The 60s and 70s were exceptional times for haunted house chillers.  The House on Haunted Hill, The Haunting, and my favorite hidden classic, the Changeling, are all exceptional films of artist style.  It’s a shame that most of these features have recently undergone such horrible remakes that have seemed to sacrifice thrills and atmosphere for other methods of film making that might appeal to a larger target audience.  Still, after seeing these rehashed pop-culture friendly remakes, you can’t help but go back home and pop in the original.  I did just that after recently seeing the miserable 2005 remake of Stuart Rosenbergs Amityville Horror.   Rosenbergs adaptation of this famous Jay Anson (based on a true story) novel gave me nightmares as a kid, and now as an adult, whenever I see the attic lights on that giant rural home shine…the hairs on the back of my neck still stand. 

Welcome to Amityville, the name of a small country town in New York that rests aside the banks of a quiet river.  Meet the family, a wife, husband, and four children.  They’re moving into a house where the past family, VERY similar to their own, was brutally murdered one year prior.  To make things more interesting, as if you didn’t see this coming, the house is haunted by the victim’s spirits.  The area also has a reputation for its past rituals and questionable satanic activities.  Double threat!  Anyway, visitors of the neighborhood church and other friends and relatives of the family become violently ill upon approach through the house's front doors.  There are also random fly infestations, doors randomly opening and closing, and oh yes, a gateway to hell in the cellar!  One by one the family starts to turn on each other as if the evil spirits that dwell within the walls of the house have this subconscious control over the family's sanity.  Sound familiar?  Toward the end there are some more strikingly similar scenes to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shinning, and it’s funny because they were both filmed only a year apart.

James Brolin and Margot Kidder both play convincing roles as a married couple coming to grips with the house's dark mysteries.  Rod Steiger also plays the role of Father Delaney whose talent especially shines in the film's famous “get out” scene.  No complaints with the acting talent in this film at all.  Brolin and Kidder are a lovely couple, and I can’t help but feel my heart strain the moment we are given any hint at all that George might have become insane enough to ever lay a strong hand against her. 

It’s been a little more than 25 years since the film's first release.  The question here is...does it still hold up?  Well, for the most part, yes.  Some scenes have always felt a little anti-climatic to me.  The scene toward the last two thirds of the film where Father Delaney looses his eye sight seems to come across as a little more silly than jaw-dropping.  Rosenberg doesn’t really take too much time either to build much tension throughout the scenes themselves.  He tries more so to build tension, as the days the family resides within the house progress, 'til the final night which is ultimately the film's most climatic segment.  There is nothing wrong with this method at all, and in my opinion, after 25 years of horrible Amityville sequels and remakes, the original is still a worthy addition to your horror film library.

I will always remember this being one of the first movies I’ve seen that scared the living hell out of me.  Rosenberg does an amazing job at bringing the house to life.  It’s not 'til the end of the film when the audience will realize that the house isn’t just haunted by the souls who died inside, but that the house itself is an actual living breathing entity.  Even after 15 years of reviewing this film, I can still picture those evil attic lit eyes staring me down long after the credits come to an end.