A young family move into a house where a young man killed his entire family. And they wonder why the house price was so low.Cue all manner of haunted house shenanigans- flies, crucifixes being turned upside down, the kids suddenly acquiring imaginary friends, red eyes being seen through the window at night, black ooze overflowing from the toilet...the list is endless.It feels like every camp and childish haunted house cliché has been poured into this movie that is actually based on a hoax. This sets the tone for the film.There are some funny moments though- watch out for the vomiting nun and the worst teeth brace you'll ever see. It looks like some kind of torture device.Also, Margot Kidder seems to be have some kind of naughty schoolgirl, proto Britney Spears vibe going on in this film. A bit pervy. Keep your fantasies in the bedroom, hun.

Saw this on a VHS in the mid 80s. Revisited it recently on a DVD. To be honest, i found the movie to be tedious n tame then. Now i jus forwarded some boring scenes. The film opens on a dark and stormy night as we hear gunshots and see flashes of light through the home's famous eye-like upstairs windows as an entire family is killed. A new family moves in after a year n unsettling things begin to occur. Ther are scenes where the walls drip blood. Was it blood or tar i don't know. Whose blood it was or where it came from was never explained. There's a hidden room in the house the dog always barks at. In one scene James Brolin climbs the stairs above that room, only to fall through them and into a pit of the same blood/tar. Was that suppose to be comedic? Also the scene involving Rod Steiger with the flies wasn't scary at all. The movie was boring considering the length n nothing happens. Somewhere around 01.16, Josh Brolin breaks open a wall n his facial expressions n eyes r epic scene man. What he sees that makes him so startled, we never come to know n we don't get to see also. The film is helped by an extremely creepy score composed by Lalo Schifrin n Brolin delivered a good performance. Margot Kidder did a decent job.

Nostalgia? Familiarity makes the heart grow fonder? When I went to check out the details for this movie on IMDb I thought the average score of 6.2 was a bit low, until I clicked in and saw my own paltry rating of 5! What was I thinking? This movie has it all, tension, atmosphere, heavy doses of symbolism, good acting, flies ... plus made in the 70s. With that 70s look to the film, where nothing is overly bright or sunshiny.I watched the remake of this last week and perhaps that's what made this look better than my original assessment. The remake was overwrought and deliberate and no matter how hard they tried to catch the gritty atmosphere of the original, it just. didn't. happen.So, if you haven't seen this in awhile or worse, like me, thought this was a rather middling mediocre affair, see if time hasn't changed your perspective.P.S. I did change my rating and reward this film with a solid seven. Watch it, you won't be sorry!

The poster for "The Amityville Horror" tells us – practically screams at us – the words "For God's Sake, Get Out!" Having seen the movie, I'm not sure if that is meant for the characters or the audience.The Amityville Horror is a haunted house movie with termites. It doesn't really move so much as it slowly ambles its way from one cliché to the next and about every 20 minutes an object will move by itself. The characters here have no personality and no energy to speak of. Even the ghosts exude a measure of lethargy and compared to the actors that's pretty swift. If you can imagine a Corona commercial that runs 117 minutes you get the idea.The story is based on the real-life murder case of Ron DeFeo, who early on the morning of November 13, 1974 murdered his family with a double barreled shotgun. Eleven months later, The George and Kathy Lutz moved into the house (which they bought as a suspiciously low low price) and 21 weeks later fled in terror leaving their belongings behind claiming that an unseen evil force drove them from their home For years, the Lutz family stuck to their story and it was only a few years ago that they went public again to say "Ya know, we gotta be honest here . . . we may have stretched some of the facts juuuuuust a weensy little bit." I wish they had done that before the world got inundated with the crappiest nine-movie franchise this side of Friday the 13th. Thanks for nothing guys.After the Lutz's made their story public it was put into the hands of Jay Ansen who turned into a book that got turned into this movie. It is pretty faithful to the book except that, ya know, reading scenes in which characters walk around the house and scenes of chopping wood and scenes of sitting in front of the fireplace and scenes of aerobic exercise do not really translate well when you're making a HORROR MOVIE!! It's a sad state of affairs when the scariest thing in a haunted house movie is hard rain.George and Kathy are played by James Brolin (the only straight man in the world who can freely admit a love for Barbara Streisand without getting quizzical stares) and Margot Kidder (trying to star in at least one movie that doesn't contain the word "Kryptonite"). This is an odd couple: He has a weird fascination with the fireplace and she has an affinity for fetish-wear (pigtails, schoolgirl outfits etc). That's about the limit of their quirkiness. Everything else about them is about as exciting as drywall.Seriously, this is the most boring couple I've ever seen in a movie. They don't do anything . . . I mean, nothing . . . ever. It's so bad that even when they run for their lives they drag their heels. Their function in the movie: Get nervous, look shocked, argue, reiterate plot points, rinse and repeat.The Lutz's haven't even unpacked when ominous things begin to slooooooooooooowly reveal themselves, like a chair that rocks by itself, blood the wells up in the toilet and 1500 dollars that suddenly disappears. I still haven't figured out what the evil force in the house stole a fistful of cash but the fact that I pondered that question just goes to prove that I have too much time on my hands, so I'll move on.Rod Steiger arrives early in the film, walks into the house when no one is there and is soon forced out of the house by violent vomiting and a plague of flies. He spends the rest of the movie slowly losing his health and little bits of his mind. He tries to warn Kathy but the demons are apparently working at the phone company because all she gets is static.I was also puzzled why after these terrible events: Brolin becoming temporarily possessed and nearly takes out the family with a double-bladed axe; blood burping up in the toilet, the walls bleeding; the priest coming down with a state of catatonia, it's only then that Kathy suddenly comes to the brilliant conclusion "Maybe we should move". Watching the movie I said, before I thought "Good! I'll help ya pack!" The movie is a trial, its so deadbeat that you scratch your head to figure out how it became a hit at the box office. At 117 minutes it's Hell to watch and even worse to ponder. The worst thing about the movie, the subtitles which inform us that it's "The 10th Day", "The 17th Day", "The Last Day". Bad enough when a bad movie seems endless, worse when it reminds you how endless it really is.