I guess it must be nearly a couple of months ago that I picked up, Poltergeist on Blu-ray, it's one of those movies I seem to see every three or four years on TV, I did buy the 25th Anniversary Edition when it was released on DVD, I have to admit that for some time I was hesitant about getting the movie on Blu-ray, for whatever reason I was convinced the movie would probably look pretty bad in High Definition but was I ever wrong, it looked great, sure a couple of the special effects sequences looked a bit dated but overall I was pretty impressed.
As much as I've always enjoyed Poltergeist I can only remember renting the sequels once ( on VHS ) so if you pressed me for details I honestly couldn't have told you much about them, well yesterday I saw a Poltergeist Blu-ray double pack on sale containing both sequels and on the spur of the moment I picked it up and I spent a lazy few hours watching them today.
To my surprise I rather enjoyed Poltergeist 2: The Other Side, I sort of remembered the priest when I saw him onscreen and I thought it was a decent sequel to Poltergeist, I thought it continued and expanded the story nicely, sure the ending was a little cheesy but I can forgive that.
Poltergeist 3 however sucked, I guess they tired to do something a little different with this sequel but honestly if they couldn't get back all of the original cast they probably shouldn't have bothered, add to that a story that made little sense and you have a pretty bad movie, maybe with a better writer / director this movie could have been salvaged, it did contain a couple of interesting ideas but nothing much was done with them and I found that frustrating.
I can't be sure but I don't imagine any restoration work was done on the Poltergeist sequels so keeping that in mind they both looked and sounded great on Blu-ray but as it's been proven many times before a great looking movie isn't the same as a great movie.
Given the chance I'd recommend picking up Poltergeist and Poltergeist 2 but I wouldn't bother with the third film unless it was dirt cheap.
