In an interview with CreepyLA this morning, Zelda Rubinstein, who infamously (albeit prematurely) declared “this house is clean” in “Poltergeist”, was unable to explain what it was like working with Tobe Hooper, the film’s credited director.
“I don’t think I can, because during the six days I worked Steven Spielberg primarily took over that helm in my scenes. I don’t know what happened the other days.”
She acknowledges that Hooper was on set the full time and that he would set up every shot, but each time Spielberg would step in and make changes. “What he wants to show and say is what gets up there (on screen) the way he wants it. There’s no deviation from that.”
Now celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special edition DVD and one night rerelease in theatres, “Poltergeist” changed Ms. Rubinstein’s life.
“Shortly after the movie came about a lady in market where I shop came up to me and said, ‘please, please, come to my house! Something’s wrong with it!'”
Amused, Ms. Rubinstein had to explain she wasn’t the character in the movie. She doesn’t even believe the rumors of a “Poltergeist curse”. However, she does feel that while she’s not “psychic”, she’s “sensitive”, and shares one experience involving a car accident she was in while she was filming “Poltergeist.”
“Just as the two cars impacted, I felt my deceased father reach in through the roof of my VW Beetle and grab me by like a puppy by the back of the neck and pull me out, and after the collision, set me back down.”
Wondering if any children have ever had the opportunity to have her sweet face greet them when trick or treating, Ms. Rubinstein immediately replies when I ask what she does for Halloween, “I hide! I move into a hotel under an unknown name and I stay there until the next day. I feel that people who come to the door may not be looking for candy.”
…On October 19th and 20th, Los Angeles audiences will be able to see Zelda Rubinstein perform in a one woman show at the Cabaret Gardenia on October 19th and 20th in “the last part of an autobiographical trilogy.”
