The Amityville Horror stuck fairly closely to the incidents related in the book. The prologue depicts the aftermath of an all-too real horror: the act of a young man who shot and killed his parents and four siblings as they slept. A year later, a newly married couple, George Lutz (James Brolin) and his wife Kathy (Margot Kidder) put an offer on the house in which the murders took place. The couple move into the house with their three children from Kathy's previous marriage. While George doesn't seem to be religious, Kathy was raised Catholic, and has arranged to have a priest, Father Delaney (Rod Steiger) come and bless the house. The family is outside playing with their dog Harry when Father Delaney arrives; he goes upstairs but is confronted by disturbing phenomena unpleasant smells, the sudden appearance of a swarm of flies in the room, and most disturbing, a disembodied voice telling him to "Get Out!" In the coming days, the Lutz family live through many strange and disturbing things a window sash crushes the hand of one of the boys, daughter Amy (Natasha Ryan) discovers an invisible playmate named Jody who tells her disturbing things, Kathy has vivid nightmares of specific details of the murders in the house, black ooze comes up through the toilets, the babysitter becomes trapped in a closet despite the lack of a lock on the door, and the dog Harry fixates over a hidden room in the basement. Perhaps most disturbingly, George becomes sullen and upset, and he becomes obsessed with cutting firewood, keeping his ax sharpened, and stoking a large fire in the fireplace. Meanwhile, Father Delaney clashes with his superiors, especially when the evil presence seems to follow him away from the house.
The Amityville Horror poses a problem for modern viewers who may know that the basic story of demonic harassment told by George and Kathy Lutz for the book and subsequent movie has been essentially debunked. William Weber, the defense lawyer of Amityville killer Ronald "Butch" DeFeo, Jr., revealed that he and the Lutzes came up the story over "several bottles of wine" he felt the story would help his defense, which was one of insanity caused by voices heard in the head of his client. The movie only makes a token gesture toward a documentary approach, with a scant few text titles indicating the passage of time spent in the house. The storytelling that director Stuart Rosenberg chooses is standard and straightforward, so, lacking any verisimilitude of a 'true story' the movie must stand up on its own merits. The events then take on less of an aspect of mounting terror, and more of a random collection of mere things that happen which add up to little or nothing.
That does not mean that viewers of The Amityville Horror are totally left out in the cold. Some may find an entertaining level of unintentional humor in the film, while others may see a different subtext of horror than intended. As horror novelist Stephen King wrote in Danse Macabre, his non-fiction roundup of horror in popular culture, "...the picture's subtext is one of economic unease, and this is a theme that director Stuart Rosenberg plays on constantly...Little by little, [the house] is ruining the Lutz family financially. The movie might as well have been subtitled The Horror of the Shrinking Bank Account...here is a movie for every woman who ever wept over a plugged-up toilet or a spreading water stain on the ceiling from the upstairs shower; for every man who ever did a slow burn when the weight of the snow caused his gutters to give way; for every child who ever jammed his fingers and felt that the door or window which did the jamming was out to get him. As horror goes, Amityville is pretty pedestrian. So's beer, but you can get drunk on it. 'Think of the bills,' a woman behind me in the theater moaned at one point..."
The Amityville Horror earned over $65 million at the box office. Critical reaction, however, was harsh. Richard Schickel, writing in Time voiced a common complaint, saying the film "...has become one of the summer's top grossing movies despite the fact that the people who made it seem to have been of two minds about their story. On the one hand, they are tediously documentary about every odd manifestation of the unseen world at work, and the accretion of these minor incidents is so dully presented that we begin to long for a good scare. On the other hand, when the film makers try to assuage our restlessness, they swing too far in the other direction."
In the New York Times, Janet Maslin laments the lack of enough levity to make the mild shocks tolerable: "George Lutz has begun to look shaggy and pink-eyed, and now he has a terrible gray pallor. He communicates with his formerly happy family in monosyllables, and spends too much time sharpening his ax. One night, Kathleen Lutz - played by Margot Kidder, who stubbornly remains the bright-eyed life of the party despite signs that plenty is amiss - finds George sitting in the livingroom alone. He is screaming that he is about to crack up, and he has fresh toothmarks on his legs. Kathleen studies the situation, then asks sweetly, 'Honey, are you O.K.?' There isn't nearly enough of this sort of inadvertent merriment in The Amityville Horror, which isn't horrifying enough to do without a few laughs."
Co-star Margot Kidder later said, "There are no pretensions as to The Amityville Horror being a deep psychological drama, I don't think. ...Horror movie buffs really are savvy audiences...Many of them are the most articulate film buffs on the planet, and they want to get scared and have fun. Much like a thrill ride at Disneyland where you're shrieking in fear, but afterward you just laugh...Audiences know that that's what they're going to get they're going to get a ride." Kidder also acknowledged the humor aspect of the film, saying "You're on that edge of serious camp. All the time. And the really masterful directors just keep it riiight there."
Although it told a self-contained story (such as it is), the success of The Amityville Horror spawned a healthy number of sequels, prequels, and spin-offs. First was Amityville II: The Possession (1982), a prequel which fictionalized the original DeFeo murders in the house. It was directed by Damiano Damiani and was based on the book Murder in Amityville by Hans Holzer. The following year saw Amityville 3D (1983), produced during the brief craze for 3D (stereoscopic) movies in the early 1980s, and was known as Amityville III: The Demon in non-3D showings. A made-for-TV film, Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (1989) came next, followed by four direct-to-DVD films in the 1990s which traded on the Amityville name. Finally, a new adaptation of the original book was produced in 2005.
Producers: Ronald Saland, Elliot Geisinger
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Screenplay: Sandor Stern; Jay Anson (book); George Lutz, Kathy Lutz (story, both uncredited)
Cinematography: Fred J. Koenekamp
Art Direction: Kim Swados
Music: Lalo Schifrin
Film Editing: Robert Brown, Jr.
Cast: James Brolin (George Lutz), Margot Kidder (Kathy Lutz), Rod Steiger (Father Delaney), Don Stroud (Father Bolen), Murray Hamilton (Father Ryan), John Larch (Father Nuncio), Natasha Ryan (Amy), K.C. Martel (Greg), Meeno Peluce (Matt), Michael Sacks (Jeff), Helen Shaver (Carolyn), Amy Wright (Jackie), Val Avery (Sgt. Gionfriddo)
C-117m.
by John M. Miller
