The Amityville Horror -- 1979 -- R

The Amityville Horror is one of those movies that the filmmakers claimed was based on a true story, but snopes.com lets you know that's a bunch of nonsense. Regardless, this film is about a family that moves into a house a year after a guy killed his parents and four siblings while they slept, claiming that voices in the house told him to do it. During their short stay, which the film says was 28 days at the beginning, weird things happen in the house such as voices, flies, black goo in the toilets, the daughter having an imaginary "friend" that actually (and freakishly) exists, and the father slowly losing his mind.

The overall package here is pretty good. Since they wanted the feeling of it to be based in reality, you really don't see much in the way of monsters or anything. Everything is implied or just heard. It makes for the whole thing to be very creepy and certainly makes you question the odd noises you hear in your own house at night.

However, we're not without some question marks. I have barely started and already odd things happen. 

The father who comes to bless the house and is run out. That's cool. Why didn't he tell the family then? Sure, they weren't there, but wouldn't that be worth waiting around for?

Then the thing in the basement. He goes downstairs and acts like he's never been there before. To top that, there's a cobweb in the way he has to duck under. A realtor would not have left that.

Then the kid decides to knock out the light bulb and fall down the stairs. Weird. It would have been something more interesting if the popped bulb came into play later, but it didn't. The whole thing was a non-incident.

Meeting of the priests: there's a big argument as to what's really out at the house. I have a suggestion: go there. If they turned him down; I'd be ok, but he never even suggested it. He should have insisted on it. But no. Like so many things, he kept silent at the opportune time.

His friend says to get away from thehouse for a couple of hours...but he's been out all day. I can get the reason why the friends really came over, but they could have found a better reason. Oh yeah, where'd the motorcycle come from>

I don't think I'd've made it to the 17th day. The night before day 17 was one of the freakiest, and I think that would have been it for me. Beyond this, we get labels for days 18 & 19 and then it's "The Last Day". No nothing significant happened between day 19 and day 28? Maybe it was the trailer that said 28 days, but I know that was established as an overall time frame somewhere.

Dang, that is one freakin' long drive from town. The sun was lower in the sky when she left and it's pitch black when she gets home. As I recall, they aren't too far from a main city unless she went a long way for a headline making news story.

The good points really out weight the question marks, though. That's me being nitpicky. The male lead was well developed enough for me as well as his wife. The kids are gone for most of the film, which weakens it only marginally. The stuff that happens in the house makes the house a character of its own. The line "houses don't have memories" couldn't have been more inaccurate than in this film.

Truly a freakish addition to the haunted house canon where the bad guy is a demon possessed house that not even a priest can escape the wrath of (which granted loses a point of believability in my book since Jesus is stronger than a demon and his followers have the power to withstand its influence. A man of God should make the demon flee, not the other way around. Satan doesn't have that type of power over God's people). But for a good scare and one to make you question those bumps in the night, it works very well. It also makes you wnat to bless your own house once you get home.