Poltergeist

Poltergeist (1982)

86 mistakes - chronological order

(6 votes)

Visible crew/equipment: When E. Buzz is heading for Dana's door, someone wearing blue jeans and a red shirt can be seen briefly in the doorway. (00:02:02)

Continuity mistake: The piece of licorice that Carol Anne puts into the cigar box with the dead parakeet "for when he's hungry" appears to be close to 6 inches long when she's placing it in the box but no more than a couple of inches long when it's shown in the box a few moments later. (00:10:10)

Jeff Swanson

Revealing mistake: When the father tucks Robbie in and Robbie says "I don't like the tree, dad." the camera shot begins rolling to the left. Robbie flinches when reacting to someone telling him to lean back more so he's not blocking too much of the father's face. The father also improvs a solution by gently pushing Robbie's shoulder back a bit as well. (00:18:55)

Revealing mistake: When the chair moves across the kitchen floor, Craig T. Nelson goes to investigate it (after it has stopped moving). He goes up to the chair and flips it over. If you look closely, Craig almost hits the camera with the chair's legs. You can tell this has happened because the camera moves up very quickly and Craig looks straight at the camera crew with very big guilty eyes. This is more easily visible on the widescreen version of the film. (00:33:30)

Continuity mistake: The window in Robbie and Carol Ann's room never has a mini blind. After the tree breaks through the window and the family races up to their room the window is intact with a blind in it. (00:39:00)

Continuity mistake: Toward the end of the movie, as the family gets in the car and leaves, the garage door is closed on the house. But when the house begins imploding, suddenly the garage door is wide open. (01:48:10)

Jeff Swanson

Continuity mistake: Just before the house starts to implode, Teague is backing away from it and as he does so, he passes a couple of white garbage bags on the sidewalk and backs into the street. In the next shot, taken from across the street showing bystanders being blown backwards, Teague is visible in the background; he's back on the sidewalk tripping backwards over the same bags he safely passed moments before. (01:48:10)

Jeff Swanson

Other mistake: In the first shot when Carol Ann is being put to bed, the wicker headboard is backwards. I know this for a fact because I used to have the exact same headboard (queen size), and the large support frame faces the wall. The only thing you're supposed to see is a bunch of single swirls in the front. But they probably turned it that way so Carol Ann would have something to grab onto. White wicker furniture was very popular and cheap in the 1970s.

Continuity mistake: At the start of the film, the dog is seen going from room to room looking for food. Just before he goes into Dana's room, someone can be seen through the crack in the door, moving from left to right.

Continuity mistake: When Carol Anne is being sucked into the closet vortex she clearly lets go of the white wicker headboard of her bed. In the next shot, the child (actually a dummy or a stunt double) is seen sailing into the closet, grasping a sizeable section of the now broken headboard.

Visible crew/equipment: In the breakfast scene when Robbie's milk glass spontaneously shatters from the bottom. Watch closely, you can see a string coming out of his cereal bowl and attaching to the bottom of his glass. Robbie just needs to give the glass a little tug, and splash.

Poltergeist mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: Near the end of the film, when she lands behind the stairs. If you look in the right hand corner, underneath the stairs, you can see tennis shoes running by.

Continuity mistake: Robbie watches the tree and gets in bed. Next to him there's a yellow comic book underneath a Darth Vader bust. When his mother arrives the comic book is completely different.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: After Diane places the chair to show Steve how it moves, the chair swaps from being parallel to him to slightly skewed. Also, its position on the floor changes: First the right legs aren't touching the brown lines, and a frame later they are.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: In the opening sequence while the kids are in bed, the toys on Robbie's headboard keep changing. The Rams football helmet is always there, but next to it, you will see a Star Wars droid, a Rubik's cube, a race car, or a dinosaur, depending on which shot it is.

Continuity mistake: The wicker headboard of Carol Anne's bed is ripped apart when she holds onto it to try to keep from flying into the closet. Towards the end of the movie, when her mom tucks her into bed, the headboard is intact and has had no repairs.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Diane could've bought a new headboard obviously.

Continuity mistake: As Diane brings the freshly-washed flask to Dr. Lesh, who's sitting at the kitchen table, the flask jumps from one hand to another.

Continuity mistake: A few seconds after Steve stops the car for his daughter, Robbie yells. During this brief scene you can see a bluish flannel on Robbie. About eight seconds later, Robbie's red pajamas reappear. Previous to these scenes, Robbie was wearing his red pajamas.

Continuity mistake: When the men are watching football, they are reacting as if they are watching live action. However, the images shown on the TV are clearly in slo-motion.

Carol Anne Freeling: They're here.

More quotes from Poltergeist

Trivia: While filming the toy clown attacking Robbie, the clown's arms were wrapped tightly around Oliver's neck. He immediately said he couldn't breathe but Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper both thought that he was ad-libbing. When Spielberg saw Oliver's face turning purple, he realised that he really was being asphyxiated and ran over to remove the arms from his neck.

More trivia for Poltergeist

Question: What exactly did the ghosts want with Carol Anne?

Answer: They were attracted to her life force. She was such a young child, that it was particularly pure and strong within her.

raywest

Answer: They were partly attracted to Carol Anne because she she was born in her house.

She was not literally born inside the house. She was born while the family was living there.

raywest

The movie literally says she was born IN the house. When Teague asks, "One of your children was born in your house, huh?" and Steve replies, "Carol Anne."

More questions & answers from Poltergeist

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.