Carrying on with the 70s, let’s look at a classic of sorts that you’re more likely to seen the parodies of. Between Indian burial grounds and disembodied voices very unhappy with current tenancy, here’s my look at The Amityville Horror.
The film was ‘based on a true story’ that itself may have been slightly uncomfortably capitalizing on the real life murders committed in Amityville in the early 70s, which the opening scenes start off recreating. They just so happened to take place in 112 Ocean Avenue, a house that if nothing else was certainly distinguished by its unique architecture—with window positioning giving the effect of eyes. It’s something both posters and the movie itself made full use of, but considering that this was still made not long after actual tragedy, you can’t help but wonder about the taste factor still. Back then you had films being made about the Zodiac killer right after the actual murders there, so I guess the seventies was just that kind of age.
Either way, the main story follows the Lutz family, with parents played by Thanos’ dad James Brolin and another comic book connection with Superman actress Margot Kidder. As in real life—that much can be established—the Lutzes moved into Ocean Avenue and according to them and this film, started experiencing assorted weirdness pretty much immediately. In this case, it manifests initially as outbreaks of janky editing interspersed with flashbacks and slightly cheesy voiceovers.
There’s a rather extended subplot involving a priest trying to get involved, played by Rod Steiger. He’s introduced happily watching children play, in a shot that now has very different connotations nowadays. It…ultimately goes nowhere, has barely any involvement with the family, and feels like it got shoved in because hey the Exorcist was a big thing!
Now, what the movie does do right is showing the slow psychological degradation of the family as they’re beset by supernatural things that also seem to be bent on ruining their real-life holdings—Mr. Lutz goes from a decent enough father to someone snapping and lashing out at people as he’s ground down by whatever’s going on. This part at least does feel like something that can be related to, and seeing someone you love be worn away by all manner of things is perhaps unnerving enough.
But everything else? We get all sorts of things thrown at us from mentions of Satanic cults from Salem to burial grounds to a gate to hell in the basement that just turns out to be a pool of tar for all I can make out, though again there are bits here and there like the daughter actually coming as a bit creepy with her invisible demon playtimes (memorable you do glimpse her playmate near the end). And speaking the final scene…you keep expecting a moment of catharsis or something, but no, the evil’s just overcome and that’s that.
Amityville Horror is at best pretty uneven for me, and falls way short of other 70s horror classics like Exorcist, Omen, Alien, and so forth, even if it does have an occasional highlight. It was followed up by about eleventy trillion sequels nobody really cares about, and at least one remake in the 2000s as produced by Michael Bay, because around that time he was producing remakes of every horror movie from around this time for some odd reason. However, some of what it did, from psychic women investigating the house to young daughters led astray, was replicated but done way better a few short years later with Toby Hooper’s Poltergeist—if you want your haunted house fix, I definitely say stick to that one.
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