Simi Valley - Poltergeist Movie 1982

Poltergeist Movie (1982)
Director : Tobe Hooper,  Co-producer : Steven Spielberg
Movies made in : Roxbury Street in Simi Valley California.

Poltergeist was released on June 4th, 1982 and became the most popular of the poltergeist series of horror movies. It was nominated for three Oscars that year and became Steven Spielbergs first major hit film.

Steven Spielberg co-wrote and co-directed the movie Poltergeist with Tobe Hooper. It’s rumored that Steven chose Toby in part due to Toby’s 1974 film success with “The Texas Chainsaw Masacre”. The films storyline involves the haunting of a suburban family house by a possible poltergeist.

About the set of Poltergeist: This information is gathered and cross referenced from many sources including our own research and although believed to be accurate it may not be completely. If you have verifiable information to share that is related to the movie set please write a review below.

Here is a youtube video of an E Story editorial that includes some scenes from the movie and talk about the death of Heather O’Rourke. The movie is fabled to have been cursed.

The images of the movie set in this article (coming soon) are of what the location looks like today as taken by SimiValleyCa.net staff. Roxbury Street in Simi Valley was chosen by location scouts after it was decided that it met all of the movies requirements. The houses in the area were new at the time and the land behind the street was empty allowing the studio trucks to be nearby without causing a problem for local residents.

 The studio apparently didn’t tell the residents that the street was to be used in a Spielberg movie, it was believed that if they knew they would have demanded more money. Instead they were told it was for a low budget horror film which wasn’t untrue either and they were offered free landscaping services for their front yards in exchange. The houses didn’t have gardens at the time and the residents accepted the offer as fair.

The first house on the street was unoccupied at the time and movie fans observations suggest no landscaping was done to it. An interesting fact is the lighting at the entrance to the pathway of the primary home were added on by production staff and the electrical wires that power them can be seen during the film’s climax.

The main house used in the poltergeist movie received substantial earthquake damage during the 1994 Northridge quake. The garage was knocked from its foundation and today concrete blocks replace the garden wall. Today and in the years since 1982 Poltergeist has spawned a lot of folklore tales and has been mentioned or spoofed in countless other productions. The movie is believed to have been cursed due to casting deaths and interviews done since it was released. Stories linger on…