Scary films, from "The Blair Witch Project" to "The Sixth Sense," have dominated theaters the past month or so. But there is one film, hailing way back from 1982, that can still make moviegoers tremble in their seats — "Poltergeist."

Set in a quaint suburban home, "Poltergeist" follows a family as they discover their house is haunted, and subsequently battle the ghostly forces to stay alive. With Steven Spielberg as writer, producer and, for all intents and purposes, director (Tobe Hooper is credited, but Spielberg used his power to control the project), the film pulled viewers in as it created the haunted house as more of a fun house.

Taking advantage of a loopy housewife (JoBeth Williams) and an innocent little girl named Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke), the haunting spirits force the Freeling family to accept their existence and seek help from paranormal/supernatural experts. What follow are some of the freakiest scenes in any horror film.

Things start to go awry when a thunderstorm hits the house. With a toothless Robbie (Oliver Robins) as the yellowest chicken in history, the thunderstorm takes over his mind, enters it and destroys. Soon enough, the huge tree growing outside Robbie's bedroom window breaks through the window, becomes a man-tree and starts eating up dear little Robbie.

Other major frights include a swimming pool wrought with de-coffinated corpses come-to-life, a tornado centralized in Carol Anne's and Robbie's bedroom, an orange, pumpkin-like portal to an alternate universe emanating from Carol Anne's closet and most frightening of all, a killer clown.

Indeed, the creepiest moment in the film was when the toy clown finally turned evil and attacked poor Robbie. Not created with a pleasant face to begin with, the clown was foreshadowed as an actor of evil early in the picture. It was merely when and how the clown would attack that made him an effective link to the success of the film's horrors.

Of course, it seems Robbie is the only victim in this tale of a poltergeist. That is until Carol Anne is kidnapped by the devious ghosts. Throwing her family into a chaotic stir that is only interrupted by its discovery that the alternate universe Carol Anne was taken to is located in the television set.

Calling upon the same parapsychologists/supernatural doctors that had visited previously, the family attempts to retrieve Carol Anne from televisionland.

With the addition of the heavy-winded and confusingly spooky Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein), the quest to save Carol Anne becomes a battle of trust between the scientifically-minded doctors and the intuition of Tangina.

Eventually, Carol Anne is saved by her mother via the pumpkin portal, both of them falling into a bathtub as if they came immediately out of the birth canal.

Unfortunately for the Freelings, saving Carol Anne angers the poltergeist further, leading to an exciting chase out of the neighborhood, as the Freeling house is swallowed up into oblivion.

"Poltergeist," as a horror flick, passes through its scenes with remarkable excitement and intense flurry. Never finding itself in an unsatisfying position, the film will indeed continue as one of the best horror flicks from the 1980s.

• Unlucky 13 sours warrior film
  
• Video Pick of the Week