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. , which was filmed in 2014, was released theatrically in Ukraine on July 27, 2017, and in the United States on October 28, 2017.[2]
| 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 | |
| September 24, 1982 | Damiano Damiani | Tommy Lee WallaceDardano 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 | |
| May 12, 1989 | Sandor Stern | 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 | |
| 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 | ||
| September 29, 1993 | John Murlowski | n/a | ||||
| Amityville Dollhouse | February 18, 1997 | This is actual release date of the film in U.S. only, not October 1996 in UK. Do not change it.--> | 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 | ||||
| Amityville Death House | February 24, 2015 | Mark Polonia | John Oak Dalton | Mark Polonia | ||
| The Amityville Playhouse | April 13, 2015 | John R. Walker | John R. Walker and Steve Hardy | John R. Walker | aka The Amityville Theater | |
| April 1, 2016 | Dylan Greenberg | Dylan Greenberg, Selena Mars, and Jurgen Azazel Munster | Jurgen Azazel Munster | n/a | ||
| 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 | ||
| August 5, 2016 | Henrique Couto | Eric Widing | ||||
| Amityville Exorcism | January 3, 2017 | Mark Polonia | Billy D'Amato | Mark Polonia | ||
| June 2017 | Dustin Ferguson | Matthew DiGirolamo, Jason Harlow and Jason Bracht | sequel to The Amityville Legacy; re-released in 2020 as Amityville Clownhouse | |||
| Against the Night | September 15, 2017 | Brian Cavallaro | Arielle Brachfeld and Brian Cavallaro | aka Amityville Prison | ||
| 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 | February 8, 2019 | Daniel Farrands | Daniel Farrands, Eric Brenner, Jim Jacobsen and Lucas Jarach | aka The Amityville Murders: A Haunting on Long Island. Loosely based on the books Murder in Amityville and | ||
| 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 20, 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 | sequel to The Amityville Harvest | ||
| Amityville Cult | December 7, 2021 | Trey Murphy | Chance Gibbs, Trey Murphy and Micha Marie Stevens | n/a | ||
| 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 | sequel to The Amityville Moon | ||
| Amityville Gas Chamber | April 1, 2022 | Michael Stone | n/a | Parody to all the very low budget mass productions, especially those which just use the title for marketing reasons. | ||
| Amityville in Space | July 19, 2022 | Mark Polonia | Rob Hauschild | n/a | ||
| 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, Ron Bonk, Avery Crumley | ||
| Amityville Christmas Vacation | September 19, 2022 | Steve Rudzinski | Winner of the 2023 Fangoria Chainsaw Award for "Best Amityville."[3] | |||
| Amityville Thanksgiving | November 8, 2022 | Will Collazo, Julie Anne Prescott | Shawn C. Phillips, Will Collazo, Avery Crumley, Julie Anne Prescott | n/a | ||
| Amityville Scarecrow II | November 14, 2022 | Adam Gowrie | Craig McLearie | Stuart Alson, Scott Chambers, Becca Hirani, Nicole Holland | ||
| Ghosts of Amityville | November 22, 2022 | Jt Kris | Danny Langston | |||
| Amityville Death Toilet | March 17, 2023 | Evan Jacobs | Evan Jacobs | Ron Bonk | ||
| Amityville Elevator | April 20, 2023 | Nick Box | Nick Box, Matt Mcnew | |||
| Amityville Emanuelle | May 8, 2023 | Louis DeStefano | Geno McGahee | Geno McGahee, Gregory Hatanaka, Linda S. Wong | ||
| The Amityville Curse | May 28, 2023 | Éric Tessier | Dennis Heaton | Graham Ludlow and Kaleigh Kavanagh | Based on the 1981 novel of the same name, though not a remake of the 1990 adaptation.[4] [5] | |
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.
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.[6] 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.[7] 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.[7] 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).
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.
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.
| text-align:center;" | Film | text-align:center;" | Release date | text-align:center;" | Budget | text-align:center;" | Total Gross | text-align:center;" | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Amityville Horror | July 27, 1979 | $4,700,000 | $86,432,000 | ||||||
| Amityville II: The Possession | September 24, 1982 | $5,000,000 | $12,534,817 | [8] | |||||
| Amityville 3-D | November 18, 1983 | $6,000,000 | $6,333,135 | [9] | |||||
| The Amityville Horror | April 15, 2005 | $19,000,000 | $108,047,131 | [10] | |||||
| Amityville: The Awakening | October 28, 2017 | $8,481,997 | [11] | ||||||
| The Amityville Murders | February 8, 2019 | $77,206 | [12] |
| Film | Rating | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rotten Tomatoes | Metacritic | ||
| The Amityville Horror (1979) | 31% (45 reviews)[13] | 32 | |
| Amityville II: The Possession | 24% (21 reviews)[14] | ||
| Amityville 3-D | 18% (22 reviews)[15] | ||
| Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes | 40% (5 reviews)[16] | ||
| The Amityville Curse (1990) | 17% (7 reviews)[17] | ||
| Amityville: It's About Time | 40% (10 reviews)[18] | ||
| Amityville: A New Generation | |||
| Amityville Dollhouse | |||
| The Amityville Horror (2005) | 24% (163 reviews)[19] | 33[20] | |
| Amityville: The Awakening | 29% (21 reviews)[21] | 42[22] | |
| The Amityville Murders | 0% (16 reviews)[23] | 35[24] | |
| The Amityville Curse (2023) | |||