Honey, the walls are seeping blood. Did you leave the hose hooked up to the outside faucet?
Newlyweds George and Kathy Lutz move into a home where murders have occurred. Fascinated by the price of the home and how great of a deal it truly is, the Lutz’s take it. Not considering the consequences of their decision, the house begins to play tricks on the couple, mainly George. Evil spirits begin to convince George of evil things and eventually, well… you know.
This movie must have just been simply terrifying when it first hit the theatrical scene back in 1979. The warped story of someone going mad in their own home and killing their family is enough to make the story truly beyond creepy. There are so many parts of this film that just ooze horror. The innocence of the couple is believable. That brings the entire story to life more. They have no idea what they are in for. Give credit to James Brolin and Margo Kidder for this. They convince the audience that they have no idea what’s going on, until it’s too late of course. The strange happenings of the home itself tend to drive home the point of there isn’t something right here. For example, the children laughing when the priest is first introduced. Again, it’s one of those moments where you just get some goosebumps. Shortly flowing that is the introduction to how much the house hates the priest, which is an indication of how much evil is within the home. I quote Eddie Murphy here, “When the (bleepin’) house tells you to get out, you get the (bleep) out.” So damn creepy.
I usually try to stray away from the artistic flavor of film, hoping to avoid being ‘that reviewer’ who believes they understand every aspect of a film or a filmmaker for that matter. I could not help but notice the light and dark contrasts of the film, the barely sunny days and the brown overtone of each scene. It relays just how German Expressionism influenced this film. If you’re not familiar with that term, or haven’t taken many film classes in college yet, it’s basically heavy darks and lights that create a very dark atmosphere and tension. It’s perfectly played visually, which adds even more creepy value to the overall film.
Was this film ambitious for its time? Yes. Definitely a prelude to films like Poltergeist where it’s much scarier to hide the antagonist than it is to constantly show them, Amityville Horror established a new form of terror. Up to this point there weren’t many films that could take take pride in such a feat as this type of horror. Most films up to this point would have a clear antagonist, someone or something you could see. The fact that the antagonist was taken out just added to how much horror you could truly put into one movie.
So is there a downside to the film? The acting hurt it a bit and people made plenty of jokes about the film. In hindsight there wasn’t much respect given to it. The remake didn’t help things either as a newer version of it made the older look outdated. No one needed to make this again, the original certainly still is creepy. So, with only minor complaints about the acting and maybe a tad bit slow on the build, Amityville Horror is still going to be creepy as hell for you.
What makes this film even more magnified on the scary-scale is the Blu-ray adaption. The HD version of the film is simply stunning. It is probably one of the better HD transfers that I’ve seen in a while. The audio also helps out the movie, coming to you in 5.1 lossless DTS HD. I commend both audio and video transfer to HD and hope more movies of this time could be done with such loving care, even if they scare the (bleep) out of you. Thank you horror genre.
As for features, you won’t find any here, regretfully. Trailers don’t count.
