Amityville Horror (1979): Horror, starring James Brolin, Margot Kidder.
The Marc Horton plot synopsis: Young couple buys drafty old house that had been the scene of a mass murder. Husband starts acting a little kooky. Priest and nun make visits, suffer convulsions. Couple and their friends make a late-night visit to the library to get to the bottom of things. etc.
The hype: Hyped as a true story but pretty much all of it has been debunked or refuted over the years, except for the fact that the house was the site where some discontented kid shot his parents and siblings. Took in $86 million at the box office.
The reality: Brolin and Kidder aren't going to win any Academy Awards for their acting at the best of time, but Rod Steiger did, for "In the Heat of the Night". Maybe it was the director's fault.
Roger Ebert called it, "dreary and terminally depressing." That sounds more like an Ingmar Bergman film. This is just derivative (mostly of The Exorcist) and dull.
The Political Incorrect Movie Review: If you thought this was scary in 1979, you were probably watching too much Carol Burnett Show.
11 years ago