Hello everyone! In honor of my favorite holiday Halloween, I decided to give you some special spooky content. Today, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I will be viewing a different old horror movie, that I haven’t seen before every night. Tonight’s feature presentation? The Amityville Horror.
Since this is “old” movie reviews, I obviously selected the 1979 version over the 2005 version. I also selected the older one because I just can’t take Ryan Reynolds seriously. Before we get in to the actual movie, I just want to talk about HOW BEAUTIFUL Margot Kidder is in this movie. No matter what kind of horror is going on around them, female 70’s horror movie characters always look stunning. Seriously though, I spent half of the movie complaining about how there was no way that woman had five teenage children, she looks amazing. James Brolin however, looks like he might be the murderer in an equally campy movie about the house down the street. I mean I guess that is true of most men in the 70’s though…
When it comes to the actual plot, the movie was pretty typical. A+ to the creator for deciding not to put a visual on the demon or the ghost girl because if they had the movie would probably lose all scary quality. I find it incredibly funny that the priest knows the house is possessed 15 minutes in to the film but for some reason it takes another 2 hours for that little tidbit of information to reach the family. Equally amusing is the fact that they don’t even suspect a demon until the last 20 minutes of the movie. I’m going to give you all a piece of advice right now. If your house smells like sulfur, and your kid keeps going on about some ghost child you can’t see, at least look into the history of your house. Oh and always ask your realtor why the giant fancy house is priced so cheap because 9 times out of 10 somebody’s ass probably got murdered there. If half of horror movie characters followed this rule then we would be down to half the amount of horror house movies we have today.
To give Amityville credit where it’s due, it is one of the first of its kind. Although it might seem overused now it definitely wasn’t at the time of its release and the film does have a nice, creepy atmosphere, as well as a good score. Was it scary? no. but it was entertaining and all together pretty spooky. It’s not everyday where you have a door to hell in your basement, and overall it’s refreshing to see that for once everyone survived, even the family dog, who is usually the first to go.
I give The Amityville Horror 3.5/5 spooky pumpkins based on spook factor, cinematic quality, and story quality. The extra half pumpkin is just for Margot Kidder because she is a underrated sweet baby angel.
Check back for tomorrow’s horror movie review! Happy Halloween!
AVE JAM 