All of this is preposterous, of course. Worse still, none of it is scary.
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As far as haunted-house movies go, this one cannot bear comparison to the classics of yesteryear: "The Uninvited" (1944), "The Haunting" (1963), "The Legend of Hell House" (1973), "The Exorcist" (1973), "Alien" (1979, more of a haunted-house movie in my estimation than a sci-fi flick), or "Poltergeist" (1982). No, "The Amityville Horror" (1979) is a far cry (or a far scream) from those old favorites. Nevertheless, the movie was so popular in its day it generated at least six or more theatrical-release and made-for-TV sequels. Amazing. I guess people just like a few good scares, even if something like "The Amityville Horror" has precious few to offer.
Based on the best-selling book by Jay Anson, which was supposedly true but which may have been entirely faked à la "The Blair Witch Project," and directed by Stuart Rosenberg ("Cool Hand Luke," "Brubaker," "The Laughing Policeman"), who should have known better, "The Amityville Horror" is a long-winded, slow-paced attempt at verisimilitude. It chronicles a period of several weeks during which time a young family move into a house that eventually drives them away in fright. The movie almost drove me away, too, but not from fright, from boredom.
The story begins with a former occupant of the house murdering his family one night in their sleep. Lovely. Then we fast forward a year as George and Kathy Lutz (James Brolin and Margo Kidder) and their children move in. They know the history of the place, but they're getting it cheap. And why not? It's a beautiful old spread: a three-story house; acres of land next to a river in Amityville, Long Island; a guest cottage; and a boathouse. All for $80,000.
Before long, however, strange things start to happen, which, in standard horror-story fashion, everyone in the movie ignores. For instance, they call a local priest, Father Delaney, to bless the house. The Father shows up in the guise of Rod Steiger in another of his patented priest impressions. He knocks on the front door, but finding no one to answer it, he does what any of us what do, he walks right in! Finding nobody inside, he wanders about the house and goes upstairs, where he is immediately attacked by a plague of flies and told by a mysterious, unseen voice to go away. I wouldn't want Rod Steiger wandering aimlessly around my house, either. He gets violently ill and leaves. When he attempts to call the Lutzes from his office, the telephone burns his hand. He's convinced the Lutzes are being haunted by Satan, but when he tells this to his superiors, they laugh at him.
Murray Hamilton, as a doubting Father Ryan (almost the same role he played as a skeptical mayor in "Jaws"), tells Father Delaney to take a vacation. So, what does Delaney do, knowing absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Lutzes are in danger of their lives at the hands of the Devil himself? He says, "Oh, well," and forgets about it.
Meanwhile, the Lutzes (or the Klutzes, as we're beginning to think of them) find volumes of weird things happening in their new house--a window closes by itself on the little boy's hand, money disappears in plain sight, the front door blows off its hinges, voices are heard in the middle of the night--but they continue to disregard them. I mean, no one questions anything until it's too late. The clichés are endless.
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[release]5116[/release]