems that the majority of the activity was focusing in on the Freeling house exclusively. It's not fully explained why they were the only house affected, but there are a number of possibilities. Possibly because it's where the highest concentration of spirits were at unrest. Possibly because it could be inferred that the Freelings moved in first given Steven was involved with the company that built the community, and thus they became the first targets. And possibly because they were trying to get to Carol-Anne since she was an easy target.

Also, it is mentioned in the movie that Carol Anne was actually born in the house. That likely caused everything to focus on her.

It was not meant that Carol Anne was literally born inside the house, just while the family was living there. It was just a casual colloquial expression Steven's boss made.

raywest

Answer: A poltergeist haunts a person rather than a place. Though building the neighborhood over their graves is what initially disturbed the ghosts, they are fixated on Carol Anne.

TonyPH

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