| Amityville Horror, The Released: 1979 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Ghost Nuts and Bolts: The Lutz family moves into the three story Dutch home at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville New York. Before long, they begin experiencing spectral horrors relating to a grisly murder that occurred at the house in the previous year. Summary: November 13th 1974, 3:15 AM: Ronald DeFeo Jr (23) murders his parents as well as five siblings with a .35 caliber rifle. All victims are asleep at the time. Pretty cool prologue eh? Admittedly though, I have trouble accepting the fact that this whack-job can run all over this three story Dutch colonial house firing shots off and NO ONE wakes up? Hmmm, me smells a mystery here. Note: Future movie installments will refer to the original victims as the Montelli family. But for the purposes of this review, I am choosing to maintain their real life surname, DeFeo. Anywho…lets flash forward one year. It's December 18th 1975 and the Lutz family has just purchased the spacious riverside house on Ocean Avenue for the low low price of 80 grand. George Lutz (James Brolin) is a surveyor whose business is hitting the skids and he is struggling to support his new bride Kathy (Margot Kidder) as well as her three pain in the ass kids. The marriage is not too stable, as George finds himself changing his religion as well as dealing with three brats who aren't even his. Be that as it may, the geeky little realtor takes them all through the house. As we (the audience) are introduced to each room, we catch a flashback glimpse of each murder that was committed there. Kathy has this religion fixation and she asks George to hang a cross on the wall in the living room. George don't seem none too thrilled about this little metal icon. Me smells some resentment here me does. Kathy has Father Frank Delaney (Rod Steiger) stop on by to bless the house. Now neither of the Lutzes ever sees Friar Frank because they're in the back yard dicking around with the kids when the good father stops by. All the better I suppose. Delaney gets trapped in one of the upstairs rooms where he is attacked by a swarm of flies. An eerie spectral voice screams at him to "Get Out!" Delaney beats feet before the Lutzes even realize that he's stopped by. He tries to call them later on the phone, but is forced to drop the receiver when he discovers bloody boils festering on the palms of his hands. (Okay, I KNOW where boils on the palms of hands come from and it is NOT from spooky devil spirits. Who is this guy trying to kid anyway? (Emphasis on the word 'kid')) Later that night, George starts acting kind of weird. He keeps complaining about the cold and he's looking a little green around the gills. Kathy hopes to brighten his evening by dressing up in her favorite lingerie and pinning some goofy fucking flower in her hair. Fucking hippies. The two hump around for a bit in what has to be the most UN-sexy sex scene I have ever seen. Fortunately we are spared the climax of this barrel of boredom when their little daughter Amy comes into the room crying. She apparently wants to go back to living in their old apartment. At 3:15 AM (Same time as the DeFeo murder), George awakens with a start. He hears some strange noises coming from the boathouse and goes to investigate. Everything seems to be honkey-dory though and he goes back upstairs. 4th Day (Thursday): Little Amy tells mom about her imaginary friend Jody. Mom doesn't pay her too much mind however as she is trying to call Father Delaney to find out why he never came to bless the house. Well Delaney is having a bad time of it as well. He has fallen violently ill and no matter how hard each of them tries, neither can seem to get a call out to the other. This is right about the time you expect to see Carrot-Top jump out from the shadows spouting off one of his annoying as hell 1-800 ATT commercials. George isn't having a very banner fucking day either. After chopping up a bunch of wood and giving his wife nasty looks, he discovers that the toilet is clogged up with this nasty looking black shit. I don't mean doo-doo either. I mean, thick nasty gelatinous piles of crud spurting out of the commode like Mount Vesuvius. I kind of feel for George in this regard. I have had similar toilet problems like that myself lately, but unfortunately I can't write it off as the by-product of an evil presence trapped inside my house (Unless the evil presence goes by the name of Taco Bell). Now we come to Aunt Helena. Helena is one of Kathy's relatives who also happens to be a nun. This waddling pile of dough sloughs her way into the house just in time to give each of the kids a stiff pinch on the cheek. Why do old ladies feel the need to pinch people anyway? Where the fuck did that masochistic custom originate? If someone tries to pinch me, they damn well better know the number for a good proctologist in order to get my boot out of their ass! Anyway, Helena doesn't pick up any good vibes from this place. Almost immediately she feels violently ill and races away from the house in order to puke. Good! Serves her right the cheek-pinching whore! 5th Night (Friday): George and Kathy try to make love, but even George must realize that their lovemaking is about as interesting as watching flowers wilt. Speaking of wilting, George apparently can't get enough lead in his pencil going in order to satisfy Kathy. Later that evening, Kathy wakens up from a nightmare wherein she sees the murders of the original DeFeo family. 6th Day (Saturday): Now we meet another obnoxious member of Kathy's family. This is Jimmy. Jimmy is getting married but apparently has lost the $1500 needed to pay for the caterer. George offers to float him a check until the money is found. The scene follows up with Jimmy's reception party and George gets into an argument with the caterer. George's health is looking really bad now, and his sanity seems to be slipping a bit as well. (The money is never found. Apparently these ghosts are little pickpockets too!) Now while, George and Kathy are at the wedding, this chick named Jackie is left at the house to take care of the kids. Jackie tucks Amy in and then finds herself trapped inside the closet. She screams and cries and blubbers and even runs her fingers raw trying to escape. Amy blames the whole thing on her mysterious friend Jody. Oh yeah…there's also some nonsense with Father Delaney and another priest named Father Bolen. Their car goes off the road. Both men are fine. 8th Day (Monday): Father Delaney is trying to tell his superiors that something funky is going on at the Lutz house. But as per custom, these limp dicks don't want to hear anything about it. Fucking typical. If the conversation doesn't have to do with touching little boys, these guys ain't interested. They begin to suspect that Delaney is starting to go a little cuckoo. 11th Day (Thursday): Here we meet Jeff and Carolyn. Jeff is George's co-worker and he's been pretty much taking care of things while George has been away. George doesn't care to hear about work, and he gets pretty antsy while he's chopping away at firewood. George even takes the axe and chucks it several yards into a tree (pretty cool). Carolyn is nothing more than a useless set of tits, and her only real claim to fame here is that she apparently has some psychic-sensitive intuitions (Convenient huh?). Later that day, the sons Greg and Matt are hanging out the upstairs bedroom trying to tease Amy with a dangling fake spider. The windowsill slams down on Greg's hand and chops it up pretty good. They take him to the hospital, but are happy to discover that no bones are broken. At 3:15 AM, George wakes up to a horrific noise. A strong gust of wind has torn the front door off of its hinges. He calls the police, and for some reason they send two detectives down to investigate the case of the flimsy door. I guess there's not a lot of crime in Amityville this time of year. The detective on the scene is the same guy that was present during the DeFeo investigation. Not that any of this really matters, since this guy is about as useless as the check-pinching nun that we met earlier. 12th Day (Friday): Now we start adding a little bit of meat to this plate of stale potatoes. George starts believing that there is something wiggy about the house. Duh! He goes down to the library and steals a book on the supernatural (Christ, he could've spared the extra ten minutes it would have taken to fill out a library card application). He reads through the book a bit and discusses his findings with Jeff and Carolyn. Through it all they discover that the land the house was built upon used to be run by the Shinnecokk Indians. They used a pit called an Exposure Pen to house all their insane tribe members. On top of that, apparently a bloke named John Ketchum, a 17th century warlock that had fled the Salem witch trials, built the original house. Between the workings of Ketchum and the Shitcocks, we now have a house full of bad juju. While all of this is going on, Kathy has a heart to heart with Amy. Amy tells her more about the invisible Jody who appears to be one of the deceased DeFeo members. I'm not sure if this is really the case since none of the DeFeo's were named Jody, but the movie doesn't really offer much more in the way of explanation. Kathy sees a pair of red glowing eyes outside of Amy's window. By the time she goes downstairs, she finds George, Jeff and Carolyn knocking down a faux wall in the basement of the Lutz home. Behind the wall is a red room, which is apparently the well that leads to hell (or some such nonsense). An evil presence takes control of Carolyn and tells the others to "Cover the well". 17th Day (Wednesday): Father Delaney tries to conduct a prayer ritual for the Lutzes. However, he sees visions of a statue of an angel crumbling to pieces from above him. When he comes out of the vision he discovers that he is blind. Father Bolen tries to help him but Delaney is completely laconic by this point. That pesky detective tries to interview Delaney, but Bolen won't allow it. 18th Day (Thursday): At 3:15 am, Kathy has a fucked up dream wherein she sees George killing Amy with an axe. He then turns the axe upon Kathy and chops her in the head with it. Kathy wakes up. 19th Day (Friday): Kathy and George get into a big fight. George is really losing his mind at this point. He bitch-slaps her across the living room, and Kathy goes spinning into the corner. So Kathy goes down to the library to check out old records on the DeFeo murder. Upon examining the microfiche, she discovers that Ron DeFeo bears an uncanny resemblance to George. Last Night: Kathy returns home and George is now completely ape-shit. He tries to kill her with his trusty axe, but unfortunately misses. He reigns in his anger long enough to notice that the walls and staircase are all dripping blood. Black shit is oozing out of the doors and thunderclaps keep incessantly crashing overhead. It's about this time that the Lutzes say "Fuck this!" and decide to leave. They scoop up the kids and hightail it into George's piece-o-shit van. But dammit, they forgot about Harry the family pooch. So George decides to stop the van and run back to get Harry. Harry is barking up a storm and scratching and gnashing all over the place. The house is going totally berserk and shit is flying everywhere. He finds Harry in the basement and tries to pull him away. Just as he does so however, the floor collapses beneath him and George falls into a pit of that nasty black shit. Harry pulls him out and the two escape from the house. He loads the pooch into the van and the family drives off abandoning their home forever. Acting/Dialogue: The acting is half-ass decent here. Margo Kidder can be kind of abrasive at times, but I think this film projects her best work to date. She seems to have cleaned herself up a little bit after her harsh performance in 1974's Black Christmas. James Brolin plays the part of George Lutz and is easily the most compelling character of the whole film. He does a good job of 'looking angry' and giving everyone the hairy eyeball. Rod Steiger (Father Delaney) is an amusing character, and you really feel for him during his confrontation with Father Ryan and Father Nuncio. But he seems to lose coherence about a third of the way through the flick. The one actor I can't get behind is Don Stroud who plays Father Richard Bolen. This guy comes across as being just a tad too creepy and he's got a look in his eye that just screams, "Come here little boy, would you like a big fat lollipop to suck on?" I can definitely see him participating in some of the more scandalous affairs that have plagued the church as of late. Gore: There's nothing here that will really cause anyone over the age of fifty to suffer cardiac arrest. The walls and the staircase of the Lutz home tend to drip blood here and there, and those damn kids need to learn to flush the fucking toilet once in a while. The most gruesome scene is probably when little Greg gets his fingers mangled by the falling windowpane. But don't worry, he's okay. Guilty Pleasures: Margot Kidder likes to show off her legs quite a bit in this. And if you look reeeeeeeeeally close, you can just about catch a nipple-slip reflected in the bedroom mirror. Oh yeah…and James Brolin prances around in his fruit-of-the-looms a few times. At least now, I can see why the guy is so angry. The Good: One of the things that has made the Amityville Horror so enduring over the years is that it was widely believed to have been based on a true story. We have learned in later years however, that this is all a crock of shit fabricated by novelist Jay Anson and the real George Lee Lutz (Who to this day, still attest to the validity of his tale and tries to squeeze as much money as he can for it). The only part of the Amityville Horror that appears to be factual is the tragic death of the DeFeo family shown in the film's prologue. Regardless, this doesn't stop the Amityville Horror from being a halfway decent spook-fest (But only halfway mind you). The biggest thing this flick has going for it is its sound quality. The main title score is pretty kick ass featuring a bunch of little kids la-la-la-ing their way through a creepy little merry-go-round ditty. There is something inherently wicked and evil about children singing. Not quite sure what it is, but damn it if the little snot-pockets don't give me the willies. Believe it or not, this theme song was originally intended for the Exorcist, but William Friedkin's people decided not to go with it. On top of that, Amityville Horror jolts us out of our seats with some pretty raw sounds that really run down the back of your spine. The voice that says, "Get out!" is pretty wild and Kathy's revelation concerning Louise DeFeo being shot in the head is fairly stark as well. The thunderclaps are used really well in the beginning of the film and go a long way towards establishing the mood. Unfortunately, they become over-exaggerated and tiresome by the end of the flick. The house itself is pretty fricking creepy. My in-laws live in a house of the exact same design, right down to the internal layout and wonky Eyeball windows. The fact that the film was shot maybe forty minutes away from my hometown adds a bit of edge to it as well. So on a personal level, it's easy for me to become 'part' of this story, as I have spent many an evening in a house of similar mien. But to anyone else, they probably won't find the place all that impressive. There are some themes occurring in the Amityville Horror that I thought were fairly clever. The Lutz' master bedroom boasts floor length mirrors on each of the walls. I take this to be symbolic of the duality between George Lutz and Ronald 'Butch' DeFeo. The movie even suggests that the two looked damn near identical. By way of the mirrors, we see that the house is reflecting the evil that went on inside. Another 'reflection' metaphor can be found in the timing of certain events. The DeFeo murders occurred at 3:15 am. Almost every night at exactly 3:15, either George or Kathy awakens to an eerie inexplicable sound or a harsh fucked up nightmare. This is nothing that I would consider to be Orwellian, but it's a cutesy little story tool nonetheless. I also liked the day-by-day breakdown of the film. As shown in the summary, we are treated to snippets of nearly all of the 19 days that the Lutzes spent inside the Amityville house. I think this method helps to add to the intensity somewhat. As each day passes, you are left with a feeling of impending doom and a slow boiling momentum that you hope will achieve climax at some point. Unfortunately, the payoff doesn't really measure up to the build up, but more on that later. On a side note: Interestingly enough, the DeFeo name is never actually mentioned at any point in the film. Even when Kathy finds a microfiche photograph of Ron DeFeo, it is actually her husband's likeness comped into the shot. I assume this was done out of respect for the real life DeFeo family. The Bad: The plotline of this movie really adheres to the ABC process of filmmaking. Which is to say, it is a narrow straightforward road, with no curves or twists at all (Kind of like Calista Flockhart). Watching this, I feel like I'm listening to a little kid whose telling you a story that he's making up right there on the spot. You can almost hear director Stuart Rosenberg in the background saying "And guess what happens next?" There are characters and plot points that are introduced that ultimately go nowhere. Take for example, the cigar-chomping detective. We see him in the prologue as he investigates the DeFeo murders. What insights he may have gleaned from that investigation are entirely unknown. But we see him again later talking to the Lutzes. His appearance at the Lutz house is entirely pointless and does nothing to move the story along. Strangely enough, we see him again trying to score an interview with Father Delaney. This one comes straight out of left field. The detective has no reason to suspect a link between Father Delaney and the goings on at the Lutz house, so why does he even bother to try and communicate with the old man? This guy could have been written completely out of the script and it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference. And what is up with that creepy neighbor? If you've seen the movie, there's a part where the Lutz' neighbor comes over as part of some Amityville welcoming committee. Typical redneck that he is, he offers Kathy a six-pack of beer. Now while there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to have your axe-wielding neighbors all boozed up, this scene goes nowhere. Kathy turns around for two seconds, and when she turns back the guy is gone and we never see him again. What the fuck was the point of all this? The Father Delaney character seems to go nowhere as well. Later in the film, he tries to pray for the Lutz family and is injured by some spectral force that blinds him. This makes no sense to me. The purpose of a haunted house is that the offending spirits are typically rooted to the house. But these spirits can apparently float about willy nilly attacking whomever they please. I also don't see the point of attacking the priest a second time. It's already been established that Delaney is powerless to do anything for the Lutzes. Again, a character that at first appears to be important, but ultimately his presence lends nothing to the overall plot to any degree. In total, we could have nixed a good ¾'s of the overall cast and it wouldn't have made a dif. Stuart Rosenberg really loses some of his pacing at about the midway point in this movie. After the wedding scene, it seems like he's just chug-chugging along vainly attempting to stretch the running time on the film. George's erosion of sanity becomes exceedingly tedious and it gets to the point where you simply don't care about him any longer. He plays around with the axe for a bit, but he continues to struggle against the murderous intent that is welling inside of him. Shit or get off the pot, that's what I always say. If I were living in that house, I would have whacked those bratty little bastiches within the first act. I'm also having trouble placing the motivations of these free-range spirits. First we have the ghost of Jody. Now I tend to think that Jody would be speaking in the best interest of the Lutzes. She seemed to warm up to Amy pretty well and I believe that it was probably her spirit that warned Father Delaney to get out of the house. Then there's the entire lore of the house itself. First we have this nonsense about the Shitcock Indians using the land as an insane asylum. This is a pretty trite back-story and it doesn't seem to lend itself well to the events that are occurring inside the house. Regardless, the Native American angle is hardly even mentioned and it is wrapped up inside some fairly forgettable conversation between Jeff and Caroline. There's also the matter of this alleged witch John Ketchum. So now we have pissed off insane injun spirits AND a wily old warlock from Salem. Hells Bells, why don't we throw in Dracula, the Wolf Man and Bigfoot while we're at it? It probably would have served the story better if they had suggested that Butch DeFeo and George Lutz were hearing 'voices' from the victims of John Ketchum. By adding the Indian nonsense into the mix, you really only succeed in creating a convoluted and thus unfulfilling origin story. But the most damning element of this film is its lack of closure. Once the characters discover the 'Red Room' they learn that the house is but a well for angry spirits that must be covered. But no one even attempts to cover the well, or even find out what the well is. This is the part of the film, where old man Delaney should have shown up and whispered some biblical hoodoo at the house. But I guess that would have made the Delaney character actually USEFUL and that's a quality that Rosenberg must have been loathe to even remotely tread upon. In total, the Amityville Horror provides some decent Boo moments, and it is definitely worthy of repeat viewings, but really doesn't deserve the place in Horror Movie History that it appears to have achieved. Great Lines: "Get Out!" --A ghost speaking to Father Delaney (Presumably, this is Jody's ghost trying to protect the good father from the evils of the house.) "She was shot in the head!" -- Kathy Lutz' waking up at 3:15 am after having a dream of the DeFeo murders. This was my favorite scene in the whole movie. "This is all a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit!" -- Father Delaney cocking off to Father Ryan. I love it when priests use naughty poo-poo words. "Jody doesn't like George." --Amy talking about her imaginary friend with the red eyes. Overall Rating: 5 out of 10 severed heads. |
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