Next Stop: Amityville Film Franchise, Population, 46 Films (and Counting…)
Monday is about movies, sometimes TV. Today the big screen- and TV-movies that make up the “Amityville” franchise; a tarnished horror classic.
It’s coming up 50 years (next month) since the real life murders took place in a house in Amityville, the village in Long Island, New York.
Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr killed his entire family with a shotgun, claiming voices from within the house, or his head, made him do it. He was given life in prison. This is the prequel, if you like, in the real life version of events. This actually happened.
Anything that has happened after, with the name “Amityville”, as linked to that crime and its story is not necessarily true at all. But allegedly the Lutz family moved into the home a year later and fled due to the paranormal activity.
A book was written — claiming to be true — and this inspired the first film, simply known as The Amityville Horror.
James Brolin and Margot Kidder star. And it’s a really great movie. It was going to be a TV movie, but when it was rejected, they spent some real time on the screenplay and went big — the result was worth it. A modern horror classic, which, I only caught up with in the last couple of years. I didn’t know where to start when it came to the name Amityville in horror — and now, finally, I know why. All the other big franchises have their shark-jumps, but Amityville just seemed like it was only ever one big shark-jump…
And then I read the book — liked it enough, not sure if it’s true or not, don’t really care about that. If pushed, I’ll presume it’s not true at all, but it’s a very good story. And it inspired a very good film.
From there, as happens in the genre, the “hits” started to tumble. Amityville II does the classic prequel-treatment, and then three, four, five arrive — some without an actual number in the title, but all with some basic theme around possession. If they’re not classic haunted house stories, then they’re based around a “possessed” item from the original house. And that might seem ludicrous. But hey, it’s horror. It’s kinda part of the deal.
I decided I needed to try to make sense of some of this — and watched Amityville II: The Possession a couple of weeks back. It’s not as good as the original, it’s maybe not even any good at all. But I fucking loved it!
And that’s how they get you.
Next thing I’m hooked. When I find out the third film in the franchise was in 3D — back when that was the gimmick and you had the 3D in the title — I was suddenly all in.
I’m five films into the franchise now, and it’s obviously hard work at times, but it’s rewarding. They are basically all old-fashioned haunted house films, and I realise now what a perfect sub-genre (blueprint) of horror this is; I’ve long thought Poltergeist was a quintessential horror film, and I’ve watched it more in the last five years than I ever did back in the day. I’m also a huge fan of the British TV series Hammer Horror from 1980, a dozen standalone short films. Many of those could fit into the haunted house sub-genre.
The original Amityville Horror was remade in 2005, during a wave of so many horror reboots. Ryan Reynolds steps up. I hear it’s okay. I’ve never seen it. But you know I will. And then in 2017 and 2018 a couple more “canon” films were added.
The films 2-9 are ropey at times (at least the ones I’ve seen, and there are others I’ve read about) but they’re all based on or referencing one or some of the books that have been written about the true story, or in sequel to the original movie adaptation and its source.
But then things go truly wild.
From TV movies, to Canadian productions, to a dozen different directors, or more…no continuity, no recurring cast, no rules. And then it gets even weirder:
There’s this explosion of Amityville haunting titles — which is to say movies that reference the “idea” of a haunting in that area. Low-budget nonsense. Straight to video chancers. Fly by nighters hoping you’ll mistake their cheaply made flick for some legit classic. They basically want you to get tricked into watching a piece of shit film. Or they are laying a trap for the mildly autistic among us, people that see the ‘challenge’ of completing a set, and are suddenly powerless and pulled in by its tractor beam.
I say I’m not going to watch the 40-odd Amityville films, many of them very odd indeed. But of course a little part of me loves the idea of this particular waste of time. Then I see there’s one actually called Amityville Karen. I’m both appalled and very excited to complete the challenge…
And of course the franchise went to space — like all horror franchises when they’re out of ideas. A haunted house in space. LOL.
The reason there are so many films — and they can forever get away with it — is because that original murder happened. And so that back-story is public domain. That’s real. And it’s there to be used, referenced. Also Amityville is a real place. So you can’t copyright and trademark it — hence all the shitty movies that don’t even really reference the story but still get to have Amityville stamped on there.
Anyway, my main thing now is to stop after the 11 films considered canon. That’s enough, right? But of course the trouble-maker in me, the bad-movie connoisseur in me, the blog writer in me, the horror fanatic in me, the probably mildly autistic in me, wants to sorta deep the toe in this puddle of putrid, stagnant water.
Jokes aside, I’ve really enjoyed (aspects at least) all five films I’ve seen. And in movies 2-5 I’m impressed by how “PG” they are whilst having some level of intrigue, if not scares. Again, the haunted house motif is a classic. It’s instantly relatable. We’ve all heard a creak in the night and wondered, or gone to bed worried we did not lock the door, or been convinced we’ve seen something. If we haven’t, we all know someone who has; someone who tells a story about a curse, or a vision, or something eerie.
Anyway, to wrap this up — and I do promise not to report back about all of this Amityville nonsense ever again, I wondered what’s the most you’ve ever stuck with a wobbly franchise? Are there any big-sequel-having car-crash film franchises that continue to take your money and/or time?
The original Amityville Horror was the first horror I watched, at the tender age of 7. It gave me nightmares, unsurprisingly, and so to this day it's one of the scariest horrors to me. The Ryan Reynolds remake isn't bad.