I picked up The Philadelphia Inquirer last week and read an article by Jeremy Roebuck about how a judicial ruling had revived the onetime local news anchor Alycia Lane’s long-dormant lawsuit against her former station. Here’s the line my eye was drawn to: “‘We’re back,’ Lane’s attorney Paul R. Rosen singsonged in an interview Friday, giving his best Poltergeist impression.”
- “They’re baack. Killer Mike and El-P, who, when together, make up Run the Jewels, are prepping their new album, titled Run the Jewels 2.”
- “Well, if you’ve been going through comedic withdrawal, then you’re in luck, because they’re baaack.” (Referring to a a series of videos by two Canadian writers.)
- “They’re baaaack! And they are bigger and bustier than ever. After a brief absence of three days, The Sun’s salacious Page 3 girls have returned to the tabloid’s pages with a cheeky tweet from the paper’s publisher.”
- “They’re Baaaaack.” (Item on a hockey blog about the return to action of three members of the New Jersey Devils.)
Probably, a lot of people make the same mistake concerning this piece of shtick that Jeremy Roebuck did. That is, they attribute it to the 1982 movie Poltergeist. In fact, in that film, what the little girl played by Heather O’Rourke said when the poltergeists arrived was, “They’re here”—which, incidentally, was chosen by the American Film Institute as the 69th greatest movie line of all time. It was the 1986 sequel, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, written by Mark Victor and Michael Grais, in which O’Rourke said, “They’re back” (unjustly left off the AFI list, by the way).
But here’s something interesting. If I can ask your indulgence, take a look at this three-minute clip from Poltergeist II, which ends with O’Rourke uttering the line.
That’s right—she says “They’re back” in a monotone. But the universe didn’t invent the singsong version. O’Rourke gave the line this way, looking spookily straight into the camera, in the Poltergeist II trailer, which got a lot of TV airplay back in ’86.
Because of the singsong, print renderings of the line usually throw in additional a’s, as the Google News examples indicate. I ran Google searches on the various versions (not including the single-a “They’re back”—used by Roebuck—simply because people so often use that phrase without referencing Poltergeist.) Here’s what I came up with.
What conclusions can we draw from the data? Well, the three-a version has a Goldilocks just-right quality that people seem to be drawn to. But what really jumps out to me are the sheer numbers. This has become such a massive cliché, yet masses of hacks go right on reaching for it. Have you no shame, people?
No need to answer that question. But I shudder to think of the journalistic community’s response to an event that’s scheduled to take place on July 24. That’s when the director Sam Raimi’s remake of Poltergeist is scheduled to open. Let me put it this way. If you play a drinking game where you had to take a shot for every “It’s/they’re baaack” headline, you will be in the emergency room by July 25.
