The Amityville Horror (film series)

The Amityville Horror (film series)

Cover art for the Amityville Trilogy Blu-ray box set, comprising the first three films of the series.
Distributed by
Release date
 1979–present
Country United States
Language English

The Amityville Horror film series is a series of American horror films that currently consists of 18 films. The films center on events in a haunted house in Amityville, New York, as depicted in Jay Anson's 1977 book of the same name. The first 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 would be 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.

Starting in 2011, there was a resurgence of unauthorized low-budget direct-to-video independent films using the Amityville name and/or plot points.

As of 2017, The Weinstein Company and Dimension Films have plans to distribute the first major theatrical Amityville film since the 2005 re-imagining, Amityville: The Awakening, which was filmed in 2014, it was released theatrically in Ukraine on July 27, 2017 but is still awaiting release worldwide.[2]

Films

Theatrical

Film Release date Director Writer
The Amityville Horror July 27, 1979 Stuart Rosenberg Sandor Stern
Amityville II: The Possession September 24, 1982 Damiano Damiani Tommy Lee Wallace

Dardano Sacchetti (uncredited)

Amityville 3-D November 18, 1983 Richard Fleischer William Wales
The Amityville Horror April 14, 2005 Andrew Douglas Scott Kosar
The Amityville Playhouse April 13, 2015 John R. Walker John R. Walker and Steve Hardy
Amityville: The Awakening July 27, 2017 Franck Khalfoun Daniel Farrands and Casey La Scala

TV Movies

Film Release date Director Writer
Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes May 12, 1989 Sandor Stern

Direct-to-video

Film Release date Director Writer
The Amityville Curse May 7, 1990 Tom Berry Michael Krueger, Doug Olson, and Norvell Rose
Amityville 1992: It's About Time July 16, 1992 Tony Randel Christopher DeFaria and Antonio Toro
Amityville: A New Generation September 29, 1993 John Murlowski
Amityville Dollhouse October 2, 1996 Steve White Joshua Michael Stern
The Amityville Haunting December 13, 2011  Geoff Meed
The Amityville Asylum June 3, 2013 Andrew Jones
Amityville Death House February 24, 2015 Mark Polonia John Oak Dalton
The Amityville Terror August 2, 2016 Michael Angelo
Amityville: No Escape August 5, 2016 Henrique Couto

Streaming only

Film Release date Director Writer
Amityville: Vanishing Point April 1, 2016 Dylan Greenberg Dylan Greenberg Selena Mars and Jurgen Azazel Munster
The Amityville Legacy June 7, 2016 Dustin Ferguson and Michael Johnson

Overview

The first film in the series, 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 in the series Amityville II: The Possession, is a prequel based on the book Murder in Amityville by Hans Holzer, and documents 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 entirely in a 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 fifth film in the series, Amityville: A New Generation, also utilizes a haunted object as a main component of its storyline: It follows a man who purchases a mirror possessed by the spirit of his father, who also murdered his family in the Amityville house with a shotgun, not dissimilar to DeFeo.[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. Six years later, in 2011, The Amityville Haunting was released, an ancillary found footage film that presents supposed home movies that corroborate the family's haunting. The Amityville Asylum (2013) is set in Amityville at a psychiatric hospital haunted by ghosts, while another film, Amityville Death House (2015), and Amityville Playhouse (2016), the latter of which focuses on a haunted theater in Amityville. Several other direct-to-video sequels bearing the Amityville title were released in 2016: Amityville: Vanishing Point, The Amityville Legacy, The Amityville Terror, and Amityville: No Escape.

Amityville: The Awakening (2017) follows a family who moves into the home with an ill son and find themselves tormented by ghosts.

Continuity between films

None of the films are direct sequels to each other, and parts I, II, and IV are the only films based on books from the Amityville book series and establish references with each other.[lower-alpha 1] Amityville II is a prequel to the original 1979 film, which tells the story of the DeFeo family's mass murder (though they are named the Montelli family in the film). Amityville 3-D is a sequel to the first film based on the accounts of 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 film could not be directly referenced including the Lutz family themselves who were never referenced by name. The film, oddly, also refers to the murders that happened in Amityville II as the DeFeo murders despite the family having been renamed Montella.

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 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). It's About Time, A New Generation and Dollhouse have all been released by Republic Pictures.

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 14, 2005 $19,000,000 $65,233,369
[9]
Amityville: The Awakening TBA N/A N/A
[10]

Critical reception

Film Rating
Rotten Tomatoes[11] Metacritic[12] IMDb[13]
The Amityville Horror 24% N/A 6.2
Amityville II: The Possession 7% N/A 5.4
Amityville 3-D 0% N/A 4
Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes N/A N/A 4.2
The Amityville Curse 20% N/A 2.8
Amityville: It's About Time 14% N/A 4.3
Amityville: A New Generation N/A N/A 3.6
Amityville: Dollhouse N/A N/A 4.1
The Amityville Horror (2005) 23% 33 6.0
The Amityville Haunting N/A N/A 2.8
The Amityville Asylum N/A N/A 2.8
Amityville Death House N/A N/A 2.8
The Amityville Playhouse N/A N/A 1.9
Amityville: No escape TBA TBA 4.4
Amityville: Vanishing Point TBA TBA 2.9
The Amityville Legacy TBA TBA 3.1
Amityville Terror TBA TBA 3.2
Amityville: The Awakening TBA TBA TBA

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The Amityville Horror (1979) is based on the 1977 Jay Anson novel, while Amityville II: The Possession is based on Murder in Amityville by Hans Holzer. Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes is also based on a novel by John G. Jones.[3]

Works cited

  1. ↑ Miller, John M. "The Amityville Horror". Turner Classic Movies. In the Know. Retrieved 14 July 2017.
  2. ↑ Aronson, Alex. "'Amityville: The Awakening' Sees More Delays; The Internet Freaks Out". Movie Pilot. Retrieved 6 August 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 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. ↑ Rotten Tomatoes:
  12. ↑ Metacritic:
  13. ↑ IMDb:
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