Back in 1979, for a brief time, a new promotional tactic was used to advertise upcoming movies. Framed posters, of the size you see outside movie theatres, were set with metal clamps high up on streetlight posts. I don't know how widespread this campaign was, but we had the posters here in Northridge. One afternoon in May of that year, I was driving past Cupid's Hotdogs and I noticed a large rectangular object on the lamppost. Slowing the car, I saw it was a theatre sized poster for "Alien". I don't recall if I was already aware of it's upcoming release. No one had heard of Ridley Scott at the time, but perhaps I'd seen a trailer. All I remember is that I wanted that poster, and so, on a Sunday morning when no one would be around, I drove back to Cupid's in my Dad's BMW 2002, and I brought with me a long handled tree lopper that I hoped might do the job. It was about ten in the morning. No one was looking, so I climbed up onto the Beemer's roof and, holding the lopper high above my head, I reached for the closest metal clamp that held the poster in place. The lopper was designed to cut medium-width tree branches, so it took a bit of prying and tugging to slice it through the metal clamp, but once I got the first one, the other came quickly.
I was fairly well jazzed, because I was 19 and I'd just bagged me a totally cool, movie theater worthy, chromium framed poster for an upcoming movie called "Alien" that looked totally bitchen, whether I'd heard of it beforehand or not.
About a month later, I saw another poster, set high again on a lamppost. I can't be sure it was once again in front of Cupid's. Something tells me this one was located in the parking lot of Thrifty Drug Store at the intersection of Nordhoff and Reseda Boulevards. I used the same method to cut it down, climbing onto the roof of the 2002 on a Sunday morn. Again, I cannot recall if I'd heard of the film beforehand, but this poster looked especially impressive and I'd have definitely wanted it whether I knew of the movie or not, because I'd read the book it was based on.
That book was "The Amityville Horror". The poster I'd just cut down was for the film of the same name. Whoever did the layout was an advertising genius on the same level as the guy who created the poster for "Dracula Has Risen From The Grave". For the "Amityville" poster, the infamous house was shown in a reddish hue, at night, with it's "evil eye" windows glowing. In big letters over that image was printed the tagline, "For God's Sake, Get Out"!
Good Lordy Moses did that ever have an effect on me. I mean, it didn't terrify me the way the Dracula poster had in 1968, at the Reseda Theatre. I was now nineteen, and had come to love horror, not only in movies but in books as well. I'd discovered Stephen King in early 1977, and later that year, I picked up a best seller called "The Amityville Horror" by author Jay Anson. If I'm not mistaken, I read that book at Christmastime in 1977 and finished it straight through over the course of a couple nights.
My friends, I now must now solemnly tell you that in all my years as a Horror Fanatic, there have only been three things that have ever kept me awake at night. One was the first time I saw "The Exorcist". I was 13 years old and scared witless. The second was my first screening of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", which also occured in late '77. I'd never seen anything as horrific, yet realistic, as if there might be insane psychos living in the boondocks near you. I literally did not sleep a wink after seeing that film for the first time.
The third thing that scared me into sleeplessness was reading "The Amityville Horror". It was based on a true story, which always heightens the effect, and there is something about a book and the written word, the way in which words go directly into the brain to be immediately processed, that makes the absorption of a written story different from one that is watched on a movie screen. Movies can be incredibly terrifying because they are visual and therefore visceral. But a book can get into your subconscious, word by word and page by page.
I was genuinely shook up by "The Amityville Horror", and I didn't sleep at all on the night I finished it. It literally scared the stuffing out of me, and it took me a few days to recover. Seeing the tagline on the movie poster brought back all the fright I remembered (and by the way, you'll recall that I mentioned above that the Lamppost Movie Poster Campaign was short-lived. That was probably because guys like me were stealing them, haha. I noticed that other ones went missing also, so I wasn't alone in my thefts).
Anyway, now we'll fast forward again to June 1979, and I'm driving away with the poster in the back seat of the 2002. I'm "not skeered" of Amityville anymore, or at least not terrified, and I'm stoked to discover there's a movie coming out. I can't wait to see it. But I never did.
So what happened? Why did I end up not seeing the movie until tonight, over 40 years later? Why did I not see the "The Amityville Horror" until October 30, 2019?
I suppose the short answer to that question is movie reviews. Let me state right off the bat that I stopped years ago reading reviews prior to seeing a film. Part of this was because critics were starting to give too much away, but it was also that, half the time, they were full of crap about the movie. Nowdays I'll still skim over a review or two after seeing a movie, and I enjoy reading the comments of fellow moviegoers on IMDB, but I never read a word beforehand, because in the old days I either got exposed to spoilers or I was prejudiced against a movie by the critic's often wrongheaded judgement.
And that was what happened with "The Amityville Horror" in 1979. I believe it was a Summer release. I was hugely looking forward to it, but when the reviews came out, they were all lukewarm. I read the one in the L.A. Times and heard a couple on TV, and all of them said that, basically, the movie didn't deliver the goods. That it didn't live up to the book, etc., etc. I put a lot of stock in reviews in those days and so, disappointed, I skipped the movie to avoid a major letdown. In recent years, since the advent of dvds, I've seen the disc sitting on the racks at various libraries, but even so, I never checked it out. That's the effect those reviews had on me. The book was so incredibly scary that I couldn't go near the movie because it (supposedly) didn't live up to it's name.
I even rented the freakin' 2005 remake, for God's Sake! It was okay, but not very memorable (are any remakes?). But still, I avoided the original.
Until last night. And that was only because I needed a horror film to finish off our Halloween Horror Movie Season. Author's note : There won't be a movie tonight because I'll be handing out candy at Pearl's. But yeah, I couldn't find anything else on the shelf yesterday at Northridge Libe, and I didn't wanna do the public domain thing again, so I threw in the towel and said "what the hey", and I checked out "The Amityville Horror", original version.
I will never listen to a critic again. You should never listen to a critic again, either, unless the review is about "Friday the 13th Part 17", or the latest Schwarzanegger flick. But even then, you don't need a critic to tell you those movies are gonna suck. So basically - screw the critics. And wait a minute because I know what you're gonna say : "Hey Ad, what about you? Aren't you being a critic with all your movie reviews? Should we therefore say 'screw you, too'? ".
I reply that "no, you shouldn't. I am writing all my reviews from the standpoint of a fan. Professional critics often have agendas, sometimes political or cultural, that they - in part - may judge a film upon. They are also gonna throw "milieu" and "oeuvre" at you every chance they get, something I would only do when faced with no other option. Critics also use a thesaurus-worth of "film theory" terminology, which adds words to their column to help fill their contractual quota, but which read like a bunch of hogwash. I didn't take "film theory" (hell, I didn't even go to college!) so you are thankfully spared such nonsense from me. :) No, I am not a critic but just a gigantic fan of motion pictures.
And I say that "The Amityville Horror" was really good. Because it is now Halloween afternoon, and I have errands to run before heading back to Pearl's for Trick-Or-Treat, I may not have time to write as lengthy a summary as I usually do, but lemme give it a shot.
It is important to note that "Amityville" had a fairly well known director, a guy named Stuart Rosenberg, an all-purpose Hollywood craftsman of the old school who could make any kind of picture. He made "Cool Hand Luke" for instance, and later "The Pope of Greenwich Village". So he wasn't tied down to the horror genre, and therefore he could come in looking to simply make an interesting movie, rather than be tied down to a horror formula.
Though the picture was produced by our old pal Samuel Z. Arkoff and released by his American International Pictures, it looks like Rosenberg was given some money to work with. The late '70s was the era of Big Budget, Two Hour Horror Movies like "The Omen" and "The Fury". "Amityville" runs two hours, so Rosenberg is able to take his time to develop the story, and that is the focus of the film rather than a lot of shock-and-awe, jump scare moments . It's all about the history of the House and it's effect on the new occupants, the Lutz family, and mostly the father George Lutz, who begins to change in personality shortly after moving in. The beginning of the film depicts a gruesome multiple murder that took place a year earlier. This happened in real life. A young man named Ronald deFeo killed his entire family while they slept, and the way it is shown in the movie, in quick cuts, is both blessedly brief yet 100% shocking and terrifying. Right away, you know Rosenberg isn't fooling around.
George and Kathleen Lutz are aware of the murders, but purchase the house anyway. They are getting it at a discount, and it's a big property, perfect for their kids. Ronald deFeo claimed he heard voices coming from the walls, and it was "they" who caused him to kill his family. Within days, we can see something similar happening to George Lutz. James Brolin gives a powerful performance here, slowly breaking down as he is overtaken by the same influence. He struggles to hold onto his sanity but his eyes reveal a growing madness......(to be continued tonight at the Usual Time).
Happy Halloween! Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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