List_of_films_based_on_the_Amityville_haunting

Works based on the Amityville haunting

Works based on the Amityville haunting

Film series

"Amityville haunting" redirects here. For the 2011 film, see The Amityville Haunting.

The Amityville haunting is a modern folk story based on the true crimes of Ronald DeFeo Jr. On November 13, 1974, DeFeo shot and killed six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, on the south shore of Long Island. He was convicted of second-degree murder in November 1975. In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into the house. After 28 days, the Lutzes left the house, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there. The house became the subject of numerous investigations by paranormal researchers, journalists, and skeptics, including Ed and Lorraine Warren. These events served as the historical basis for Jay Anson's 1977 novel The Amityville Horror, which was followed by a number of sequels and was adapted into a film of the same name in 1979. Since then, many films have been produced that draw explicitly, to a greater or lesser extent, from these historical and literary sources. As Amityville is a real town and the stories of DeFeo and the Lutzes are historical, there can be no proprietary relationship to the underlying story elements associated with the Amityville haunting. As a result of this, there has been no restriction on the exploitation of the story by film producers, which is the reason that most of these films share no continuity, were produced by different companies, and tell widely varying stories.

The Amityville Horror film, released in the summer of 1979, was a major box office success, and went on to become one of the most commercially successful independent films of all time.[1] A series of sequels were released throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s through various distributors; some of the films received theatrical distribution, while others were direct-to-video releases. In 2005, a re-imagining of the first film was released.

Beginning in 2011, there was a resurgence of low-budget direct-to-video independent films based on or loosely inspired by the Amityville events.

In 2017, The Weinstein Company and Dimension Films distributed the first theatrical Amityville film since the 2005 re-imagining. Amityville: The Awakening, which was filmed in 2014, was released theatrically in Ukraine on July 27, 2017, and in the United States on October 28, 2017.[2]

Literature

Films

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Overview

The first film to be inspired by the story of the Amityville haunting, The Amityville Horror (1979) chronicles the events of Jay Anson's novel, in which the Lutz family finds their new home in Amityville, New York, to be haunted; the house had been the site of a mass murder by Ronald DeFeo Jr. in 1974. The following film, Amityville II: The Possession, is a prequel based on the book Murder in Amityville by Hans Holzer, and depicts the purported supernatural events in the home that led DeFeo to murder his family. The third installment, Amityville 3-D, is set after the events of the first film, and was released in 3D.[6]

In 1989, the fourth installment, Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes, was released as a made-for-television film, and documents hauntings stemming from a floor lamp that was in the home at the time of the DeFeo murders. The Amityville Curse, released in 1990, follows a group of teenagers who spend the night in a former rectory in Amityville where a priest committed suicide; this installment was set in an entirely different house.[7] Amityville: It's About Time, released in 1992, focuses on a haunted clock that a family from Los Angeles, California takes into their home from an estate sale in New York.[6] The seventh film in the series, Amityville: A New Generation, also utilizes a haunted object as a plot device. This time, a man purchases a mirror possessed by the spirit of his father, who, like DeFeo, also murdered his family in the Amityville house with a shotgun.[6] Amityville Dollhouse (1996) follows a family haunted by spirits unleashed from a doll house replica of the Amityville home.

In 2005, a remake of the 1979 original film was released theatrically. In 2017’s Amityville: The Awakening, which received a limited theatrical release, a family with an ill son moves into the home and find themselves tormented by ghosts who seek to possess the son's body.

Further films would follow, each released direct-to-video or with limited theatrical releases: The Amityville Haunting (2011; a found footage film that presents supposed home movies that corroborate the family's haunting); The Amityville Asylum (2013, set in a haunted Amityville psychiatric hospital); Amityville Death House (2015, featured yet another explanation for the hauntings); Amityville Playhouse (2016, focuses on a haunted theater in Amityville); Amityville: Vanishing Point (2016, focused on a haunted boarding house in Amityville); The Amityville Legacy (2016, features a haunted toy monkey from the original house), The Amityville Terror (2016, a family moves to Amityville and are tormented both by an evil spirit and the townsfolk who want to keep them trapped there); Amityville: No Escape (2016, college students encounter evil in the forest around Amityville); and Amityville Exorcism (2017, evil spirits possess the daughter of a family that moves to Amityville).

Continuity between films

The first three films released, share some continuity, although they also contain contradictions. Amityville II is a prequel to the original 1979 movie, and tells the story of the murder of the DeFeo family (renamed the Montelli family in the film). Amityville 3-D is a sequel to the first movie, and is based on the accounts of paranormal investigator Stephen Kaplan (renamed John Baxter for the film), who was trying to prove that the Lutz family's story was a hoax. Due to legal disputes with the actual Lutz family, the events of the first movie could not be directly referenced, nor could the Lutz family themselves be referenced by name. Amityville 3-D also refers to the massacre in Amityville II as the "DeFeo murders", despite the renaming of the family to Montelli for that film.

Of the later films, Amityville: The Awakening (2017) is explicitly a different continuity from all of the previous movies, which are depicted as films within the film; the characters watch and discuss the 1979 movie, and one of them brings DVDs of the sequels and remake to the protagonist's house. The Amityville Curse (2023) is loosely based on the 1981 book of the same name, but is not a remake of its 1990 adaptation.

Release

Producers and distributors

The films have at various times been owned by several different production and distribution companies internationally and in the United States. American International Pictures produced and released the original film, before Orion Pictures bought the rights to the film, as well as II and 3-D. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) now owns films one through 3-D, and released them in a DVD box set in 2005. While 4 was a TV film broadcast on NBC, it has been released multiple times by independent distribution companies in recent years (one of which was Vidmark, who also released Curse (1990); Vidmark is now owned by Lionsgate). Multicom Entertainment Group owns distribution rights to Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes, It's About Time, A New Generation and Dollhouse.

Box office

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Critical reception

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Documentary

  • My Amityville Horror, a 2012 documentary focusing on Daniel Lutz's account of the haunting. At the time of the events, he was a child.

See also

References

  1. [1]
    Miller, John M. "The Amityville Horror". Turner Classic Movies. In the Know. Retrieved 14 July 2017.
  2. [2]
    Aronson, Alex. "'Amityville: The Awakening' Sees More Delays; The Internet Freaks Out". Movie Pilot. Archived from the original on 9 June 2017. Retrieved 6 August 2017.
  3. [3]
    "Winners". FANGORIA Chainsaw Awards. Retrieved 2023-05-22.
  4. [4]
    Armando Tinoco (September 13, 2022). "Tubi Confirms Adaptation Of 'The Amityville Curse' & Original Horror Pic 'Marry F*** Kill'". Deadline. Retrieved August 19, 2023.
  5. [5]
    Morazzini, Jim (May 28, 2023). "The Amityville Curse (2023) Review". Voice from the Balcony. Retrieved August 19, 2023.
  6. [6]
    Young, R.G., ed. (2000). The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film: Ali Baba to Zombies. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 17. ISBN 978-1-557-83269-6.
  7. [7]
    "Canuxploitation Review: The Amityville Curse". Canuxploitation. Retrieved 19 July 2017.
  8. [8]
    Arkoff & Turbo 1992, p. 228.
  9. [9]
    Smith 2009, p. 13.
  10. [10]
    "Amityville II: The Possession". Boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved September 7, 2015.
  11. [11]
    "Amityville 3-D". Boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved September 7, 2015.
  12. [12]
    "The Amityville Horror (2005)". Boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved September 7, 2015.
  13. [13]
    "Amityville: The Awakening". Boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved September 7, 2015.
  14. [14]
    "The Amityville Murders". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved August 31, 2023.
  15. [15]
    "The Amityville Horror (1979)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 14, 2023.
  16. [16]
    "Amityville II: The Possession (1982)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
  17. [17]
    "Amityville 3-D (1983)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
  18. [18]
    "Amityville: The Evil Escapes (1989)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved September 7, 2023.
  19. [19]
    "The Amityville Curse (1990)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved September 7, 2023.
  20. [20]
    "Amityville 1992: It's About Time (1992)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved September 7, 2023.
  21. [21]
    "The Amityville Horror (2005)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 14, 2023.
  22. [22]
    "The Amityville Horror". Metacritic. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
  23. [23]
    "Amityville: The Awakening (2017)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved September 7, 2023.
  24. [24]
    "Amityville: The Awakening". Metacritic. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
  25. [25]
    "The Amityville Murders (2019)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved September 8, 2020.
  26. [26]
    "The Amityville Murders". Metacritic. Retrieved January 5, 2023.

Works cited

  • Arkoff, Samuel Z.; Turbo, Richard (1992). Flying Through Hollywood By the Seat of My Pants. Birch Lane Press. ISBN 978-1-559-72107-3.
  • Smith, Gary A. (2009). The American International Pictures Video Guide. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-786-43309-4.
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