IF YOU ARE IN A THEATER WHERE THIS IS SHOWING ... GET OUT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

I'LL ADMIT IT. One evening, back during my wayward youth, I started reading Jay Anson's supposedly true book about a Long Island haunted house, ``The Amityville Horror,'' and could not put it down until I finished every terrifying page. I was so scared I stayed awake until dawn.

When the totally awful ``Amityville'' movie, with James Brolin quaking and muttering and Rod Steiger's overacted priest the only remotely frightening thing on screen, came out in 1979, I laughed all the way through it.

Now Michael Bay's slick horror movie company, Platinum Dunes, has remade ``Amityville.'' It's not as irritating as the outfit's ``Texas Chainsaw Massacre'' remake, but only because the original ``Chainsaw'' was a good movie that didn't deserve the bland treatment by some TV commercials director.

The new ``Amityville,'' directed by TV commercial guy Andrew Douglas, does make you appreciate the, uh, fragrance of bad '70s moviemaking, though. With its 101 out-of-sync-with-the-mythos references to other fright franchises and utter lack of anything worth screaming or laughing at, it doesn't exactly just lie there - it's too smash-edited and over-cameraworked for that - but it does represent just how flavorless commercial horror product has gotten.

John Lutz, one of the book's protagonists, has already taken the filmmakers to task for messing with the actual (as he tells it, anyway) chain of events, and the production notes admit that some of Scott Kosar's script was ``inspired by'' previously unfilmed reports.

Not that this should matter to anyone except Mr. Lutz, whom Ryan Reynolds portrays as a complete psycho with peculiarly frozen facial muscles. What we have here are the usual apparitions, possessions, creepy kids and angry Indian spirits that have haunted scary movies for decades. Why worry about sticking to the story when the formula is held in such a death grip?

For those who don't know, Lutz was a young contractor who married widowed Kathy (Melissa George of TV's ``Alias'') and moved her and her three children into the Dutch colonial bargain at 112 Ocean Ave. The previous occupants had all been murdered in their sleep by the family's eldest son, who claims to this day that voices in the house made him do it.

Anyway, the Lutzes lasted 28 days before fleeing the place for good, never even returning to collect any belongings.

According to this version, pleasant George got the chills, then got cranky with the kids, then got much, much too interested in log-splitting. The Lutz daughter bonds with the ghost of a child with ``Ring'' girl hair, and there's a midriff-baring baby sitter who hasn't a clue about proper, mid-'70s slut fashion.

Philip Baker Hall is the priest with the flies in this version, and barely registers. Who knew anything could make us miss a bad Steiger performance so much?

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR - One and one half stars

(R: violence, language, sex, drug use, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George, Philip Baker Hall.

Director: Andrew Douglas.

Running time: 1 hr. 29 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Remake of the cheesy '70s haunted house flick based on the genuinely frightening ``nonfiction'' best-seller makes you appreciate, well, '70s cheese and dubious best sellers.

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Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George play a married couple who start having serious buyer's remorse about the home they have just purchased in ``The Amityville Horror.''