Maybe a lot of the older guys here didn't really relate to it, but it an excellent (well maybe not excellent, but quite good), use of taking the commonplace, modern, california housing tract as the center of otherworldly goings-on. That really seperated it from the many films that chose a 'period' or 'gothic' setting to achieve a spooky effect. The Lutz house, for example, from first look was a spooky location.This is what made poltergeist funny, at first, and then terrifying. Televisions, household gadgets and kitchen furniture become fantastic, trippy playthings and then the tools of evil rather than using bloody axes or trans-dimensional harmonic generators or some other psuedo-scientific gizmos. Even the team of modern psychic researchers become tools and victims of the terror. As the commonplace everyday world became changed into an evil cataclysm and the very children we hold so dear become the victims, it was the generation of young parents and young adults that were scared witless by the film. There are so many great scenes, one that comes to mind is when Nelsen and Williams go to the neighbors' house to ask about the noises and mosquitos and a pork n bean munching lunk answers the door as they tell their story and then end up cracking up in laughter over the ubsurdity of the situation, laughing at the neighbor and themselves. Great writing all around.