Harefooted Halloween: Poltergeist II: The Other Side

What I Liked: The wacky horror scenes where shit goes off the rails are really inventive and well done.  I especially love the part where Craig T. Nelson (All the Right Moves) vomits up a gigantic worm monster that crawls away and turns into a slimy hunched over human skeleton-oid creature.  Fuckin’ A man.

Julian Beck (Dinner Guest in 9 ½ Weeks) is great and creepy as a demon pretending to be an old preacher who wants to steal Carol Anne away and kill the rest of the family.  He looks like a walking corpse with his sunken wide eyes, big toothy grin, gaunt appearance and soft spoken disposition.  His performance is kinda one for the ages in my opinion.  The scene where he tries to persuade Nelson to let him in the house is hypnotizing and freaky.

The cinematography is very nice and up there with the likes of a Spielberg production (although he wasn’t involved this time).  Andrew Laszlo (First Blood, Streets of Fire, Innerspace, Newsies) does a good job filling out the frame with excellent choices and makes the movie feel bigger than it really is.

What I Didn’t Like: I don’t know what the rules are with the ghosts/demons.  They seem to come and go as they please and I’m still not sure why they want Carol Anne.  This is typical for any ghost/haunted house picture but it’s still a negative nonetheless.

Overall Impressions: Oh boy, this is gonna piss off a lot of people but I liked this one better than the first.  It’s basically the same thing again except it’s more straight forward, gets to the point and actually feels thought out ahead of time.  The worm puking scene alone is better than anything its predecessor came up with.

I’ll never understand why the original was an enormous hit and still has its legion of fans.  Number 2 is like they stripped away all the bullshit and gave you a leaner meaner version.  I mean a Native American (Will Sampson (The Outlaw Josey Wales)) trains Nelson on how to fight the supernatural monster with magic smoke from a peace pipe.  It’s weird as hell and I’m into it.