Poltergeist

Continuity mistake: After Carol goes through her mom's body, a huge wind sweeps away the living room. The lamp next to the TV falls down, but a second later it's facing upwards again.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: The reddish brown goo on Robbie's face after he's almost eaten by the tree varies between camera shots.

jerimiah

Continuity mistake: 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.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Diane and Carol Anne are lying in the bathtub towards the end, Carol Anne's hair and hand position change drastically between the wide shot and the closeup.

Krista

Continuity mistake: Right after JoBeth Williams and Craig T Nelson joke with Dr. Lesh about not showing the tapes of their haunting on "60 Minutes" or "That's Incredible", JoBeth walks to the table with Dr. Lesh's flask in her hand. As she walks from the sink, there's a silver cap on it. When she gets to the table, the cap is gone. She couldn't have removed it out of sight, she had a coffee cup in her other hand.

Ingabritzen

Continuity mistake: When Diane and Carol are in the tub, the amount of red slime on Diane's forehead, and foam on Steven's hand increases or decreases between shots.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: The first night the ghosts come out of the TV, before Carol Ann wakes up, there's a pillow on the background laying on the floor by a basket. When she walks towards the TV the pillow is standing upright by the basket.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: Diane places the liquor flask upside down on the table, but a frame later it has turned 180ยบ.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: Returning from the pool, Diane enters the kids' bedroom and starts to fly, covering the door with mud. A second later the door is clean, only to dirty itself in the following shots.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Robbie leaves in a taxi, in the close-up Steve is massaging Diane, in the wide angle he is just standing behind. This keeps swapping back and forth.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Carol Ann is about to be abducted, sometimes she is suspended horizontally over the bed, others diagonally.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: After the credits, the position and amount of beer cans around the fallen bicycle changes between shots.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Carol Anne goes to the TV in the parents' bedroom the first time, the clock on the TV changes from 2:38, 2:58, 2:38 and then back to 2:53 with each camera angle change.

jerimiah

Continuity mistake: The piece of licorice that Carol Anne puts into the cigar box with the dead parakeet "for when he's hungry" appears to be close to 6 inches long when she's placing it in the box but no more than a couple of inches long when it's shown in the box a few moments later. (00:10:10)

Jeff Swanson

Continuity mistake: Just before the house starts to implode, Teague is backing away from it and as he does so, he passes a couple of white garbage bags on the sidewalk and backs into the street. In the next shot, taken from across the street showing bystanders being blown backwards, Teague is visible in the background; he's back on the sidewalk tripping backwards over the same bags he safely passed moments before. (01:48:10)

Jeff Swanson

Continuity mistake: As the Freeling family is escaping through the side of their house, you will notice that Diane is holding a doll that looks like Carol Anne.

Continuity mistake: 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.

Jeff Swanson

Continuity mistake: 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.

More mistakes in Poltergeist

Carol Anne Freeling: They're here.

More quotes from Poltergeist

Trivia: In the swimming pool scene with the mother near the end, the actress didn't know it, but those weren't fake skeletons.

More trivia for Poltergeist

Question: What exactly did the ghosts want with Carol Anne?

Answer: They were attracted to her life force. She was such a young child, that it was particularly pure and strong within her.

raywest

Answer: They were partly attracted to Carol Anne because she she was born in her house.

She was not literally born inside the house. She was born while the family was living there.

raywest

The movie literally says she was born IN the house. When Teague asks, "One of your children was born in your house, huh?" and Steve replies, "Carol Anne."

More questions & answers from Poltergeist

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