Real Skeletons In Poltergeist?
okay, so i know about the supposed curse on poltergeist, about actors untimely death and everything and that appartantly, the skeletons in the muddy pool are real and they are the ones that caused the curse…but how could the props department get real bodies for the pool scene??? i guess i believe in the curse because of the actors death and all the bad stuff that happened on set but i dont get how they could get real skeletons…does anyone know how or any good answers for that?
MystMoon
16 Jan, 2010
In “Poltergeist”, there are no real corpses. IMDb trivia states: “The skeletons that emerge from the swimming pool while Diane searches for help are actual skeletons. JoBeth Williams didn’t know this until after the scene was shot.” However, if you watch the scene carefully, you will see that the majority of objects in the scene are fake corpses, with few skeletal bodies; they most definitely could not have used the real thing in this situation. Actually, Steven Spielberg soothed his leading actress’ fears about electrocution if the lights should fall into the pool by getting into the pool with her to direct the scene!
NOTE: Until I saw this on IMDb, I’d never heard about the supposedly “real skeletons”; it’s odd that no one mentioned it in any interviews, as they did for “Poltergeist II: The Other Side”.
In “Poltergeist II”, they did discover that some of the skeletons in the cave were real; after strange things kept happening on the cave set, Will Sampson informed them that it was because of these skeletons. People in the props department admitted they had supplemented with the real thing and removed them. They were given respectful burial, and Sampson, who was a shaman for his people, performed a ceremony at the site~not an exorcism as some claim! I know because I watched a lengthy interview with Sampson, Craig T. Nelson and others connected to the film.
“Unrest” (2006) had this as its tagline: The First Film To Use Real Bodies (source: IMDb). However, I found this on the IMDb forum for “Unrest”:
It’s actually the second movie to use a real corpse.” Men Behind the Sun” aka “Camp 731″ is the first.
I checked, and it is true that two corpses are used in two very graphic scenes. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t care to even glance at this thing.
ljh
16 Jan, 2010
In the past it wasn’t at all uncommon for doctors or scientists to purchase cadavers and have the flesh and muscle removed so that the cleaned skeleton could be wired back together and studied. It probably wouldn’t be out of the question for theater companies or movie studios to have done the same thing. If these old props made from real skeletons were still hanging around in a storage facility somwhere, it would not be out of the realm of possiblity for them to be taken and redressed to be used in Poltergeist.