In many ways The Amityville Horror is a quintessential haunted house film. The film follows the subsequent weeks, using sporadic time cards, to document the disintegration of George’s mental faculties as the house’s evil energies threaten his sanity and endanger his family. Based on the 1977 book by Jay Anson, the film stars James Brolin and Margot Kidder as George and Kathy Lutz, a young married couple who move into the notorious Amityville house one year after Ronald DeFeo Jr killed his entire family. In some ways, this film may be the least exciting entry in this editorial series because it’s the most straightforward (ie: conventional) film. The mentality nowadays appears to be that what follows “Amityville” barely matters because horror audiences have a brand recognition with the word.īefore we can dig into wild sequels like Amityville Exorcism or Amityville in Space, we need to go back to the original title: Stuart Rosenberg’s 1979 film The Amityville Horror.

As the cost of filmmaking equipment dropped and new avenues for distribution and exhibition opened up, independent filmmakers seized on Amityville as a recognizable (and therefore sellable) title.

The other reason is the explosion of low budget, direct-to-video titles in the last two decades.As Oller explains: “The nuttier the twist, the less worried anyone has to be about getting sued.” After the Lutzs lost their suit against The Possession and 3-D producer Dino De Laurentiis, Amityville titles became open season so long as they didn’t skew too closely to the real-life story.

As Paste editor Jacob Oller explains in his piece “Why Are There So Many Absurd Amityville Horror Movies?”, there appear to be two main reasons why there are so many movies with Amityville in the title. It is borderline ridiculous that there’s so many entries (for those who are curious: 2022 has seen the release of no less than 10 new films!). Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions.Īt this point, the Amityville “universe” of films is something of a running joke in horror circles.

14 and under 1973 full movie