The Amityville Horror (1979) ***1/2

Despite feeling a bit dated, relying heavily on jump scares, being a bit nonsensical, and regardless of the validity of its connection to the true-life story, I’ve always enjoyed The Amityville Horror (1979) and continue to find it an entertaining haunted house movie. The film wouldn’t be half as effective without Lalo Schifrin’s bold and dreamy score or James Brolin’s weary, crazy-eyed performance or half as fun without Rod Steiger’s over the top hamminess. 

Brolin and Margot Kidder have a great chemistry and TAH is a showcase for how good Kidder was in horror movies—1973’s Sisters (review) and 1974’s Black Christmas (review) being two other classics of the genre in which she excelled. It’s interesting that Stuart Rosenberg directed this—the only other film of his that I’ve seen is Cool Hand Luke (1967), which is obviously very different from TAH. On this viewing I found the stylistic choices of the film to have a lot in common with the late '70s and early '80s output of David Cronenberg and Lucio Fulci.

Recommended for fans of Shock (1977) (review), The Changeling (1980) (review), and The House By The Cemetery (1981) (review).