Амитивилль қорқынышы: 1979 жылғы фильм

1979 film

The Amityville Horror is a 1979 American supernatural horror film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, and starring James Brolin, Margot Kidder, and Rod Steiger. The film follows a young couple who purchase a home haunted by combative supernatural forces. It is based on Jay Anson's 1977 book of the same name, which documented the alleged paranormal experiences of the Lutz family who briefly resided in the Amityville, New York home where Ronald DeFeo Jr. committed the mass murder of his family in 1974. It is the first entry in the long running Amityville Horror film series, and was remade in 2005. Executive producer Samuel Z. Arkoff originated the project after purchasing the right's to Anson's book, and it was initially conceived as a television film, which Anson adapted himself. When Arkoff rejected the teleplay, it was reworked by screenwriter Sandor Stern as a feature film. The producers intended to shoot the film in the actual DeFeo residence, but its owners denied them permission. Filming instead began on location in Toms River, New Jersey in October 1978, followed by interior shoots occurring at the Metro Goldwyn Mayer sound stages in Los Angeles, which were completed just before the Christmas holiday. The Amityville Horror had its world premiere at the Museum of Modern Art on July 24, 1979, before receiving a wide theatrical release three days later. The film was a major commercial success and one of the most profitable films released by its distributor, American International Pictures. It went on to gross over $80 million in North America, becoming one of the highest grossing independent films of all time, At the time of the film's release, King had unfavorably reviewed the film for Rolling Stone, in which he deemed it a "simplistic and transparent" story, an assertion he recanted in Danse Macabre, writing that the "canards" who dismissed it "really miss the point, and as a lifelong horror fan, I should have known it. Stupid, simplistic, and transparent are also perfectly good words to describe the tale of The Hook, but that doesn't change the fact that the story is an enduring classic of its kind." King attributed the film's significant commercial success to audiences identifying with the lead characters, a middle class couple who take a large financial risk in purchasing a home, only for it to have dire intrapersonal consequences within the family. Samuel Z. Arkoff, an executive producer and head of American International Pictures, contacted CBS asking to produce the film as a theatrical feature, offering CBS the rights to broadcast it on their network in exchange. At the time of his casting, the script was unfinished, so Brolin obtained a copy of Anson's novel. Brolin read it until two o'clock in the morning. He had hung up a pair of his pants in the room earlier and during an especially tense passage of the book, the pants fell to the floor. Brolin jumped from his chair in fright. Convinced that the material would make an effective film, Brolin agreed to star. Kidder was cast in the role of Kathy Lutz after her breakthrough performance as Lois Lane in Richard Donner's Superman the year prior. Commenting during an interview promoting the film, Steiger said: "This is my last maneuver in letting Hollywood know that I'm in good shape physically."

For the location shooting of The Amityville Horror, the production scouted various locations on the East Coast, including in Maine and South Carolina, before settling on Toms River, New Jersey. The producers had initially sought to film at the real Amityville residence in Long Island, New York, but local authorities denied them permission. In August 1978, local Toms River newspapers published articles seeking submissions from homeowners who were willing to lease their residence to the production. The Dutch Colonial home that was ultimately chosen was converted to resemble the 112 Ocean Avenue residence in Amityville. The house was leased by the production for $12,000, and a boathouse was constructed on the property for an additional $31,000. Principal photography began in Toms River in late October 1978. Additional exteriors were shot at Toms River's Riverwood Park Recreation Center, the Ocean County Courthouse, and Reynolds Tavern. After completion of the location shooting in November 1978, Filming completed at the MGM Sound Stage 26 just before the Christmas holiday, on December 22, 1978. Largely practical special effects were employed while filming: While shooting the scene in which Father Delaney is swarmed by flies, for example, actor Rod Steiger was doused in sugar water and beer, causing the insects to swarm him.

Lalo Schifrin was hired to compose the original score for The Amityville Horror. When beginning the composition of the main theme, he was given the static image of the home which plays over the film's opening credits sequence. Recalling his inspiration, Schifrin said: "Since a family with three kids was about to move into the mansion, ignoring its past, I got the idea to write a haunting and distorted lullaby for three children's voices." In addition to the vocal accompaniment, Schifrin composed the film's score using a harp, celeste, violins, and violas, aspiring to create a "chilling" contrast between the voices and orchestral arrangements. To incorporate more "menacing sounds," he utilized low pitched string arrangements, a bass clarinet, a brass muted French horn, and a waterphone. It is sometimes alleged that Schifrin's score was the one rejected in 1973 for The Exorcist, but Schifrin has denied this in interviews. Schifrin's score earned the film a nomination an Academy Award for Best Original Score, It was given a wide theatrical release in the United States three days later, on July 27, 1979.

The Amityville Horror opened in 748 theaters, and grossed $7.8 million during its opening weekend. By September 1979, the studio reported that the film had earned $41 million during its first 31 days of release, which at that time had expanded to 940 theaters. At the conclusion of its theatrical run, the film had grossed a total of $86.4 million at the U. S. and Canadian box offices (nearly twenty times its budget),

In 2019, Forbes published an inflation adjusted list ranking horror film grosses based upon contemporary ticket prices, in which The Amityville Horror ranked as the eighth highest grossing horror film of all time, with an adjusted gross of $310.3 million at the time of the article's publication.

In his review, Roger Ebert described the film as "dreary and terminally depressing," writing that, "The problem with The Amityville Horror is that, in a very real sense, there's nothing there. We watch two hours of people being frightened and dismayed, and we ask ourselves   what for? If it's real, let it have happened to them. Too bad, Lutzes! If it's made up, make it more entertaining. If they can't make up their minds   why should we?" A staff review in People said Rod Steiger was overacting and that the film was "ridiculous." Tim Pulleine of the Monthly Film Bulletin declared that the film "proves the most satisfying excursion into no frills spine chilling for some time." and that "The film is constantly well played and provides Rod Steiger with his best opportunity in ages for all stops out bravura." John Simon of the National Review described the film as "dreadful." Janet Maslin of The New York Times criticized the film for containing repetitive gimmicks, noting that, "so many horror movie clichés have been assembled under the roof of a single haunted house that the effect is sometimes mind bogglingly messy. There is apparently very little to which the director, Stuart Rosenberg, will not resort. But he still can't come up with anything more hair raising than the trick of having one Lutz experience a severe start when he or she doesn't realize other Lutzes are in the room. Whenever Mr. Rosenberg stumbles upon an idea as good as this one, he's bound to repeat it over and over again." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a favorable review, writing that, "what it does scarily well is make a very attractive three story colonial (which would go for 300 thou easily if only it had a different case history) the villain of the piece. The horror is all the more effective because it arises not in some cobwebby and batty castle nor on an unlisted planet in an unnumbered millennium, but around the corner and up our street." The film has received some favorable contemporary reviews, including from historian James F. Broderick, who praised it as "an effective horror movie that succeeds largely because the performers take the over the top material seriously   The film is taut, tense, and filled with the bizarre, unsettling events chronicled in the book." In a 2013 assessment, John Kenneth Muir called The Amityville Horror a "blunt and effective horror film" and discussed author Stephen King's analysis of the film's subtext of financial turmoil. On internet review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 31% of 45 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review, and the average rating is 4.8/10. Its consensus reads, "Dull and disappointing, the best that can be said for The Amityville Horror is that it set a low bar for its many sequels and remakes".

Despite its largely unfavorable critical reception at the time of its original release, Cultural critic Nicholas Mirzoeff wrote in 2012 that "the vulnerability of the local housebody has become part of the wider cultural web of implication" ever since the film's release, summarizing: "In Stuart Rosenberg's film, when George Lutz decides to move into the house, he declares: "A house has no memory." The rest of the film, and this genre of recent horror cinema in general, is dedicated to refuting that proposition." The British Film Institute included it in a top ten list of great haunted house films in 2013, noting: "The half baked debate over how much of this really happened tends to obscure the fact that is rather a good haunted house chiller that didn’t really deserve the critical drubbing it got when it was first released  A series of mostly awful sequels followed as well as a pointless 2005 remake, all helping cement Amityville and the story of its haunting in modern legend." In 2018, Esquire ranked it the fifth scariest haunted house film ever made, and in a 2021 public survey undertaken by SWNS Media Group, it was ranked as the seventh greatest horror film of all time. Star Kidder reflected upon the film negatively in a 2009 interview, calling it "a piece of shit. I couldn’t believe that anyone would take that seriously. I was laughing my whole way through it, much to the annoyance of Rod Steiger, who took the whole thing very seriously. At the time, my agent proposed sort of a “one for me, one for them” policy. That was one for them. It was the crazy Christians who made it a hit. They wanted people to believe in the devil and possessions and haunted houses and all that hooey."