Editorials
‘Amityville: Mt. Misery Road’ Is a Short Film Barely Stretched to Feature Length [The Amityville IP]
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
There have been some bad Amityville films since we ventured off the path into open IP territory. A lot of filmmakers have used the name recognition of the “franchise” to make a quick buck, albeit to varying degrees of creative success.
While some of the twenty-two films have been…let’s say challenging; at least the vast majority of them have a story to tell. And then there’s Amityville: Mt. Misery Road, which takes a bare bone narrative conceit and stretches it out to 70 minutes.
Yes, folks, welcome to the case of the short that billed itself as a feature.
There’s a kernel of a good idea in the film. Mt. Misery Road hails from multi-hyphenate husband and wife pair Karolina and Chuck Morrongiello, who literally do everything on the film (writing, direction, music, editing, producing, and acting).
The film follows Florida couple Charlie (Chuck Morrongiello) and Buzi, pronounced “bougey” (Karolina Morrongiello), as they prepare for a spooky weekend getaway to the titular location. We’re told not one but two asylums burned to the ground there, resulting in one of the most haunted places in America.
So far, so good right? Well, not exactly.
It’s never clear why Buzi and Charlie are going to Mt. Misery Road. At some points, it’s referred to as a vacation, while the film’s logline describes the pair as “avid ghost hunters.” And yet the day before they embark on the trip, they’re still searching out introductory websites about the area and meeting with people to learn the history. The timeline is very confused.
When they arrive in NY, there’s a discussion of filming their experience (the film is shot conventionally until they leave on the trip, at which point it mostly switches to found footage). All of this begs the question: is the filming just for fun or are they shooting a low budget video to make money?
We never see a YouTube channel and there’s no other indication that’s their job. The word “avid” seems generous considering how little the pair seem to know about not just the area, but about researching online in general. And while it hardly matters to the “plot,” the lack of clarity speaks to the film’s inability to provide its characters even a basic motivation.
Despite repeated warnings from Curt (Curtis Wyka), a Hungtington native, as well as historian Mike Gallagher (Lloyd Goldstein), the Floridians are determined to first drive and then hike to the site. This takes 40 minutes of screentime.
The pair promptly become lost in the woods, where they are attacked and killed by Mothman or a Lady in White (it’s not entirely clear).
While the film has a similar bare bones narrative approach to The Blair Witch Project, the Morrongiellos have no sense of how much story a 70-minute feature requires or how to edit the footage to make it compelling. This results in long, agonizing scenes of the couple’s most perfunctory activities.
For example: the film opens with three minutes of credits, followed by 90 seconds of Charlie driving home on the highway. Buzi’s web search of haunted attractions near Mt. Misery Road takes an additional 2.5 minutes and shortly thereafter there’s a two minute sequence of Buzi dancing in a bar for Charlie’s amusement.
These time stamps may not seem that significant but watching them play out in real time feels interminable. The extended length of these (often immaterial) sequences makes up nearly the entire runtime; there is no film, there’s just a loose collection of poorly edited scenes.
This means we spend a considerable amount of time watching Charlie and Buzi look at pictures of orbs in the woods. We watch them board the plane, then drink on the plane, then sleep on the plane.
Later, there’s a long sequence without actors as a cottage is filmed in great detail while Charlie provides a voice-over about stories of missing children. Could this contribute to a spooky atmosphere as the couple embark on their journey through the woods? Possibly, but it is too drawn-out, and the children never figure into the plot. All of these scenes wind up feeling like padding to inch the film past the seventy minute mark.
The poor editing is exacerbated by the painful dialogue, much of which appears to be improvised (or perhaps the Morrongiellos aren’t acting and this is who they really are?) Whole chunks of dialogue outlines how cold it is, or how much money they spent on the trip so they can’t cancel (this occurs several times). At one point Charlie even (re)tells Buzi the history of Mt. Misery Road, repeating verbatim the details that Curt told them BOTH in the bar earlier.
And then there are the “babes.” If audiences found the term of endearment cute before hitting play, rest assured that it will drive you mad by film’s end. Admittedly there’s a fleeting moment of humor when the two Floridians encounter cold for the first time (“Hey babe!” “Hey babe!” “It’s cold!” “I know!”), but by the time Buzi is screaming “Babe? Babe! Babe? Babe!” on an endless loop in the dark for fifteen minutes, it’s enough to make you go running for the woods.
Babe…this one’s no good.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Best Dialogue: Charlie (after learning about the Woman in White who burned the asylum): “That crazy bitch”
- Best Scare: It’s a stretch to call anything in the film scary, but Buzi’s nightmare where she discovers Mothman and his red eyes in the dark bathroom is decent.
- Most viral moment: So much of the film is a slog, but the song that plays over the plane footage about Buzi’s Butt (called, you guessed it, “Buzi’s Butt”) is very catchy.
- Technical Complaint: From what I can recall, there isn’t a single montage in the film. It’s as though the Morrongiellos are unaware of the filmmaking technique. It’s frustrating because so much of Amityville: Mt. Misery Road could have been strengthened simply by shortening sequences and tightening the editing. But then it wouldn’t be a feature film…
Next Time: We’re back into remake territory (sort of) as The Amityville Murders (2018) recreates the original DeFeo murders.
Soon after the New Hollywood generation took over the entertainment industry, they started having children. And more than any filmmakers that came before—they were terrified. Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), Eraserhead (1977), The Brood (1979), The Shining (1980), Possession (1981), and many others all deal, at least in part, with the fears of becoming or being a parent. What if my child turns out to be a monster? is corrupted by some evil force? or turns out to be the fucking Antichrist? What if I screw them up somehow, or can’t help them, or even go insane and try to kill them? Horror has always been at its best when exploring relatable fears through extreme circumstances. A prime example of this is Larry Cohen’s 1974 monster-baby movie It’s Alive, which explores the not only the rollercoaster of emotions that any parent experiences when confronted with the difficulties of raising a child, but long-standing questions of who or what is at fault when something goes horribly wrong.
Cohen begins making his underlying points early in the film as Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) discusses the state of the world with a group of expectant fathers in a hospital waiting room. They discuss the “overabundance of lead” in foods and the environment, smog, and pesticides that only serve to produce roaches that are “bigger, stronger, and harder to kill.” Frank comments that this is “quite a world to bring a kid into.” This has long been a discussion point among people when trying to decide whether to have kids or not. I’ve had many conversations with friends who have said they feel it’s irresponsible to bring children into such a violent, broken, and dangerous world, and I certainly don’t begrudge them this. My wife and I did decide to have children but that doesn’t mean that it’s been easy.
Immediately following this scene comes It’s Alive’s most famous sequence in which Frank’s wife Lenore (Sharon Farrell) is the only person left alive in her delivery room, the doctors clawed and bitten to death by her mutant baby, which has escaped. “What does my baby look like!? What’s wrong with my baby!?” she screams as nurses wheel her frantically into a recovery room. The evening that had begun with such joy and excitement at the birth of their second child turned into a nightmare. This is tough for me to write, but on some level, I can relate to this whiplash of emotion. When my second child was born, they came about five weeks early. I’ll use the pronouns “they/them” for privacy reasons when referring to my kids. Our oldest was still very young and went to stay with my parents and we sped off to the hospital where my wife was taken into an operating room for an emergency c-section. I was able to carry our newborn into the NICU (natal intensive care unit) where I was assured that this was routine for all premature births. The nurses assured me there was nothing to worry about and the baby looked big and healthy. I headed to where my wife was taken to recover to grab a few winks assuming that everything was fine. Well, when I awoke, I headed back over to the NICU to find that my child was not where I left them. The nurse found me and told me that the baby’s lungs were underdeveloped, and they had to put them in a special room connected to oxygen tubes and wires to monitor their vitals.
It’s difficult to express the fear that overwhelmed me in those moments. Everything turned out okay, but it took a while and I’m convinced to this day that their anxiety struggles spring from these first weeks of life. As our children grew, we learned that two of the three were on the spectrum and that anxiety, depression, ADHD, and OCD were also playing a part in their lives. Parents, at least speaking for myself, can’t help but blame themselves for the struggles their children face. The “if only” questions creep in and easily overcome the voices that assure us that it really has nothing to do with us. In the film, Lenore says, “maybe it’s all the pills I’ve been taking that brought this on.” Frank muses aloud about how he used to think that Frankenstein was the monster, but when he got older realized he was the one that made the monster. The aptly named Frank is wondering if his baby’s mutation is his fault, if he created the monster that is terrorizing Los Angeles. I have made plenty of “if only” statements about myself over the years. “If only I hadn’t had to work so much, if only I had been around more when they were little.” Mothers may ask themselves, “did I have a drink, too much coffee, or a cigarette before I knew I was pregnant? Was I too stressed out during the pregnancy?” In other words, most parents can’t help but wonder if it’s all their fault.
At one point in the film, Frank goes to the elementary school where his baby has been sighted and is escorted through the halls by police. He overhears someone comment about “screwed up genes,” which brings about age-old questions of nature vs. nurture. Despite the voices around him from doctors and detectives that say, “we know this isn’t your fault,” Frank can’t help but think it is, and that the people who try to tell him it isn’t really think it’s his fault too. There is no doubt that there is a hereditary element to the kinds of mental illness struggles that my children and I deal with. But, and it’s a bit but, good parenting goes a long way in helping children deal with these struggles. Kids need to know they’re not alone, a good parent can provide that, perhaps especially parents that can relate to the same kinds of struggles. The question of nature vs. nurture will likely never be entirely answered but I think there’s more than a good chance that “both/and” is the case. Around the midpoint of the film, Frank agrees to disown the child and sign it over for medical experimentation if caught or killed. Lenore and the older son Chris (Daniel Holzman) seek to nurture and teach the baby, feeling that it is not a monster, but a member of the family.
It’s Alive takes these ideas to an even greater degree in the fact that the Davis Baby really is a monster, a mutant with claws and fangs that murders and eats people. The late ’60s and early ’70s also saw the rise in mass murderers and serial killers which heightened the nature vs. nurture debate. Obviously, these people were not literal monsters but human beings that came from human parents, but something had gone horribly wrong. Often the upbringing of these killers clearly led in part to their antisocial behavior, but this isn’t always the case. It’s Alive asks “what if a ‘monster’ comes from a good home?” In this case is it society, environmental factors, or is it the lead, smog, and pesticides? It is almost impossible to know, but the ending of the film underscores an uncomfortable truth—even monsters have parents.
As the film enters its third act, Frank joins the hunt for his child through the Los Angeles sewers and into the L.A. River. He is armed with a rifle and ready to kill on sight, having divorced himself from any relationship to the child. Then Frank finds his baby crying in the sewers and his fatherly instincts take over. With tears in his eyes, he speaks words of comfort and wraps his son in his coat. He holds him close, pats and rocks him, and whispers that everything is going to be okay. People often wonder how the parents of those who perform heinous acts can sit in court, shed tears, and defend them. I think it’s a complex issue. I’m sure that these parents know that their child has done something evil, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still their baby. Your child is a piece of yourself formed into a whole new human being. Disowning them would be like cutting off a limb, no matter what they may have done. It doesn’t erase an evil act, far from it, but I can understand the pain of a parent in that situation. I think It’s Alive does an exceptional job placing its audience in that situation.
Despite the serious issues and ideas being examined in the film, It’s Alive is far from a dour affair. At heart, it is still a monster movie and filled with a sense of fun and a great deal of pitch-black humor. In one of its more memorable moments, a milkman is sucked into the rear compartment of his truck as red blood mingles with the white milk from smashed bottles leaking out the back of the truck and streaming down the street. Just after Frank agrees to join the hunt for his baby, the film cuts to the back of an ice cream truck with the words “STOP CHILDREN” emblazoned on it. It’s a movie filled with great kills, a mutant baby—created by make-up effects master Rick Baker early in his career, and plenty of action—and all in a PG rated movie! I’m telling you, the ’70s were wild. It just also happens to have some thoughtful ideas behind it as well.
Which was Larry Cohen’s specialty. Cohen made all kinds of movies, but his most enduring have been his horror films and all of them tackle the social issues and fears of the time they were made. God Told Me To (1976), Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), and The Stuff (1985) are all great examples of his socially aware, low-budget, exploitation filmmaking with a brain and It’s Alive certainly fits right in with that group. Cohen would go on to write and direct two sequels, It Lives Again (aka It’s Alive 2) in 1978 and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive in 1987 and is credited as a co-writer on the 2008 remake. All these films explore the ideas of parental responsibility in light of the various concerns of the times they were made including abortion rights and AIDS.
Fifty years after It’s Alive was initially released, it has only become more relevant in the ensuing years. Fears surrounding parenthood have been with us since the beginning of time but as the years pass the reasons for these fears only seem to become more and more profound. In today’s world the conversation of the fathers in the waiting room could be expanded to hormones and genetic modifications in food, terrorism, climate change, school and other mass shootings, and other threats that were unknown or at least less of a concern fifty years ago. Perhaps the fearmongering conspiracy theories about chemtrails and vaccines would be mentioned as well, though in a more satirical fashion, as fears some expectant parents encounter while endlessly doomscrolling Facebook or Twitter. Speaking for myself, despite the struggles, the fears, and the sadness that sometimes comes with having children, it’s been worth it. The joys ultimately outweigh all of that, but I understand the terror too. Becoming a parent is no easy choice, nor should it be. But as I look back, I can say that I’m glad we made the choice we did.
I wonder if Frank and Lenore can say the same thing.
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