This review/rambling reflects the original 64 minute cut
It’s Amityville but on the kind of budget that either produces charming and cheap trash goodness or unwatchable awkwardness like a blind virgin fumbling around with an inexperienced and sociopathic prostitute. Flip the coin, roll the dice and call your mama for advice because regional no-budget horror is a game only for the adventurous. After opening credits set to tribal drum beats (sending my head to fuzzy memories of Fulci’s Zombi 2) and synth abuse, a narrator warns us that the film we are about to watch is based on true events in “the world of the supernatural”. He also lets us know that the order and sequence of events has been changed for dramatic effect. Glad there’s no bullshitting here. More talk about Satanic cults, God worshippers and angels of darkness. That brings us to Louise and Bill Foster moving into a three-bedroom home following their recent marriage. The narrator continues that the purchase price was reasonable… TOO REASONABLE! Louise starts narrating and I already dislike her. She and Bill have their first big argument immediately… I’m talking as they’re moving shit in. Foreboding music plays as they make up through talk of coffee and Louise hangs a cross on the wall. Bill smokes a cigarette, Louise unpacks in the kitchen so she can make coffee and the cross supernaturally turns upside down. GASP! This scene takes much longer than it should but it does allow Bill the chance to smoke another cigarette. The couple enjoys their coffee and Louise notices the cross ain’t sitting right but a knock on the door draws their attention away from things. There’s nobody at the door. GASP! Well, Louise rehangs the cross, Bill chases the phantom door knocker and slime (maybe a thick pudding) oozes from the stove. Bill blames his wife for the slimy and stinky mess in the kitchen. Bill investigates an outside noise and a chair lazily attacks Louise. This terrifies her to no end… or she may just be really constipated. Anything is possible in the war with evil. Noises in the dark, shadows in the shadows and some atrocious lighting really hammers home the fact that you can’t see shit and wouldn’t know anything spooky were happening if it wasn’t for the oppressive score. We also get our protagonists/idiots arguing a bunch and laying on dramatics with all the skill of a mannequin recently granted life with the catch of having to deal with a brain injury. Morning coffee makes itself (Does this war with Satan know no bounds?!) and phantom fingers run through the wife’s hair and grope her as she does the dishes. She has a fit or she may just be severely constipated. Flip a coin. More slime (thick toothpaste?) appears, things get odorous, Bill smokes, Louise portrays distress with all the subtlety of a sentient sledgehammer attacking a room of glass ornaments, an off-putting chat on the beach between the married couple leads to them realizing they need to call in a “ghost chaser” (they also crack jokes about the spooky molestation), demon rape (whilst Bill smokes in the living room), spontaneous newspaper combustion, paranormal thunder, they’re told they need to leave immediately (yeah, that’ll happen) by a blonde psychic who also warns them of the house’s awful history before fleeing the place due to its evil (this is done after a walkthrough of the place that will put anyone who is the slightest bit tired right to sleep) and finally Bill decides to do his own damn exorcism while Louise takes a bath. It comes to a close with a black-robed and knife-wielding figure appearing and the man of the house firing his gun in a pitch black kitchen at random spots. Amazingly, Louise doesn’t take a stray bullet to the dome. The heroes flee into the night and the narrator lets us know they left their dream home and never returned. Wow. What a thrilling climax. If the effects of opium tried its hand at directing The Amityville Horror utilizing nothing but people who lied on their résumés about acting experience, production notes from a particularly tired Andy Milligan and the special effects team behind Maury Shankleman’s Bar Mitzvah video something like Satan War would be the end result. That’s a long-winded way of me saying this thing is a completely boring yet hypnotically alluring slice of no-budget horror.
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