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Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 122 из 359Moviesproduce fiction as a byproduct the same way that boiling water produces steam . . . or as horror movies produce art.
If we were going to discuss the book version of The Amityville Horror (we're not, so relax) it would be important for us to first decide if we were talking about a fiction or a nonfiction work.
But as far as the movie is concerned, it just doesn't matter; either way it's fiction.
So let us see The Amityville Horror only as a story, unmodified either by "true" or "make-believe." It is simple and straightforward, as most horror tales are. The Lutzes, a young married couple with two or three kids (Cathy Lutz's by a previous marriage), buy a house in Amityville. Previous to their tenancy, a young man has murdered his whole family at the direction of "voices." For this reason, the Lutzes get the house cheap. But it wouldn't have been cheap at half the price, they soon discover, because the house is haunted.
Manifestations include black goop that comes bubbling out of the toilets (and before the festivities are over, it comes oozing out of the walls and the stairs as well), a roomful of flies, a rocking chair that rocks by itself, and something in the cellar that causes the dog to dig everlastingly at the wall. A window crashes on the little boy's fingers. The little girl develops an "invisible friend" who is apparently really there. Eyes glow outside the window at three in the morning. And so on.
Worst of all, from the audience's standpoint, Lutz himself (James Brolin) apparently falls out of love with his wife (Margot Kidder) and begins to develop a meaningful relationship with his ax. Before things are done, we are drawn to the inescapable conclusion that he is tuning up for something more than splitting wood.
It's probably bad form for a writer to recant something he's already written, but I'm going to nevertheless. I did an article on movies for Rolling Stone in late 1979, and I now think I was needlessly hard on The Amityville Horror in that piece. I called it a stupid sort of story, which it is; I called it simplistic and transparent, which it also is (David Chute, a film critic for The Boston Phoenix , quite rightly called it "The Amityville Nonsense"), but these canards 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-in fact, those words probably go a long way toward explaining why it is a classic of its kind.
If we were going to discuss the book version of The Amityville Horror (we're not, so relax) it would be important for us to first decide if we were talking about a fiction or a nonfiction work.
But as far as the movie is concerned, it just doesn't matter; either way it's fiction.
So let us see The Amityville Horror only as a story, unmodified either by "true" or "make-believe." It is simple and straightforward, as most horror tales are. The Lutzes, a young married couple with two or three kids (Cathy Lutz's by a previous marriage), buy a house in Amityville. Previous to their tenancy, a young man has murdered his whole family at the direction of "voices." For this reason, the Lutzes get the house cheap. But it wouldn't have been cheap at half the price, they soon discover, because the house is haunted.
Manifestations include black goop that comes bubbling out of the toilets (and before the festivities are over, it comes oozing out of the walls and the stairs as well), a roomful of flies, a rocking chair that rocks by itself, and something in the cellar that causes the dog to dig everlastingly at the wall. A window crashes on the little boy's fingers. The little girl develops an "invisible friend" who is apparently really there. Eyes glow outside the window at three in the morning. And so on.
Worst of all, from the audience's standpoint, Lutz himself (James Brolin) apparently falls out of love with his wife (Margot Kidder) and begins to develop a meaningful relationship with his ax. Before things are done, we are drawn to the inescapable conclusion that he is tuning up for something more than splitting wood.
It's probably bad form for a writer to recant something he's already written, but I'm going to nevertheless. I did an article on movies for Rolling Stone in late 1979, and I now think I was needlessly hard on The Amityville Horror in that piece. I called it a stupid sort of story, which it is; I called it simplistic and transparent, which it also is (David Chute, a film critic for The Boston Phoenix , quite rightly called it "The Amityville Nonsense"), but these canards 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-in fact, those words probably go a long way toward explaining why it is a classic of its kind.