-Poltergeist (1982): 10/10
Had an opportunity to see this on the big screen today, and had to take it to see one of the best funhouse thrill rides ever conceived. It doesn't matter who "really" made this film (which will probably be debated for another thirty-eight years), but credited director Tobe Hooper and producer/co-writer Steven Spielberg, in their 1982 spook show, crafted a film that's as moving as it is frightening. It's also a rare, early example of a totally functional, intact family unit inside of a Spielberg production, and JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson anchor the film with affectionate gravitas. Williams, in particular, is superb in an underrated performance, her fierce devotion to daughter Carol Ann (Heather O'Rourke) -- spirited away into another dimension by "The TV People" somewhere inside of their identikit suburban home -- resulting in some raw, anguished acting. When she intones, "She moved through my SOUL...!" as Carol Ann's disembodied spirit passes through her on the staircase, I never fail to well up. And the film is polished to a high gloss by a superb technical team, with ILM's top-notch visual effects still working like a charm (even blown up to movie-screen size, it's hard to see the seams) and Jerry Goldsmith providing one of the greatest scores of his long and illustrious career. Roiling with unsettled dread one moment, keening with emotion the other, it's a masterclass of film composition, and the sixteen-minute setpiece as diminutive spiritual house cleanser Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) sets to ferret out Carol Ann from "The Other Side" is probably the best individual stretch of music Goldsmith ever composed for a movie. Still terrifying, still witty and warm in its details about 80's suburbia, Poltergeist remains one of the top scary movies ever made, and not even a pair of mediocre sequels and an already-forgotten 2015 remake can tarnish its legacy.