James Brolin and the Devil

Last Wednesday night (actually Thursday morning, around 2), I watched The Amityville Horror, which scared me as a child and stars James Brolin. The opening is still really creepy and shocking. As in, if you're thinking at all while watching, you might not want to watch the rest of the movie because it's not so much that it's scary, but it's...upsetting. And then, as soon as it's settled in with the awful and the afraid and the based-on-a-true-story of it all, it gets insanely cheesy. And boring. How sad that this horrifying memory from my childhood is ultimately hard to watch because it's bad and not much else. The main part of the story, really, is about James Brolin trying to be a good dad to his new wife's family. At one point, Margot Kidder wears one leg-warmer, or maybe a tight, and does ballet moves topless with a flower in her hair. Weird.

So then, the next night (actually Friday morning circa 3a.m.), on the Sci-Fi Channel, I watched The Car, which is another 1970s horror film starring Mr. James Brolin. The Car is about a you-know-what that drives around--empty--mowing people down. The effects are primitive, to put it kindly, so no one actually ever gets hit by the car or even rolls up over the hood. They just sort of spring up into the air, followed by a shot of either the grill or the hubcabs passing by. That car is pissed. James Brolin is the local law, and he's gonna get to the bottom of it. The weird part is that there's all this character stuff between killings, with Brolin being a single dad and trying to warm his daughters up to his new girlfriend. Like maybe the satanic car part of the script was secondary, just like the satanic house was before, and James Brolin spent the 1970s thinking he was making family movies.

Good scary movies: Sisters; Rear Window; Alien; The Vanishing (Dutch); the first fifteen minutes of Scream