The Amityville Horror
HORROR-THON 2023 • IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD
10/10
DIRECTOR: Stuart Rosenberg
STARRING: James Brolin, Margot Kidder, Rod Steiger
RELEASED: 1979
RUNTIME: 1 hour, 57 minutes
WATCH ON: Prime Video, AMC+, MGM+, Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home
SCARE LEVEL: Medium
DEAL OF A LIFETIME: Walk away.
The house is a gorgeous Dutch colonial on the water, and it’s priced to move. The two quarter-circle windows in the attic look exactly like eyes. If a house is staring at you during an open house, don’t make an offer.
George and Kathy Luz buy a big house on Long Island for a suspiciously low price. The reason is that the year before, a man killed his entire family inside it. They move in anyway with Kathy’s three kids.
Almost right away, things go wrong. Swarms of flies take over a room. A priest comes to bless the house and is told to get out by a voice from nowhere. Black goo comes up through the toilets. And George gets colder and angrier, and spends a lot of time sharpening his axe.
The story is based on a bestselling book about the real Lutz family, who said they fled the house after 28 days.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
This is a movie about a house more than about any ghost or spirit, and the house is probably one of the best actors in it. Those attic windows have been burned into pop culture for 50 years, not to mention my brain, since I watched it the first time as a teen.
The flies are honestly one of the worst parts for me. No ghost. No gore. Just a room buzzing with way too many of them. It makes me itchy just thinking about it.
James Brolin’s slow slide from nice new husband to guy with an axe is the most frightening thing here. Kathy is played by Margot Kidder, the same Margot Kidder from Sisters, which I watched for Horror-Thon 2020.
It drags in places, and the ending is more “we left” than a real climax. I’ll say, the haunted-house-as-bad-investment genre has never been better. Poltergeist and The Amityville Horror should be required viewing before anyone signs a mortgage.
FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY
The rumors that they intended to film inside the actual house in Amityville, NY, but production was too scared to enter the house, are false. The town of Amityville denied the studio to permision to film anywhere whatsoever in Amityville as an attempt to distance themselves from any publicity. Even the current owners of the house changed the “evil eyes” of the home to rectangular-shaped windows because of the unwanted fame the book and movie brought.