 The Amityville Horror (1977)
Remember that scary house with the semi-circular windows that looked like angry eyes? That image really scared me, so much so that I refused to see the movie. I was already terrified of the blood that dripped from the walls in my basement, I didn't need someone else's dripping blood walls to remind me of my own discomfort.
But when I spotted a vintage-looking hardback copy in a thrift store, I couldn't resist. Cut to three years later when, tired of reading exorcism how-to books, I decided to sit back in the easy chair and read an exorcism story book.
I think I'll stick to the how-to books for now. This story book is less story than book, in that it's a bunch of pages with letters on them pasted together between some cardboard with a minimalist picture on the front.
It does tell the story of George and Kathy Lutz, and the strange goings-on during their one month stay at 112 Ocean Drive in Amityville, NY. However, it is neither interesting, well-written, nor convincing.
The writing style is really crappy and lazy, even lazier than your reviewer, who's writing this on a napkin while on the can. According to the book jacket cover slipcover folio jacket, Anson started as a copy boy in 1937 and went on to write "over 500 documentary scripts." Well he shoulda stuck to copy boying. His descriptions range from the stupid to the inane. What passes for horror or excitement is an overuse of the exclamation point key on his teletype machine. For instance, the following terrifying passage:
"George bent down. He heard slow canine snoring. It was only six in the evening, and Harry was fast asleep!"
Technically that's cute, not scary. Silly Anson, who also worked in advertising, should have known that. Silly.
Similarly, by the end of the book, the devoted reader is generally rooting for the demons to exterminate the Lutzes. George is an angry child- and dog-abusing alcoholic. Kathy is a materialistic, unfeeling crybaby scaredy cat. The kids, Ducky, Bucky, and Fucky, are horrible and stupid and rotten. Father Mancuso, their priest, is a total fraidy cat (he NEVER returns to the house after it tells him, "Get out!" – what a pussy!). Only Harry, the trusty dog who's left in a kennel in freezing weather, then whacked with a newspaper by George when the kids invite him in to play, comes across as remotely intelligent, instinctively knowing he should get the hell out before Old Man Devil gets the hell in.
The Lutzes are so fucking stupid, it's unbelievable. They remain in the house even after everyone's life is threatened by the strange events, which mostly consist of randomly opened windows, the sounds of a marching band in the living room, and some flies in one of the guest rooms that disturb Kathy's sense of cleanliness more than her sense of "What the fuck was that?" By the way, in the book, the walls don't drip blood, they ooze green slime. How jejune.
Unfortunately, the only thing that dies in The Amityville Horror is the reader's patience. It turns out that there were some people killed in the house, and maybe it's on an old Indian burial ground, and maybe there's a portal to hell in an old well under the house. Cliché piled on cliché, heaped with cliché. Ultimately, the Lutzes get out, rather easily, and wind up in California where they sell their story and become the huge celebrities they remain to this very day. Why, wasn't that Missy Lutz, all growed up, I spotted on the hot male arm of hot male actor Josh Brolin at this year's Golden Globes, and looking, as E! Entertainment Television fashion policeman Leon Hall exclaimed, "sinfully delicious"? Hmmmmm? Yes? Ya?
The best part about the book is that it contains photos of George and Kathy Lutz, both of whom are rejects from the rejects of the 1970s, what with their big floppy hair, neckerchiefs, fat collars, stupid eyes, and thick wavy beards (Kathy doesn't have a beard, and neither wears a neckerchief, at least that I could see, but it had to be said, also they don't have eyes). Even better are the diagrams of the house and property. It was interesting to note all the rooms in which George did something abusive or Kathy said something abusive, and was punished with levitation or a cold draft of air.
Frankly, I didn't believe a word of it. That won't stop me from renting the video as soon as humanly possible. I CANNOT WAIT.
Review by Crimedog |