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| Poltergeist III |
He wants Carol Anne now before she grows up. Youth is a strong life force. Innocence is pure life force. We lose strength as we lose our innocence. You see, innocence is the only gift we’re given in life. All else must be fought for. In that gift is purity. In that purity lies strength.
This is actually my favorite scene. They gave Rubinstein the
Razzie just because she returned in this film, not because she does anything
different than in the first film. It is easy to kick a woman when the film
she’s in stinks up the nostrils with its stench. Another reason I like the
scene is how it kind of haunts me in its dialogue about little Carol Anne
preyed upon before “she grows up”. I don’t know: knowledge of what happened to
O’Rourke just provides something tragic to this line of dialogue.
The abundant use of a fog machine and constant reliance of
mirror tricks can only carry you so far if the story is positively worthless.
At least, I took the scene above from this and won’t soon forget it. I’m not
sure what it is about Heather O’Rourke. Maybe it is because she was only two
years older than me and died so young, under circumstances that could have been
prevented, that lends such a sense of eerie and holds this presence of sadness
over any scene O’Rourke appears in. There’s a simple, small scene where she’s playing
on this spelling-word machine. Nothing all that noteworthy or powerful about
it, but just a moment in time where she was a child with no sense of an end to
mortality. That is what I took from the film. All the nonsense with Kane and
those other poltergeists that seem to be his work, moving about this high rise
that would have been an ideal candidate for Cronenberg’s Shivers, just did
nothing of any consequence that worked a spell quite like O’Rourke’s mere
presence during the film. When she’s gone for a long stretch, with the film
having to be carried by Skerritt and Allen (both unfortunately trapped in this
bad film, unable to escape), it is quite a reminder of her loss to me.
O’Rourke’s character’s name, however, never leaves the film…much to my (and
many others) chagrin.
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| December 27, 1975 – February 1, 1988 |
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