Works based on the Amityville haunting

"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. 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
Created by	Jay Anson (Original book)
Original work	The Amityville Horror (1977)
Owner	Various (Public Domain)
Years	1977–2022
Print publications
Book(s)	The Amityville Horror Murder in Amityville Part II The Final Chapter Amityville: The Evil Escapes The Amityville Curse The Horror Returns The Nightmare Continues The Amityville Murders
Films and television
Film(s)	List of Films
Short film(s)	See Below
Official website
www.AmityvilleHorror.com (removed)

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] In 2018, The Amityville Murders is a direct prequel to the 1979 film and ignores the events of Amityville II: The Possession (1982).

Literature

• The Amityville Horror, a 1977 book by American author Jay Anson
• Murder in Amityville, a 1979 book by Hans Holzer that serves as a prequel to The Amityville Horror
• The Amityville Horror Part II, a 1982 book by John G. Jones that serves as a sequel to The Amityville Horror
• Amityville: The Final Chapter
• Amityville: The Evil Escapes
• The Amityville Curse
• Amityville: The Horror Returns
• Amityville: The Nightmare Continues
• High Hopes: The Amityville Murders
• Amityville: My Sister's Keeper

Films

Film	U.S. release date	Director	Screenwriter(s)	Producer(s)	Notes
Original series
The Amityville Horror	July 27, 1979	Stuart Rosenberg	Sandor Stern	Elliot Geisinger and Ronald Saland	based on the book of the same title
Amityville II: The Possession	September 24, 1982	Damiano Damiani	Tommy Lee Wallace Dardano Sacchetti (uncredited)	Ira N. Smith, Stephen R. Greenwald and José López Rodero	based on the book Murder in Amityville; Mexican-American co-production
Amityville 3-D	November 18, 1983	Richard Fleischer	William Wales	Stephen F. Kesten and Antonio Rubio	aka Amityville III: The Demon; American-Mexican co-production
Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes	May 12, 1989	Sandor Stern		Steve White, Barry Bernardi and Kenneth Atchity	aka Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes and Amityville: The Evil Escapes; based on the book Amityville: The Evil Escapes
The Amityville Curse	May 7, 1990	Tom Berry	Michael Krueger, Doug Olson, and Norvell Rose	Franco Battista	based on the book of the same title; Canadian production
Amityville: It's About Time	July 16, 1992	Tony Randel	Christopher DeFaria and Antonio Toro	Steve White, Barry Bernardi and Christopher DeFaria	aka Amityville 1992: It's About Time; based on the book Amityville: The Evil Escapes
Amityville: A New Generation	September 29, 1993	John Murlowski			n/a
Amityville Dollhouse	October 2, 1996	Steve White	Joshua Michael Stern	Steve White, David Newlon, Zane W. Levitt and Mark Yellen
Remake
The Amityville Horror	April 15, 2005	Andrew Douglas	Scott Kosar	Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller	remake of The Amityville Horror (1979)
Based on the Amityville haunting
The Amityville Haunting	December 13, 2011	Geoff Meed		David Michael Latt	n/a
The Amityville Asylum	June 3, 2013	Andrew Jones
The Amityville Playhouse	April 13, 2013	John R. Walker	John R. Walker and Steve Hardy	John R. Walker	aka The Amityville Theater
Amityville Death House	February 24, 2015	Mark Polonia	John Oak Dalton	Mark Polonia	n/a
Amityville: Vanishing Point	April 1, 2016	Dylan Greenberg	Dylan Greenberg, Selena Mars, and Jurgen Azazel Munster	Jurgen Azazel Munster
The Amityville Legacy	June 7, 2016	Dustin Ferguson and Michael Johnson		Dustin Ferguson, Matthew DiGirolamo and Jake Bockoven	re-released in 2020 as Amityville Toybox
The Amityville Terror	August 2, 2016	Michael Angelo		Justin Jones, Philip J Day and Zeus Zamani	n/a
Amityville: No Escape	August 5, 2016	Henrique Couto		Eric Widing
Amityville: Evil Never Dies	June 2017	Dustin Ferguson		Matthew DiGirolamo, Jason Harlow and Jason Bracht	sequel to The Amityville Legacy; re-released in 2020 as Amityville Clownhouse
Amityville Exorcism	January 3, 2017	Mark Polonia	Billy D'Amato	Mark Polonia	n/a
Against the Night	September 15, 2017	Brian Cavallaro		Arielle Brachfeld and Brian Cavallaro	aka Amityville Prison
Amityville: The Awakening	October 28, 2017	Franck Khalfoun		Daniel Farrands, Jason Blum and Casey La Scala	n/a
Amityville: Mt. Misery Road	May 31, 2018	Chuck Morrongiello and Karolina Morrongiello	Chuck Morrongiello	Chuck Morrongiello and Karolina Morrongiello
The Amityville Murders	October 9, 2018	Daniel Farrands		Daniel Farrands, Eric Brenner, Jim Jacobsen and Lucas Jarach	aka The Amityville Murders: A Haunting on Long Island; A direct prequel to The Amityville Horror (1979) and based on the books Murder in Amityville and High Hopes: The Amityville Murders
Amityville Island	March 17, 2020	Mark Polonia	John Oak Dalton	Rob Hauschild	n/a
Amityville Vibrator	June 6, 2020	Nathan Rumler
Witches of Amityville Academy	October 2, 2020	Rebecca Matthews	Tom Jolliffe	Nicole Holland, Kira Reed Lorsch, Donna Spangler and Brittan Taylor	aka Amityville Witches
The Amityville Harvest	October 8, 2020	Thomas J. Churchill		Thomas J. Churchill, Steven Louis Goldenberg and Phillip B. Goldfine	n/a
An Amityville Poltergeist	May 18, 2021	Calvin Morie McCarthy	John Ashley Hall and Calvin Morie McCarthy	Josh Dietrich, Airisa Durand and Calvin Morie McCarthy
The Amityville Moon	October 5, 2021	Thomas J. Churchill		Thomas J. Churchill, Steven Louis Goldenberg and Phillip B. Goldfine
Amityville Cult	December 7, 2021	Trey Murphy		Chance Gibbs, Trey Murphy and Micha Marie Stevens
Amityville Vampire	December 14, 2021	Tim Vigil	Carlos Perez, Tim Vigil	Ted Chalmers, David S. Sterling and Gustave Whinnery
Amityville Scarecrow	January 4, 2022	Peter Jack Mundy	Shannon Holiday	Scott Jeffrey
Amityville Uprising	January 11, 2022	Thomas J. Churchill		Thomas J. Churchill and Phillip B. Goldfine
Amityville Gas Chamber	April 1, 2022	Michael Stone		n/a
Amityville in Space	July 19, 2022	Mark Polonia		Rob Hauschild
Amityville Hex	August 9, 2022	Tony Newton	Tony Newton, Shawn C. Phillips	Michael Bilinski, David Cartledge and Sam Mason-Bell
Amityville In The Hood	August 23, 2022	Dustin Ferguson	Jerimiah Douglas, Dustin Ferguson	Dustin Ferguson (as Dark Infinity), Rob Hauschild and Saul Mejia
Amityville Karen	September 13, 2022	Shawn C. Phillips	Julie Anne Prescott	Shawn C. Phillips, Will Collazo Jr., Ron Bonk, Avery Crumley
Amityville Thanksgiving	November 8, 2022	Will Collazo Jr.
Ghosts Of Amityville	November 22, 2022	Jt Kris		Danny Langston

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.^[3]

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.^[4] 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.^[3] 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.^[3] 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 Murders (2018) is a direct prequel to the 1979 film, and ignores the events of Amityville II.

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; 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

Film	Release date	Budget	Total Gross	Ref.
The Amityville Horror	July 27, 1979	$4,700,000	$86,432,000	^[5]^[6]
Amityville II: The Possession	September 24, 1982	$5,000,000	$12,534,817	^[7]
Amityville 3-D	November 18, 1983	$6,000,000	$6,333,135	^[8]
The Amityville Horror	April 15, 2005	$19,000,000	$108,047,131	^[9]
Amityville: The Awakening	October 28, 2017	—	$7,236,992	^[10]
The Amityville Murders	February 8, 2019	—

Critical reception

Film	Rating
	Rotten Tomatoes	Metacritic
The Amityville Horror (1979)	32% (44 reviews)^[11]	32
Amityville II: The Possession	24% (21 reviews)^[12]	—
Amityville 3-D	18% (22 reviews)^[13]	—
Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes	—	—
The Amityville Curse	20% (5 reviews)^[14]	—
Amityville: It's About Time	14% (7 reviews)^[15]	—
Amityville: A New Generation	—	—
Amityville: Dollhouse	—	—
The Amityville Horror (2005)	23% (161 reviews)^[16]	33^[17]
Amityville: The Awakening	30% (20 reviews)^[18]	42^[19]
The Amityville Murders	0% (16 reviews)^[20]	35^[21]

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

• Bloodbath at the House of Death, a 1984 spoof on the 1979 film The Amityville Horror

References

1. Miller, John M. "The Amityville Horror". Turner Classic Movies. In the Know. Retrieved 14 July 2017.
2. Aronson, Alex. . Movie Pilot. Archived from the original on 9 June 2017. Retrieved 6 August 2017.
3. 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.
4. "Canuxploitation Review: The Amityville Curse". Canuxploitation. Retrieved 19 July 2017.
5. Arkoff & Turbo 1992, p. 228.
6. Smith 2009, p. 13.
7. "Amityville II: The Possession". Boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved September 7, 2015.
8. "Amityville 3-D". Boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved September 7, 2015.
9. "The Amityville Horror (2005)". Boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved September 7, 2015.
10. "Amityville: The Awakening". Boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved September 7, 2015.
11. "The Amityville Horror (1979)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
12. "Amityville II: The Possession (1982)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
13. "Amityville 3-D (1983)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
14. "The Amityville Curse (1990)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
15. "Amityville 1992: It's About Time (1992)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
16. "The Amityville Horror (2005)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 4, 2020.
17. "The Amityville Horror". Metacritic. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
18. "Amityville: The Awakening (2017)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 4, 2020.
19. "Amityville: The Awakening". Metacritic. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
20. "The Amityville Murders (2019)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved September 8, 2020.
21. "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.