Steven Spielberg – Missile Test

I couldn’t say how many times I’ve seen Jaws. It’s been so many times that the film feels like a familiar presence in my life. My first viewing was so long ago that it’s mostly faded back into the ether, consisting of little snippets that have been distorted by time. I remember that I was young, maybe five or six years old, and that my old man was there to make sure I covered my eyes during the gory bits. Was it irresponsible to let someone so young watch a movie featuring such gruesome scenes of death as Jaws? Well, it was rated PG, for Parental Guidance, and that’s just what I got. I was too young for the gore, but there were about 120 minutes of really good movie that wouldn’t cause nightmares, and that I got to see until I was old enough for the rest. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Jaws”

So, who really directed Poltergeist? Part of the Hollywood mythos the last few decades treats this as an open question. Was it Tobe Hooper, the man at the top of the credits? Or was it producer Steven Spielberg? It was such a serious concern among the Directors Guild that they launched an investigation into whether or not Spielberg had tried to snatch credit away from Hooper. Honestly, no one involved is saying definitively one way or the other, but Hooper is a competent storyteller with fine directorial vision, and I can’t see him having a film taken away from him. That being said, it’s also hard to picture Spielberg letting a director that was not him have total creative control over a flick he was very much involved in as producer. So did Spielberg direct Poltergeist? Who knows, and who cares? Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Poltergeist”