Review -- The Amityville Horror.

Directed by: Stuart Rosenberg
Starring: James Brolin, Margot Kidder, Rod Steiger

1979.

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This movie is perhaps the scariest movie i have ever laid witness to. It did not take millions of dollars in special effects. It did not take a green screen. It did not take aliens from mars threatening to lobotomize us all and give us the intellect equivalent to Mariah Carey when she decided to make a movie.

It was also NOT, and i repeat NOT, "Jeepers Creepers" (that lowly bag of shit mixed in a cement mixer and poured out as concrete suitable only for the town of Roy).

This movie was frightening. Geniunely frightening. You can't say that about many of the movies that have come out lately. "The Haunting"? Yeah...no. "Jeepers Creepers"...hmmm, a movie about a flying bat? I don't know... My shit was scarier after i ate vegetables for an entire week. In fact, the only thing scary about that movie, aside from imagining the producer's state of mind when he came up with it, was the intro part. That, i will admit, had the ability to really set up a movie with an eerie chill...and then it threw in that piece of shit bat-demon that made me want to piss on the tape and send it back to the director...geezus that was crap.

No, "Amityville" was horrorific...because of its simplicity. It gave you an honest chill. When the cat jumps at the window screen as James Brolin's character is sitting there (with his late '70's porno beard), it was really frightening. You could relate to that fear. Who the hell can relate to a fuckin' flying bat-demon with headgear??

Blood pouring from the walls...now that's frightening. Not a giant metal freak mobile. The glowing eyes that sat outside of the window of Margot Kidder's character's daughter, that was chilling. The way they just sat staring, and then walked off.

The only movie recently that I can think of that matched that kind of simplistic chill was in "The House on Haunted Hill" when that one stupid girl is looking through her camera and sees the ghosts operating. The moment they stop and look up and just stare at her motionless and emotionless...that was chilling. Almost everything else...no (especially not "The Darkness").

It was the little things that made "Amityville" so perfect for fright. Take for instance, the chair rocking. I'm sorry, as lame as that was, if i was in a room where there was a little girl talking to a chair that was rocking all by itself, i would piss in my pants in a heartbeat.

Then there was the room with blood on the walls. The priest blessing the house, and then being told by the house to get out. The nightmares the wife had about the other previous tennets getting shot in the head. The cross being turned upside down.

In the end, what made "Amityville" so frightening, which "Jeepers Creepers" had in the very beginning, was the realistic fear. "Amityville" was chock full of it. "Jeepers Creepers" had it in the driving scene. No music, driving down a quiet nondescript town on an eeriely straight road. Pastures for miles, at dusk. Too bad that movie went soooo far offtrack that you wanted to shoot yourself toward the end of it to rid yourself of those memories.

I know that "Amityville" is an old movie, and you have all probably seen it, but still. I needed to write something about it after seeing it. It was so refreshing to watch something that was actually scary...other than "Fast and the Furious"...but that was scary because someone actually made that shit, and was sober when he/she/demon did.