Please Don’t Squeeze The Shaman

Picking up where Poltergeist (1982) left off, in Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) the ghost-displaced Freeling family moves in with their mother because their house was sucked into another dimension. Happens more often than you’d think.

The evil ghost that had a taste for young Carol Anne in the first movie, follows them to give it another go. Enter Reverend Henry Kane, dressed in Hell black and looking like an early settler preacher. He actually is/was, having led his cult followers to a death-by-starvation salvation in the cave that was under the Freelings original house. OK, now everything is starting to make sense.

He comes for Carol Anne and wreaks ghost havoc until he gets her, possessing a worm in a bottle of tequila (I’ve been possessed by that worm on numerous occasions) and trying to get in the house. Taylor, an Indian shaman, shows up to help, even giving dad Steven Freeling the “Power of the Smoke,” a mythical Indian spirit to help Steve repel evil in all its black glory. (I don’t puff, but it looked like a party.)

Carol Anne once again gets sucked into the other dimension, and this time the whole family has to go in and get her, oddly the movie’s weakest part, besides some painful dialogue. “We thank you!” yells mom Diane as Taylor drives away in their mechanically-challenged car they gave him as payment for helping save Carol Anne from black Hell death.

Clearly, he got the better end of the bargain.