The Amityville Horror (1979) – Review

“The events of this movie are based on misleading information, when it’s not just outright bullshit, and is basically a cinematic hoax.” Sadly, this was not the disclaimer found at the start of American International Pictures’ The Amityville Horror, but it should have been, as this “based on true events” movie is more fiction than fact and while this is nothing new in the film industry that this particular offering started a long-running franchise is still a bit surprising.  So let’s take a look back at the film that started it all and the horrors it unleashed.

In 1977 Jay Anson’s book The Amityville Horror was a top bestseller and thus the idea of it making its way to the big screen should be no surprise but unlike many horror stories that made the book-to-screen transition this one was supposedly based on true events, yet these so-called events have mostly been debunked over the years and while this normally wouldn’t stop a filmmaker from going whole hog in the attempt of making a “chiller thriller” what we ended up with was a movie that was more filler than thriller. The movie opens with one of the few truly undisputed events, the true horror of Amityville and that would be the fact that Ronald DeFeo Jr. took up a rifle and murdered his entire family at their home at 112 Ocean Avenue – a truly horrific event that became the subject matter for the prequel – and then the film then jumps ahead a year to give us the only other undisputed event, that the Lutz family purchased the house and moved in shortly after, everything else is up for grabs when it comes to fact versus fiction.

Buyer’s Remorse: The Movie

The movie follows the supernatural misadventures of the Lutz family, which consists of parents George (James Brolin) and Cathy Lutz (Margot Kidder) and three kids from her prior marriage; Greg (K.C. Martel), Matt (Meeno Peluce) and Amy (Natasha Ryan) and over the film’s two-hour running time we’ll see George become obsessed with chopping firewood – with his sweating visage simply screaming “I’m an axe murder” – and once in a while something creepy will happen, the first being Father Delaney (Rod Steiger) arriving to bless the house and quickly becoming sick to his stomach as a room is filled with flies and a voice bellows “GET OUT” to which, he in fact, does get out. What follows from this point is certainly tepid by today’s horror movie standards; with doors opening and closing on their own, a little girl talking to an imaginary friend who may not be all that imaginary, and the dad going further and further off the deep end.  I’d say it’s a fair bet that most of the actors in this film were clearly told to go to eleven when it came to giving their performances because “over-the-top” seemed to be the go-to setting for most of the cast.

Rod Steiger’s “In the Heat of the Fright.”

Stray Observations:

• A rocking chair in the little girl’s room starts rocking on its own because that is one haunted house cliché that always works and it gets me every time.
• James Brolin is startled by the sudden appearance of a shrieking cat because the “Cat Scare” is another horror cliché that almost always works and is a pretty cheap scare tactic utilized by many a hack filmmaker, one that is often enhanced by “Spring-Loaded Cat” variation for added effect.
• What are the odds of your kid’s imaginary friend actually turning out to be an evil demonic spirit? Asking for a friend.
• I found the scariest part of this movie to be when the envelope with $1,500 dollars that was to pay the caterers went missing, that was damn terrifying.
• Murray Hamilton plays an asshole priest who mocks the idea of an evil presence in the Lutz home and he’s basically playing an ecclesiastical version of his Mayor from Jaws. And I’m still confused as to why the church refused to investigate the Lutz family home.  Is the Catholic Church in the pocket of Big Satan?
• We get the startling reveal that George Lutz is a dead ringer for killer Ronald DeFeo Jr. but not only is this not true in real life, other than they both sported beards, but it also doesn’t really make sense in the context of the movie. Do demonic forces have a preference for the physical appearances of those they possess?
• George Lutz tries to get through the bathroom door with an axe a year before Jack Nicholson would be doing the same thing in Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining.

“Here’s Georgie!”

Decades later New Line Cinema would mine this territory quite well with their Conjuring Universe franchise and while they’ve yet to tackle the “true events” of the Lutz family one has to admit that directors like James Wan and David F. Sandberg have a better understanding of what makes for a good scary movie – The Amityville Horror director Stuart Rosenberg was known for more dramatic offerings like Cool Hand Luke and Voyage of the Damned and not spook shows and while this film made a shit load of money when it came out and became the biggest box office success for an independent film, it doesn’t hold up all that well and I’d be hard pressed to find many people today who would find this movie at all scary.

“May the power of Christ compel you to be afraid!”

This is not to say The Amityville Horror is a bad movie, Rosenberg is a competent director and he did have a very good cast on hand, not to mention composer Lalo Schifrin’s Academy Award-nominated score which does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to building tension and mood, unfortunately, the pacing of the film is a little too slow and the horror aspect never reaches heights that will offset all the other dreary and depressing elements of the story, and when James Brolin finally falls into the “Well to Hell” it’s a case of too little too late. For me, the scariest element of this film was whether George Lutz’s business is going to fail because even though George does seem to be possessed by some demonic force the real threat is whether or not the house will be repossessed by the bank and not by Satan.  Basically, The Amityville Horror is a horror movie that failed to deliver much in the way of scares – the image of the demonic pig is laughable and not the least bit scary – and is most noteworthy for the fun performances by its cast and not much else.