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Based on a bestselling, allegedly nonfiction book about haunted goings-on in a Long Island house (
The Amityville Horror Conspiracy), this rather cheesy horror movie is more silly than unsettling. James Brolin and Margot Kidder star as newlyweds who move into the empty home and are gradually affected by the legacy of a murder committed on the premises. Rod Steiger is a priest who can tell what's up and gets dispatched in a rather ugly way. Director Stuart Rosenberg can't lift the action above a certain level of tawdriness, and the audience ends up watching the horror from a distance instead of feeling involved. In the wake of
The Exorcist, this 1979 spooker seemed like a no-brainer knockoff--and still does.
--Tom Keogh
Review
For those caught up in the media blitz surrounding the "real-life" paranormal activities of the Lutz household in the late 1970s, Jay Anson's bestselling non-fiction tome and its subsequent movie adaptation may have been riveting, seminal works of fact-based horror. Years removed from the scandal, however, it's possible to see The Amityville Horror for what it is: a laughable piece of quickie camp exploitation, produced by the company that invented the form, American International Pictures. The Lutz's story -- however fabricated -- made for some great, straightforward post-Rosemary's Baby, post-Exorcist freak-outs. But in its translation to the screen, Amityville became an almost Dadaist exercise in incoherence, riddled with shots that don't match, performers that seem to have been filmed at separate times in separate locations, and interminable stretches of celluloid where absolutely nothing happens. '70s stalwarts Margo Kidder and James Brolin -- not to mention the well-in-decline Rod Steiger -- turn in wildly overmodulated performances that somehow don't fit together, despite having a common denominator of bug-eyed, histrionic bombast. Of course, none of the ineptitude of the film's first hour would matter if there were a satisfying payoff, but Amityville botches even that, with fake-looking green ooze and perhaps the least-menacing portal to hell in motion picture history. By the time the umpteenth low-angle shot of the house's evil-eye attic windows rolls around, most viewers -- no matter how nostalgic -- would be best advised to shut off Amityville and rent Poltergeist instead. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
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