Poltergeist

Music by Jerry Goldsmith

 

 

 

 

Beware with the soundtrack of Poltergeist (1982). Right in the opening track, with the national American anthem followed by the TV white noise, you realize that this is not an ordinary soundtrack.

Of all those ridiculous warnings like "do not read this book at night" or "don´t watch this movie alone," it really seems reasonable to suggest to "don´t listen to this music at night." Director Steven Spielberg says something like in the booklet notes. It is clear that the memory of the film weighs over music, but even away of the film it´s amazing the suggestion that there is something more in between the music lines is really impressive in Poltergeist. The "presence" underground suggested by the lower strings effects mark subtle presence since The Calling to emerge with frightening force in Escape From Suburbia. The Calling opens with debussyan movements of the orchestra and then presents Carol Anne´s Theme, a tune that serves as a relief in the middle of the nightmare that builds subtly on tracks like The Clown, Night Visitor (the sequence of rotten steak), and the chilling Night of the Beast. In Twisted Abduction, Goldsmith glimpse the other side in choir’s waves and strings, but it is with Night of the Beast that the score faces the musical inside out in the contrast between the subtle and the alarming. The track It Knows What Scares You is reminiscent of impressionist music. If Debussy did music for a horror movie would probably sound like this. In The Light Impressionist atmosphere returns in a moving interlude, and the score concludes in the beautiful full version of Carol Anne's Theme, sung by a set of children's voices – or lost souls? Complete with outtakes and tracks previously unavailable on vinyl edition, Poltergeist is certainly one of the major works of the Jerry Goldsmith. A kind of summary of his symphonic language, which completed an evolution line, then with more than twenty years.