Does anyone else find this in extremely poor taste, considering she’s dead, and all? I can’t imagine her family approving this, but, I guess they must have. Ick! Poltergeist!
What are you talking about, a TV ad for a re-issue of the film ‘Poltergeist’, or what?
I think all those Direct TV comercials are creepy and sad. I hate seeing well known actors, who maybe aren’t working that much anymore, stoop to doing parodies of the thing that made them famous.
ETA: if the parody was for laughs it would be different.
I’m a little too young for Poltergeist, so I forgot the actress was dead until it came up in another thread here the other day. I don’t like any of these commercials, but in that light, that one is definitely in bad taste.
I was going to post about this myself! I find it in incredibly bad taste, not to mention just creepy. Would the family have to approve or sign something?
I don’t find it creepy at all. Her death doesn’t mean we can’t watch any of her movies again. This commercial is just applying a twist to her most famous role. The fact that she’s dead is completely irrelevant when I watch Poltergeist - and for that reason I don’t find the commercial to be in poor taste. I suspect her family sees it as an homage to her that they are putting her work in the public eye again.
I don’t really like it when they put dead people in commercials they never signed on to perform. I’m not really creeped out nor do I consider it to be a mark of bad taste to show a movie with an actor who is no longer among the living. I do think it’s in poor taste to use the image of an actor to shill products which they never agreed to shill. Fred Astair dancing with a vacuum cleaner, John Wayne selling beer, and even an episode of Tales from the Crypt using H. Bogart’s image is in poor taste.
Odesio
The commercial is a twist on Craig T. Nelson’s most famous role. And that particular scene, is the most famous one in the movie.
I doubt they even considered whether it would be tacky or not.
Now would be a good time to ask - how do they do these commercials, anyway? Craig T Nelson is 25 years older now than he was when he did Poltergiest, yet in the commercial he hasn’t aged a day. Ditto Ben Stein & Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
The tackiest part was Nelson’s awful dye job. Like something out of a Just For Men commercial.
Couldn’t spell “Humphrey”, huh?
If they can CGI a live performance of Whitney Houston to make her look less emaciated, then being able to make an actor look younger via CGI probably isn’t that difficult. (They might be digitally shaving the actor’s younger face and sticking it on his older body.)
Don’t forget William Shatner in the commercial based on Star Trek. Now he believes JJ Abrams can put Kirk in the next Star Trek movie!
Yeah this commercial creeps me out too…but the part that is really creepy is that when the little girl says “They’re heeeere…” her mouth doesn’t seem to match up with what her lips are doing. It looks like footage they are running backwards or something.
The absolute first thing I thought of when I saw the ad was that this actress is now dead and it’s in completely poor taste. It’s different to pop in the DVD and watch the movie by choice…a commercial foisted upon us at random is exploitative.
Does anyone know what kind of permissions DirecTV needs to get for these commercials? Do they just have to get the company that owns the movie to give permission or do they need permission of the actors? I’m never sure how that stuff works.
So would I be right to assume that all of you who found it in poor taste to also think it was poor taste for that Elvis-Celine Dion duet thing to air last year?
It involves Celine Dion, so, of course, its in poor taste! 
I found it extremely creepy and in very poor taste.
I thought about mentioning this one in the “commericals you hate” thread because it’s in poor taste. Somehow, the fact that she died as a child makes it even worse in my opinion.
I was having a lazy day. Sue me.