The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson and the Lutz Family (1977): The Amityville Horror was a hoax that most people don't realize was a hoax because of all the movies and sequels and books claiming to be "based on a true story."
Basically, it appears as if the Lutz family and the lawyer for the mass murderer who lived in the house before them cooked up a story of a haunting -- the lawyer in order to get a new trial for his client (and to make money from a book), the Lutz family to get out from under the crippling mortgage that had made them house-poor. In the real world, the day after the Lutzs reportedly fled the house for good thanks to demonic forces, they returned to...hold a garage sale.
So it goes. The Amityville Horror is, then, an amazingly successful hoax. That it's ineptly imagined and written is beside the point.
But the ineptness does makes it weirdly endearing. The Devil, in the Amityverse, has a Swiss Army Knife of malign powers, the most hilarious of which is 'Invisible Late-Night Marching Band.' He also makes prank phone calls, summons up flies, disguises himself as a giant robed figure and a giant red-eyed pig, gropes people, slams doors, opens windows, tears down front doors and garage doors, fills rooms with the smell of poop, threatens people with a ceramic lion, causes green goo to ooze out of keyholes, summons thunderstorms, levitates sleeping people, loosens the wheels on cars, and generally makes a nuisance of himself.
Anson's pronounced tendency to throw in everything and the kitchen sink leads to a breathless description of how someone showed up at the Lutz's door claiming to be a neighbour welcoming them to the neighbourhood. He had a six pack with him. But he was too poorly dressed to be from the neighbourhood...and then he left, TAKING HIS SIX PACK WITH HIM. And he was never seen again!!!
I want a book about that guy. Was he the Devil? Was he drunk? Where did he come from? Where did he go? Oh, well. Recommended because it's hilariously bad and ridiculous.
The Amityville Horror, written by Scott Kosar, based on the screenplay by Sandor Stern, based on the book by Jay Anson, based on material by George and Kathleen Lutz, directed by Andrew Douglas, starring Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jesse James and Philip Baker Hall (2005): The original Amityville Horror (1979) was a financially successful, dramatically awful horror movie whose only greatness may lie in the Eddie Murphy comedy bit it spawned ("GET OUT!" "Too bad I gotta go!").
The "true story" it's based on has since turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by the Lutz family, though the original murders were tragically real. Subsequent residents of the house in question, in Suffolk County, New York, have reported nothing unusual about the house other than the hordes of tourists that stop by to look at it. Hoo ha!
This movie looks a lot better than the original, not much of a feat considering how crappily 70's the cinematography was in that original shitfuck. It's shorter, which pretty much eliminates any building of suspense. And it cuts the one scene I (and Stephen King in Danse Macabre) would cite as the first film's one moment of fully realized suburban terror, an incident in which the House appears to steal much needed money from George Lutz, cash needed to pay for a wedding. That was a good scene. So they don't even try to duplicate it.
So far as I can tell, the screenwriter realized how bad the original material was pretty early on and so decided to remake The Shining instead. I shit you not. So this is basically The Shining as written and directed by moronic hacks and produced by Michael Bay (seriously on that last one). Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George are spectacularly miscast as a young couple in the 1970's -- Reynolds's hairless hard-body alone pretty much erases all suspension of disbelief.
Philip Baker Hall struggles manfully with the underwritten priest part which caused Rod Steiger to devour the scenery in the original, and we don't even get the spectacularly bizarre bit involving Kathy Lutz's nun sister. Or the bit where the demon, its red eyes clearly light bulbs, perches at the window to glare at the Lutzes. Or the crazy part about the doorway to Hell in the basement.
Come to think of it, at least that godawful 1970's movie was sorta fun; this one is just sorta boring. The remake does have a terrific bit of fucked up continuity, though. At the end, Kathy Lutz spends all day at the Amityville library researching the house. When she returns home that night, George has turned into Mr. Cuckoobanana. What seems to be a real-time ten minutes of shenanigans ensues which ends with the family taking off in their motorboat...at which point the sun comes up. Because in Amityville, the nights are about 20 minutes long. Really not recommended.
