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Next up we've got three little sweet gems;

• An American Haunting - Donald Sutherland meets the Bell Witch legend.
• An American Werewolf in London - John Landis does lycanthropy.
• And Now The Screaming Starts - Amicus ghostly revenge film.

And thus does the enthusiasm come flooding back...

Amityville Sequels

Amityville Horror II: The Possession
1982 • Dir: Damiano Damiani • Some folk, meh

Okay, so I'm going to keep the reviews short for each of the three Amityville sequels I've got.

Amityville II is (very) loosely based on the original DeFeo murders. Substitute DeFeo for Montelli and Ronnie for Sonny, add demonic possession, badda-bing badda-boom, you got Amityville II.

As supernatural horror, Amityville II is kind of silly. As a portrait of a brutally dysfunctional family, it's pretty much spot on. Some of the intra-family violence in the film is reputed to actually have occurred in the DeFeo family, which lends a very nasty frisson to the film. Ronnie's dad is supposed to have beaten up Ronnie, and Ronnie's mother quite often. Ronnie DID pull a rifle on his father at one stage. There the similarity pretty much ends. Amityville II was based on well-known parapsychologist Hans Holzer's book on the Amityville house and name-drops a few of the other 'theories' - indian burial ground, witch, etc - as to why the house on Ocean Avenue is 'haunted'. By the way, no Indian burial ground has ever been found under or near the Amityville house, no evidence that a witch ever lived on or near the site has likewise ever been found.

Amityville II is pretty much a battle of wills between the 'demon' that is 'possessing' Sonny, and the local priest Father Adamsky. The battle of wills is pretty much at the end of the third act, and is meh, okay.

Quite possibly the biggest ick in the film is the incest between Sonny and his younger sister Patricia. I feel oogy just thinking about it. The only thing that made it a meagre fraction more bearable was learning that Diane Franklin who plays Trish Montelli was 20 yrs old when she did the film, because boy howdy does she look about 15. Ick. Until today, I didn't piece together that she's the french chick in 'Better Off Dead' - one of my favourite 80's teen films. Cool.

As a devil film, Amityville II is highly derivative of The Exorcist. If you've seen both, you'll know what I mean. As a domestic abuse film, the supernatural content cheapens it. As a dramatisation of the DeFeo murders it's highly fanciful, and too saturated with Hans Holzer's peculiar theories.

The only thing that scared me in this film was the incest. The rest made me nearly go to sleep. When I have to go outside in the 5º cold to have a cigarette to wake up, I know the film is seriously boooooring.

Stars: 2 out of 5

Amityville III: The Demon aka Amityville 3-D
1983 • Dir: Richard Fleischer • St: Tony Roberts, small role w/ Meg Ryan

I'm well into hating Amityville by now. This film was the 3D entry into the series. In a nutshell, reporter for mysticism debunking magazine and friend unveil seance fraud at Amityville house. Reporter later buys house and moves in. House tries to kill him and family with standard Amityville hauntedness. Well/gateway to hell in basement. Flies. Spooky photos. Stuff. Drowned girl seen in house moments before reveal that she is dead. Oooooooooooh!

I felt lightly brain damaged after watching this fiasco. Tony Roberts looks like Frankenstein with jug ears and poodle hair.

No point, no meaning, lost, lost in world of Amityville shittiness. Please rescue me before I lose my mind. When I'm done with this project, I'm taking a hammer to this disc.

Stars: 1 out of 5

The Amityville Curse
1990 • Dir: Tom Berry • St: Kim Coates

This time we're still in Amityville, but not at the famous shack on Ocean Avenue. We're apparently drawing from a Hans Holzer book still. The set up for this, the SIXTH Amityville film (yeah, seriously, I know), is a bunch of yuppies invest in a house - you know, to clean it up and sell it on for more cash - before falling victim to the spoo-doo-dookiness of life in the quiet town of Amityville.

Two couples and a single have many spooky experiences - dreams, visions, sounds. Oh and one of them is going seriously bonkers.

The background is that their house was once a parochial house for the local dog-collar sky pilot. He gets killed in the confessional booth, and all the stuff from the local church, where he died, is now stored in the basement of his old house. This includes a haunted confessional. Yes, go back and read that again. Why would you be a priest in Amityville? It has to suck major dog's balls. "Well father, we're shifting you to Amityville." "What in the FECK!"

Murders happen, and the sins of the past are about to be exposed.

I'm not going to reveal the ending, but what I will say is simply this: This one wasn't that bad. It suffers from having the Amityville tag attached, and could easily be set anywhere else, and be a mildly pleasant little horror film.

I may spare this one the hammer of filmic justice.

Stars: 2 out of 5

Another Amityville Addendum

So I made a mistake, the Amityville house is not for sale for 1.5M USD. Still, check it out, now renumbered as 108 Ocean Avenue, and without the weird quarter circle windows: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/108-Ocean-Ave-Amityville-NY-11701/32596605_zpid/

Amityville addendum

Something I should have added to the wrap-up on Amityville. In one of the doco special features, Margot Kidder talked about meeting horror fans because of the film. She said that she liked meeting horror fans because, unlike a lot of other movie fans, horror fans were actually quite intelligent and seemed generally quite knowledgeable about cinema.

That's really nice isn't it? Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Margot Kidder, I salute you.

And now, shower me with your pity...

For next I must contend with not one, not two but THREE, THREE Amityville sequels.

(from the ever-helpful Wikipedia)
• Amityville II: The Possession (1982) based on the DeFeo story, and with some fascinatingly repulsive incest thrown in.
• Amityville 3D (1983) (made in 3-D, and has also been released as Amityville III: The Demon) Meg Ryan in trouble again.
• The Amityville Curse (1990). Where someone buys a haunted LAMP or some shit from an Amityville garage sale. EDIT: It's not a lamp, I just had no recollection of what happened in this film since I saw it 5 years ago.

Wikipedia also reliably informs me that nine Amityville movies have been made in total. NINE. The mind boggles.

The Amityville Horror

1979 • Dir: Stuart Rosenberg • St: James Brolin, Margot Kidder, Rod Steiger

Premise: George and Kathy Lutz move into their new home, but no sooner than they do, than the usual raft of 'my house is possessed by satan' phenomena begins occurring. This is based on a true story. Though the truth of the story is more than a little dubious...

Analysis: The Amityville Horror is the scariest movie in the world... about mortgage fraud. Like Altered States, I saw this film when it first came out when I was a kid. I was 8 when I first saw The Amityville Horror at a drive in, and at the time it scared the living shit out of me.

But I'm 30 years older and wiser now, and The Amityville Horror just seems kind of... hokey to me now. Let me first say, that I don't get 'house haunted by satan' films. Why? If you're the 10,000-odd year old rebel Lucifer, why in the name of all that's shitty would you want to haunt a house and scare the bejeezus out of a surveyor, his wife and her 3 kids by a previous marriage? Why would you appear to the little girl as a walking on two legs pig motherfucker called Jody? Why would you manifest to a priest as the strong scent of feces? I would credit the Devil with a little more integrity than that.

Of course, the house was never haunted. Yes Ronnie DeFeo did kill his family. Yes, he did say he heard voices in the house telling him to kill. But snorting all that coke, like 'Butch' DeFeo did provides an alternate reason. Satan or drug psychosis? Why not let Occam's Razor decide kids!

The families who've lived in the Amityville house since have never had a problem, apart from incessant armies of gawkers and amateur exorcists and ghost hunters wanting to 'investigate' the house. It's up for sale now if you're curious, at the sweet price if 1.5M US$.

Here's what many believe to be the true story of the Amityville house. Drugfucked, bullied son Ronnie DeFeo decides to kill his mum and dad one night, with help from the older sister. She kill their younger siblings as well. Ronnie cracks, kills his sister as well. Ronnie gets dragged off to the booby hatch. Here's a hint kids, don't push for an insanity plea if you're actually crazy. Someone might believe you and sling you in a rubber room for the rest of forever.

Sometime later, George and Kathy Lutz move in to the Amityville house, now with a nice price reduction due to the 'a multiple murder happened here' discount. George, whose business is doing poorly, and has just taken on the expense of a new wife and family, ever so wisely massively over-extends his finances with a crippling mortgage as well.

George and Kathy want to default and bail after a month, but Mr Bank Kill-Joy says 'No'. With the help of their lawyer and several rattan-covered bottles of 1970's chianti, they concoct the 'my house is haunted, so, er... by the way, I shouldn't have to pay off the mortgage' story.

The end.

There's really a lot that's terrible about this film. James Brolin's limp attempt at crazyeyes, Rod Steiger's ferocious, hammy scenery-chewing acting, and just the sheer nonsense of most of the phenomena - 'Hey there's a glowy eyed pig standing in the window waving at me, better axe it to death! Who wants bacon?' - makes The Amityville Horror a film that massively suffers from a nostalgic re-viewing. Do yourself a favour and watch instead the documentary that comes with most versions of the original film, the documentary that makes out what big-ass LIARS George and Kathy were.

Stars: 1 out of 5

Altered States

1980 • Dir: Ken Russell • St: William Hurt, Blair Brown, Charles Haid

Premise: Eddie Jessup begins experimenting with isolation tanks and hallucinogenics to see if there is some underlying common race memory of mankind that explains spiritual phenomena. Or something.

Analysis: I can't really call this film horror, but then again it's also called science fiction, which I don't think fits either. In the end, I keep it on the horror shelf because it scared the piss out of me when I saw it as a kid.

This is William Hurt's first feature film, and also quietly features the first film appearance of a wee Drew Barrymore. Adapted from Paddy Chayefsky's first, last and only novel (Chayefsky himself adapted the screen play) and directed by the renegade director Ken Russell, Altered States is one incredibly messed-up crazy movie.

The central plot of the film revolves around Prof Eddie Jessup's experiments in a sensory deprivation tank while knocking back shooters of a hallucinogen that may be intended to be ayahuasca.

Eddie's first trip is a cue for the usual gaudy visual madness of director Russell, including a trip to the Garden of Eden, and the occasional side trip into a flaming Hell. Not much of a one for drugs myself, I watch Altered States so I don't have to take peyote or acid. To my dying days I will probably imagine that acid trips must be like a Ken Russell film.

The film really does feel pulled in two directions - the intelligent dialogue, original John Lilly research, and search for purpose in man's evolutionary history is Chayefsky's, while the lurid, gaudy and religious overtones are undeniably Russell's. The two are said to have argued quite a bit during filming, causing Chayefsky to have his screenplay credited as 'Sidney Aaron'. To be honest, while Russell's satanic, crucified goat-head figure is what I mainly remember seeing from when I was a kid, it is Jessup's obsessive drive to find this shared genetic memory of humanity, and the idea of physical regression that I find most intriguing.

With an adult viewing, Ken Russell's Garden of Eden and devilish/hellish imagery look, well, a bit silly. One moment everyone's talking soberly about DNA, anthropology and evolution, and the next a snake/Edenic serpent is choking Jessup/Adam to death under an umbrella. You've got to give credit where credit's due - Ken Russell's an amazing lunatic.

The film still leaves me pondering: the notion of storing a genetic memory of the entirety of physical and mental evolution in all of us, is a heady idea. It makes even the humblest person feel like an incredible repository of the tragedies and successes of the human species. The idea of accessing this heritage is a staggering one. If Altered States teaches us anything it's how much more amazing it would have been if not helmed by the sexy nun/heaven and hell obsessed Russell.

Is it horror? Change, mutation, murder, fundamental questions about human existence, an underlying nothingness to existence that could swallow you whole - sounds sufficiently horrific to me.

Stars: 3.5 out of 5