On A List of Movie Reviews

(For optimum viewing, adjust the zoom level of your browser to 125%.)


The Amityville Horror (1979)

Rate: 2
Viewed: 10/04, 7/05

AmHor1
7/05: The Amityville Bore is one of the worst, most boring "scary" films ever made.

It has many rip-off moments from The Exorcist and The Shining. George, who looks wild-eyed while chopping wood with an axe, is spotted by his wife in her Catholic schoolgirl clothes(!). She drops her only one brown paper bag of groceries that's meant to last for a week for her family of six.

Diabolical is when the spirit from the house controls the car. Oh, geez, the sex scenes...they're absolutely silly. An axe is thrown at the tree for no apparent reason. Ditto for a book stolen from the library, a random occurrence of unsmashed hands, and a door broken from the inside.

It's evident that, by the looks of Margot Kidder, she's cuckoo as a loony bird and is nowhere near the scream queen of the 80's: Jamie Lee Curtis. James Brolin is so stoic that he's perfect to play a tree. Characters pop in and out in mere seconds like the guy who showed up with a six-pack of beer before leaving.

Instead of calling repeatedly for weeks, why didn't Kathy go to see the priest on the third day or so? What's the relevance of the priest and the detective? How about interviewing the killer? Why do I have to keep seeing the same side of the house a million times? I get it already: it resembles a skull. Unbelievably, the film is two hours long, but nobody dies. The final clincher of its immense stupidity is the ending informing me that everybody had moved to another state before capping off with "The End."

All in all, the new tagline of The Amityville Bore should be: "FOR GOD'S SAKE, STOP LAUGHING!"