At the tender age of eight, my mother took me to see "The Amityville Horror" in a movie theatre. I remember being exceptionally scared by it, and recall quite vividly some of the movie's scary and eerie moments like the black liquid oozing from a toilet; the pig with the red eyes; the Red Room scene, and so on. I had not seen the film since 1979 until recently on DVD. Well, looking at the film now more objectively than when I was eight, I have concluded that "The Amityville Horror" is only occasionally effective but it also mostly silly, dull, and frightfully cold and emotionless.
The story, based on a now debunked "true story" novel by Jay Anson, centers on the Lutzes, a couple who move in to the dreaded Long Island house with their three kids. The house is sold cheaply, mainly because a killing spree took place a few years earlier involving the DeFeo family - they were killed by their teenage son with a shotgun. I would never move into a house where murders had taken place - nowadays, such houses are usually boarded up though not always. Anyway, the Lutzes love the house and buy it. George Lutz (James Brolin) begins to feel the curious need of chopping wood for the fireplace through most of the film. The wife feels neglected, especially since he won't help with carrying the groceries. The daughter starts talking to her new friend, Jody, who is invisible, and has a habit of locking her babysitter in the closet. A frantic psychotherapist/priest/exorcist (Rod Steiger) comes to bless the house one day until he is chased out by flies and a voice saying, "Get Out!" A nun comes to the hous e and feels so sick upon entering that she vomits on the Lutzes's driveway. Either the house smells and needs to be fumigated or it is haunted.
"The Amityville Horror" is chock full of "shock" moments, and some of them are effective (the babysitter pounding on the closet door with her bloodied hands is disturbing). The film, however, has no momentum. It sort of labors along at a snail pace pausing occasionally for some weird occurrences and rappings in the house (my favorite being the case of the missing 1500 dollars). The main flaw is that the Lutzes are presented as less a family than some annoying neighbors I could hardly care about - no attempt to develop sympathy for them has been made. Mr. Brolin comes off as demented a madman within the first few minutes as Jack Nicholson did in "The Shining." Margot Kidder, a reliable actress of dignity, comes off best but not enough to save the film. Steiger overacts shamefully, supposedly trying to match the towering performance of Max Von Sydow in "The Exorcist." As the realtor should have said at the beginning of the film: No sale.
P.S. The Oscar-nominated musical score by Lalo Schifrin was originally composed for "The Exorcist" but it was rejected by director William Friedkin.
For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at http://buffs.moviething.com/buffs/faust/
E-mail me with any questions, comments or general complaints at jerry@movieluver.com or at Faust667@aol.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews