In what has been billed as "the first real ghost story," the titular poltergeist is somehow allied with ghosts of the white-sheet variety, with zombies and skeletons, with Satan himself and various sub-demons, with animated dolls, with octopus-like trees, with God knows what all. There is no connection, no logical sequence, no way of digesting events as they come along and trying to figure out the governing laws. Quite apart from the necessary intelligence, the movie hasn't the simple patience to develop the sense of moral-spiritual-psychological threat that features in the best (and "realest") ghost stories; it understands physical threat only, and it emerges as just another monster movie, whose menagerie of monsters is dictated by an overendowed and undersupervised special-effects department. If the terror tactics are poorly calculated, though, the humor tactics are even more so, as the relentless satirical jibes effectively remove the suburban family from sympathy. With Craig T. Nelson, Jobeth Williams, and Beatrice Straight; co-written and co-produced by Steven Spielberg; directed by Tobe Hooper (though Spielberg has made an ex post facto attempt to take credit for that, too). (1982) — Duncan Shepherd