The fact that it’s still portrayed as a factual narrative is what’s most disturbing.
A fantastic idea for a horror movie… A young family finds their ideal home, but they are hardly able to afford it. Too good to be true: enormous rooms, a sea view, and a boat home. The estate agent then explains why everything is so inexpensive. Six members of the same family died there a year earlier. However, they still decide to move in since the price is too good to pass up.
But the Lutz family is beginning to feel the effects of their new abode, especially the father (James Brolin), who struggles to stay warm and becomes overly attached to his axe. After being scared off by a swarm of insects and subsequently a mystery disease, their priest (Rod Steiger) is unable to sanitise the house. Their young daughter tells them about a red-eyed pig who is her imaginary companion. They can no longer endure the visions and fierce window banging and leave the house.
I originally saw this at a suburban London theatre in around February 1980. But. The Amityville Horror didn’t really appeal to me. All I did was jump when the cat leaped up at the window. Having someone explode a paper bag behind me would have cost less.
Even in a supernatural horror movie, I required (what I now know to be termed) internal logic when I was a teenager. I just couldn’t figure out what I should be afraid of. A spectre? Poltergeists? Do you possess a demon? Each of the strange occurrences raises a potential supernatural issue.
Margot Kidder and James Brolin
Maybe I had too high of expectations after watching Suspiria, The Omen, Carrie, and The Exorcist. Maybe that’s why it was highlighted in the marketing that everything was based on a genuine story. The Amityville Horror only has a significant advantage if the audience thinks they’re seeing a recreation of some terrifying stuff that truly happened. It would be terrifying if you or I experienced any of this.
These days, it’s quite typical to spook viewers but also pique their curiosity. stating that the story the movie is based on is real. causing all of the events we see to appear real to our minds.
1979 UK poster
But why did I believe it to be true at the time? I already felt that way when I initially watched the movie. Looking back at the previous advertisements (posters, print, and radio), only the book genuinely made the claim that it was a “true story.” Such statements were judiciously avoided in the movie advertising, but this did not stop several magazine pieces from reiterating the validity of the book’s assertions.
The book’s cover plainly said “a real story” and it had previously been a great bestseller before the movie was created. Despite the doubts of major media, it was a compelling tale for magazine coverage and less fastidious news sources.
This intricate radio commercial from 1979, which was played around London, really hammered the idea that everything in the tale is genuine. This frightened me more than the movie did.
Despite its flimsy underpinnings, this horror film franchise was a big success and gave rise to a number of sequels, novels, and very terrible TV movies.
I avoided most sequels since the original movie left me so disillusioned, with the exception of one on television. The ongoing spin-offs proved that it was still effective for a large number of additional people.
Poltergeist (1982), which featured a family in a very haunted home (a burial site was also one of the many potential explanations cited in Lutz’s book), did so for me far better. Naturally, Tobe Hooper’s movie featured better-realized scares, complete support from Industrial Light and Magic for the visual effects, and a far more internally cohesive narrative. No nonsense claims that it is based on reality, either. I was smitten.
When I discovered I had been cheated years later, I genuinely became enraged. When I learned that the Lutz’s haunting was a staged fake based on a more specific report. The Amityville Horror Conspiracy by Stephen Kaplan. Being a serious paranormal investigator himself, Kaplan accepted the Lutz family’s invitation to investigate the Long Island home for paranormal activity. He concurred, but his appointment was afterwards cancelled. He had a suspicion and kept an eye on news stories and the various Lutzs’ testimonies of what had transpired.
Indeed, George Lutz purchased the home. Yes, the family that came before them was killed. But there are several more interpretations for everything that occurred to them inside the house (smells, cold, changes in behaviour). They believe that some of it came from their daughter’s dreams (the pig-demon). Kaplan points out how the specifics of the Lutz’s narrative alter over time in different news pieces and even in various early printings of their well-known book! Additionally, he is unable to discern any coherence in the period they outline.
Because they were examined and presented with such carelessness, cases like the Lutzs’ gave paranormal research a poor name, Kaplan was worried. Importantly, while the numerous other Amityville novels are still being published, Stephen Kaplan’s book is no longer in print. Ghost stories bring in extra money.
I felt after reading it that The Amityville Horror had been thoroughly disproved. When the Ryan Reynolds version debuted in 2005 and even boasted “based on the actual events” on the movie posters, I was more than a little shocked. How is it even possible? Does it become any better by changing “a” genuine tale to “the” true story? The phrase “true story” was not even on the original movie poster.
The new version is undoubtedly scarier, half-naked Ryan Reynolds is undoubtedly hotter, and Chloe Moretz, even at the age of eight, outperforms the rest of the group. Many new occurrences that weren’t in the Lutzs’ novel are included in the movie. And when the cabinet beneath the stairs transformed into a massive tomb after viewing Kaplan’s proof, such as a floor plan of the mansion, I really laughed out loud. Who knew the Lutz family’s basement included a Tardis of its own?
My Amityville Horror, a 2012 new documentary that includes a feature-length interview with the eldest of the Lutz children who was present when it all happened, was my most recent hope for the truth. Now that Daniel Lutz’s mother and stepfather have died away, I had anticipated that he would be free to deny what I had considered to be a media stunt designed to raise money to help the family out of their financial situation.
Daniel affirms the inexplicable occurrences all happened with an intense and believable fury, contrary to what I was hoping for in terms of closure. Is it also ferocious desperation?
I’ll sum up by saying that the original DaFeo murders and the genuine mysteries surrounding that case still hold my interest.
Six members of the same family were shot and killed in their bedrooms in one dreadful night. But surely the others would awaken and begin to move around after the first shot? How, therefore, did the neighbours miss anything?
The murder of an entire family was an unusual crime back then. I wonder whether Red Dragon by Thomas Harris was influenced by this instance (first filmed as Manhunter in 1986). What real-life killings did Harris also explore while conducting extensive research to show police operations so realistically?
My only residual interest in the Lutz family’s tale is Daniel’s mental state. What occurred to him if not something supernatural? Rather than a ghost, did his father actually throw him up the stairs? This is what makes My Amityville Horror such a suspenseful and fascinating film.
