The perfect 1980s movie. Mom smokes pot while dad reads a Reagan book. The family is snacking constantly! Family members are introduced while asleep, the dog making the rounds of the household eating snacks out of their hands and beds, and then no amount of haunting can make them lose their appetites. Horror movie I watched at a formative time and haven’t really revisited in forty years – fortunately it holds up.

First casualty is the family bird, who dies before we even meet her. The chairs-move-by-themselves bit escalates quickly to the tree/clown/closet/TV horror night, then the family calls in a university team (led by Beatrice Straight of Chiller) who faithfully documents the haunting but is in way over their heads. When the house gets too dangerous the other two kids are sent away and the great Zelda Rubinstein is summoned to provide self-contradictory advice, successfully rescuing Carol Anne from the TV dimension. Then they do not leave the house immediately: Coach Dad takes a late meeting at work (the real estate company that built the neighborhood on a graveyard) while the house attempts to eat the others. Then in part two they’re followed by an evil preacher and Coach gets possessed by a tequila worm, and part three was maybe set in a city parking garage? Maybe we’ll revisit these next shocktober.

The member of the research team who decided not to come back:

Mom is JoBeth Williams of The Big Chill: