Even though I’ve seen a lot of movies (over a hundred just going by this blog), many of those in the horror genre, there are plenty of big name films that have passed me by completely. I’ve never seen any of the Friday the 13th movies for example, despite being one of the biggest franchises of the genre. Never experienced the joy of Pumpkinhead, never spent long nights pondering the philosophical implications of Child’s Play, never filled the forums of fanfiction.net with a 17 part Puppet Master/Gingerdead Man crossover epic. That’s the hard truth when it comes to movies: There will always be more movies that you haven’t seen than ones you have.
So it was with the Amityville series, up until this entry. For years I had heard the name Amityville, seen it name dropped when horror movies came up, but I had never actually seen one of the movies. Hell, I didn’t even know it was (technically) based on a book, or that Amityville apparently was a real place in New York City. All I had was a name, and a reputation for being shit, generally speaking. What horror franchise doesn’t have a few clunkers in there though, am I right? Remember that one time Michael Myers got beat up by Xzibit? I don’t, because that’s another movie I’ve never watched.
Anyway, the flagship of the Amityville series: The Amityville Horror, starring James Brolin (father of Josh) and Margot Kidder (girlfriend of Superman) as George and Kathy Lutz, a married couple who move their family into a big new house in Amityville, Long Island in late 1974. A house that just happened to be the scene of a gruesome mass murder of an entire family by a member of the family. And is definitely haunted. And definitely wants to drive this family to insanity and eventual murder. When religious people vomit uncontrollably in the mere presence of something, that’s usually a sign that might want to reconsider making that down payment. In my limited experience at least, I don’t know where the limit is for the average prospective home owner. Is black ooze coming out of the toilet a deal breaker or not?
Released in 1979, The Amityville Horror comes at the tail-end of what I’d call Satan-o-rama, a period in Hollywood’s history where the key to a successful horror movie seemed to involve not masked serial killers, but demons and other members of the supernatural. Starting with the award-winning Rosemary’s Baby in 1968 (a notoriously despised movie within this blogosphere) or arguably Leslie Stevens’ Incubus in ‘66, the 1970s and early 80s saw a string of films with a strong Satanic focus. From critical and commercial successes like William Friedkin’s The Exorcist and Richard Donner’s The Omen to cult favorites like The Wicker Man total flops like The Devil’s Rain, starring Ernest Borgnine as a goat man. People were obsessed with the devil man, I don’t know what to tell you. If it wasn’t movies, it was in Dungeons & Dragons or metal music, or later with Pokemon and Harry Potter. It’s really dumb.
Problem is, The Amityville Horror suffers from the same issues that Rosemary’s Baby had: It’s really fucking boring, and nothing fucking happens in it. At least with Rosemary’s Baby there was this atmosphere of hopelessness by the end that I can sort of respect, even though I don’t like that movie. Amityville Horror is two hours of waiting for shit to pop off, it finally popping off in the last 20 minutes, and it having no consequence. No one dies, no one even gets severely injured, and the subplots are just abandoned like orphans on a church doorstep. Interested in seeing what happens with the priest? Wondering when the detective is going to stumble on a clue? Convinced that the psychic friend might become possessed by demons? Hoping beyond hope that that whole ‘George is being driven insane by the house’ thing would actually result in a scene that’s more than five minutes long? Well tough shit, because this house is about as horrifying as Eddie Murphy’s The Haunted Mansion, with a few extra flies.
You might think I’m being harsh, but there’s nothing that The Amityville Horror does that hasn’t been done better by other films. You want a haunted house? Try House, the 1977 cult classic from Japan. You want something kids being contracted by spirits or demons? Try The Exorcist, or Poltergeist if you like 80s movies. How about a movie where the father goes insane and tries to murder his family? Look no further than Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and it gets bonus points for also taking place on a desecrated Native American burial ground. So watch one of those better movies for Halloween instead, and avoid this three-story stinker if at all possible. You’ll be a lot better off.
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