The Amityville Horror

Last weekend I was in Seattle visiting Lorna! You can't have a proper Bernhoft-Benivegna reunion without cooking lots of Mexican food, swapping favorite serial killer/cult based Netflix documentaries and bringing Nail Polish Sunday back from the dead. We spent all last week texting back and forth, planning which movies to watch and sending each other screenshots of nail art because we are too effing adorable. 

My Colors

(from left to right) Mint Candy Apple by Essie, Fishnet Stockings by Essie, Pink Nail Art Pen by UO, Yellow Nail Art Pen by UO, Black Nail Art Pen by Sally Hansen & White Nail Art Pen by Sally Hansen (Thank you Bernhofts for your impressive Nail Art Pen collection!)

First, I painted my nails with Mint Candy Apple.

Then I used a nail polish pen to paint a pink line down the middle of my nail.

After that dried, I added a white line to the left side of the pink stripe and a black line to the right side of the pink stripe.

On the right side of the pink stripe I added six horizontal black lines.

Then I filled in the black stripes with yellow. 

Lastly, I added red dots to the center pink stripe. Surprisingly, Sheila and Lorna didn't have a red nail art pen. However, they did have wood shish kabob skewers! I used the tip of the wood skewer to make these red dots happen.

The Amityville Horror (1979)

The Amityville Horror is "based on a true story". In the 1970s, the eldest son of the DeFeo family murdered his three siblings and his parents in their home in Amityville, New York. A year later the Lutz family moves in and claims that the house is haunted. They see flies in the house even though it’s wintertime, they claim that the house oozes weird green slime and their super creepy daughter has an imaginary pig friend named Jodie. Really, her imaginary friend is a pig-like creature with glowing red eyes. My imaginary friend was the Chinese kid from the TV show Lamb Chop. GIRLFRIEND, take some advice from me and maybe choose a better imaginary friend.

The Amityville Horror follows this "true story" fairly closely. Lorna and I tried to find intellectual meaning in the film. So in the beginning of the movie, a priest comes to bless the house. Upon entering, he suddenly starts sweating and feeling ill. Then his face is covered in flies and he hears a demonic voice yell, ‘Get out’. Near the end of the movie, the priest is randomly struck blind. Lorna has an impressive knowledge of religion and Bible stories, unlike me who just recently learned about the religious significance of Easter. Lorna said that in the Bible St. Paul is struck blind while on a mission to arrest followers of Jesus. Peter is only given back his eyesight after he starts believing in God. However, this theory doesn’t really fit because the priest believes in God and acts piously throughout the film. It almost seemed that since the movie is based on a true events, there were plot points that had no significance and were simply following what supposedly happened in real life. Lorna was not pleased about this.

I could make the argument that the film represents the pressures that men feel to provide for their families. So the father (George Lutz, who I have to say is killin the beard and 70s hair game) has just married Kathy Lutz and become the father of her three children from a previous marriage.

George’s landscaping business is failing and he now has the responsibility of buying a home for his new family and supporting three children that aren’t even his. George and know what happened in the Amityville house, but buy it anyway because I guess when it’s 1979 and a house is super haunted, you can buy it for $80,000. George is also having some bedroom performance issues, making his feel super inadequate as a husband. Near the end of the movie, George rides around town on his motorcycle (unclear how he can afford that. PS he also owns a boat), expressing his masculinity. When he comes home, he sees Jodie’s creepy red pig eyes in the attic. He grabs an axe (that he’s spent literally the entire movie sharpening) and goes after what ends up being Kathy and the children. He swings at Kathy and then realizes that she is not imaginary pig friend. Maybe because of the pressure George feels to be a strong father, he is pushed to arrive upon a testosterone inspired solution to his whole ghost problem:

1. Ride around town in my motorcycle and black leather jacket

2. Axe murder some ghosts
3. Naturally become the best dad ever!!!
4. My step kids are definitely going to love me and not have nightmares every night about that time I almost axe murdered them.

Great plan George.

Reading reviews of The Amityville Horror is hilarious. Basically everyone hated it. They thought it was boring, not at all scary and that parts of the plot were completely unnecessary. Roger Ebert’s only positive comment was about George’s incredible 70s hair. Overall, The Amityville Horror receives a hair score of 9 out of 10 and a horror score of 2.