Quick LinksPoltergeist Cast Members Began to Suffer Tragic Fates Heather O'Rourke's Losing Battle With a Parasitic Infection Dominique Dunne's Infamous Murder Led to a Miscarriage of Justice Getting to the Bottom of the Poltergeist Curse Theory
Poltergeist was one of a handful of films that Steven Spielberg conceptualized but didn't end up directing due to contractual obligations to another film -- in this case, E.T. Spielberg had written the story idea and drafted out a script with three other writers for a horror film that combined his love of suburban Americana with a supernatural horror. Spielberg was still a producer on the film and settled on horror master Tobe Hooper, famous for his film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, to direct. While Spielberg's original concept was more science fiction, Hooper's influence steered the film towards being a ghost story.
Poltergeist's plot centers around a family who, after settling into a track house in a sprawling California community, come to find that their home is cursed, having been built atop a Native American burial ground. While some have stated that Spielberg was the true director of the film, thanks to the massive influence he exerted on set, he may have dodged a bullet when the film's curse began extending into real life -- as Poltergeist cast members began to suffer tragic fates shortly after the production.
Poltergeist Cast Members Began to Suffer Tragic Fates Poltergeist PG Release Date June 4, 1982 Director Tobe Hooper Cast Craig T. Nelson , JoBeth Williams , Beatrice Straight , Dominique Dunne , Oliver Robins , Heather O'Rourke Runtime 114
In all, four cast members died soon after the film wrapped, including Heather O'Rourke, whose famous quote as Carol Anne Freeling, "They're heeeeere!", became the film's signature line. Heather O'Rourke became hugely famous as a young child when Poltergeist became a smash hit at the box office. Her societal effect was not unlike JonBenet Ramsey's, another child star who suffered a tragic fate that captured America's attention. Like Ramsey, O'Rourke became known for her ultra-cute, doll-like appearance and platinum blonde hair. In the film, her character, Carol Anne, becomes the conduit between the film's ghosts and her family, who are reeling with terror as supernatural events begin to afflict their home.
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Carol Anne is the only family member who can communicate with the house's ghosts, which she does by speaking into the television set after the programming ends and the TV turns to static. Placing this power into the hands of a hauntingly-cute child was one of Poltergeist's genius turns, and the film kicks into a horrifyingly high gear when Carol Anne is sucked into another dimension through the television set and held captive by the ghosts. Though she was eventually rescued from the clutches of hell in the film, Heather O'Rourke's real-life fate didn't have a happy ending.
Heather O'Rourke's Losing Battle With a Parasitic Infection Close
O'Rourke reprised her role as Carol Anne in two subsequent sequels, but during filming for Poltergeist III, she contracted a rare parasite from drinking well water at her parents' home in Big Bear Lake, California. Her condition was misdiagnosed as Crohn's disease, and her treatment led the child to suffer face-swelling and other side effects that made her life difficult. When the parasite eventually caused intestinal stenosis, O'Rourke eventually collapsed and suffered a cardiac arrest on January 31, 1988, and doctors were unable to save her. The tragic death captured the public's attention, so influential was her role as Carol Anne in the public consciousness. But it was Dominique Dunne, who played Carol Anne's sister, Dana, who suffered an even more tragic and haunting death.
Dominique Dunne hailed from a famous and influential Hollywood family. Her father, Dominick, worked in television as a writer/producer, also helping make famous films like The Panic in Needle Park. Her brother, Griffin Dunne, also had a big career in Hollywood, starring in An American Werewolf in London and the Martin Scorsese film After Hours. A year before Poltergeist's release, Dominique had entered into a relationship with a man named John Thomas Sweeney, who already had a history as an obsessive and often abusive boyfriend. Early in their relationship, Sweeney had become physically dangerous, at one time grabbing Dominique Dunne by the neck and throwing her to the floor. That time, she escaped, but the night before Halloween in 1982, she wouldn't be so lucky.
Dominique Dunne's Infamous Murder Led to a Miscarriage of Justice Close
By then, Dominique Dunne had ended her relationship with Sweeney, but on the night of October 30, while rehearsing lines for a television series at her home in West Hollywood, Sweeney showed up at her door. Desperate to win her back, Sweeney coaxed her out of her front door, but the obsessive young man became enraged when she rejected his pleas for reconciliation, and he strangled her to death in her front yard. Dunne was transported to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where she was placed on life support. She never regained consciousness, having no brain activity from the oxygen deprivation. On November 4, only months after Poltergeist was released, her parents consented to have her removed from life support.
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The resulting trial was pure anguish for Dominique's family, as her name was dragged through the mud by defense attorneys, and despite Sweeney's confession to arresting officers that he had strangled her to death, the resulting miscarriage of justice led to Sweeney only receiving a light sentence. Dominique's brother, Griffin Dunne, recalled the harrowing trial on The Kelly Clarkson Show years later, saying, "Her murderer only got 3 and a half years [in prison]. In California Judicial History it was a very well-known case for how something could go so terribly wrong." That led Dominique's father, Dominick, to devote his life to becoming a crime reporter for Vanity Fair, hoping to keep other victimized families from suffering the same fate as his own.
Getting to the Bottom of the Poltergeist Curse Theory Close
If those two tragedies weren't enough to make the case for a Poltergeist curse, two other cast members, Julian Beck and Will Sampson, also died shortly after the film's release. For those superstitious enough to believe in a curse like this, fans of the film have pointed to the film's mining of a Native American cemetery as the cause of the curse. Others have pointed to the film using real human skeletons for the scene when actress JoBeth Williams dives into a muddy pool in the family's backyard trying to find Carol Anne. Williams recalled the circumstances, saying, "A few years later, I ran into one of the special effects guys, and I said, 'You guys making all those skeletons, that must have been really amazing.' He said, 'Oh, we didn't make them, those were real.' I said, 'What?' He said, 'Yeah, they were real skeletons.'"
While the use of real skeletons was never confirmed, factually, the sheer terror produced by Poltergeist have kept the notion of a curse at the top of mind for many fans of the film. Whatever the case, Poltergeist stands as a canonical horror film, maybe the greatest of the 1980s, and as long as that legacy endures, so too will talk of the infamous curse. Poltergeist is available to rent on AppleTV+, Prime Video, and Google Play.