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All this was prelude. At 34, Spielberg has tapped directly into the power source of youthful fantasies and produced two remarkable works of popular art. Poltergeist, which he supervised from original story to final cut, is a horror movie about malevolent spirits that infiltrate the home of an ordinary California family. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, which he devised and directed, tells of a creature from outer space who is mistakenly abandoned on earth and befriended by three school-age children. "Poltergeist is a scream," Spielberg says. "E.T. is a whisper." The first film means to thrill, the second to enthrall. Both succeed beyond anyone's expectations, perhaps even those of their prodigious creator. They re-establish the movie screen as a magic lantern, where science plays tricks on the eye as an artist enters the heart and nervous system with images that bemuse and beguile.
Spielberg has formidable competition for the attention of moviegoers this summer. The producers of Annie have engineered a powerful media blitz to herald their lavish if lead-souled musical. Tron, a futuristic melodrama set inside a video game, hopes to lure the addicts of the arcades back to moviehouses. New versions of Rocky, Grease, Star Trek and The Thing will tempt old adherents. The Road Warrior and Blade Runner will offer up eye-catching punk-rock apocalypses. Robin Williams will attempt to enter The World According to Garp. Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen have new movies, and Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton will sing and dance their way through The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Even so, Poltergeist's intelligence in confecting disaster, its honest laughs and spine-snapping chills—from upended kitchen chairs to ghostly vapors and a gaping, horrid hell mouth—should lead it to the head of the class.
E. T, though, is in a class all by its beautiful self. Of course it should make truckloads of money: its sneak previews have been the most rapturously received since Jaws; industry marketing experts have predicted it as a summer smash; and one professional cynic emerged from a Manhattan screening of the film last week and confidently announced, "$350 million." But the gleam of moisture in his eye said something else, something everyone else will soon be able to discover: that E. T. is a miracle movie, and one that confirms Spielberg as a master storyteller of his medium.