Stuart Rosenberg

Director of Cool Hand Luke and others.

The Amityville Horror (1979) -- Kind of fun to watch, with a handful of nice edits (the opening gun blasts, for example) and spooky moments. Sometimes the movie builds slowly, such as James Brolin's gradual transformation into the previous killer (lots more gradual than Nicholson in The Shining). Other times it goes too fast, like when the kind of interesting set-ups with the priest and the cop eventually get dropped altogether--as does the story of the family itself when they just leave and that's the end. In the end, like a lot of horror movies, the movie's more interested in weird effects than a story; otherwise, this could have been a classic. (Damiano Damiani directs the prequel, Amityville II: The Possession.)