The Amityville Horror (1979)
"For God's Sake, Get Out!"
Director - Stuart Rosenberg
Writers - Jay Anson – Book
Sandor Stern
Starring - James Brolin, Margot Kidder, Rod Steiger, Don Stroud, Murray Hamilton, John Larch, Natasha Ryan, K C Martel, Meeno Peluce, Michael Sacks, Helen Shaver, Amy Wright, Val Avery, Irene Daily, Marc Vahanian
Review by The_Void
A very lacking film
The Amityville Horror is often regarded as something of a minor classic within the horror genre; but this is an unfounded viewpoint, as this film is largely rubbish. The first hour and a half at least are boring, and when it finally does begin to get exciting; you're already too bored to care. The plot follows a family consisting of a mother, a stepfather and a couple of kids. They move into a house where someone killed their family (good opening gets your hopes up) in a small town called Amityville. However, all does not go well and soon after moving in, the family starts to experience a couple (and I mean 'a couple') of slightly odd happenings. This then gets them thinking that the ghost of the man that killed his family is in the house somehow and we've got a horror film on our hands. Or at least we should have...
In a film that focuses on having the horror moving at a slow pace, you've got to expect a lot of it's running time to focus on building it's characters. However; the 'down time' here does no such thing. Instead, it concentrates on (trying to) make itself frightening with one ridiculous and boring scene after another. The kid locks the babysitter in the closet, some flies attack a priest, James Brolin (the actor who plays the central character) looks "malevolent" etc etc, and it gets boring fast. The Amityville Horror is the next horror film up for a remake, and for once this may be a good thing as this film completely fails to capitalise on it's premise. Of course, ghost stories often make for rubbish films; but this one fails to even be a good ghost story. To it's credit; the house does look foreboding and the film builds the atmosphere surrounding it up well, but there's not much else in the way of good things that can be said for this film.
The Amityville Horror (1979)
Review by Wayne Malin
Looks good...that's about it.,
A family (James Brolin is the dad...Margot Kidder is the mom) move into a beautiful house in Long Island NY. Naturally it turns out to be haunted.
This is a (bad) adaptation of a very good book. Supposedly the book was accepted as being true...we all know now that it's totally fictional. The book was a quick, scary read. The movie takes the book, jettisons almost all of the scary material, and ends up being a VERY dull mess. What was the studio thinking? Why take a good book and totally destroy it?
The acting doesn't really help. Brolin appears drugged out during the entire movie and Rod Steiger REALLY overacts as a priest. Margot Kidder is very good--she gives this movie a much better performance than it deserves. And it IS kind of fun to see Murray Hamilton and Don Stroud as priests.
The film does have a few good moments: there's an opening multiple murder scene which jolts you and a certain dream Kidder has is nice and gory (and not in the book). Also the film looks beautiful--especially the house. This was AIP's (American International Pictures) last film--it was also their biggest hit. THAT'S scarier than anything in this movie.
Basically a dull, big-budget horror movie. Let's hope the remake is better. This is a 1 all the way.
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