Someone Needs to Stop the Amityville Franchise
If you are even only a casual fan of horror movies, you should be aware of The Amityville Horror. You might also know that the original film had a few sequels and was later remade with Ryan Reynolds in the early 2000’s. But how many horror movies do you think there are that have “Amityville” in the title? How many of those do you think are officially recognized as part of the franchise? Whatever value you had in your head is probably a lot lower than the actual number. Nearly 30 official Amityville movies exist and a vast majority of them have scores of less than 4/10 on IMDB. Aside from Godzilla, I struggle to think of another horror franchise with that many titles. I, intentionally and unintentionally, have seen a total of 7 Amityville movies and can say that there are countless other horror movies that would be better suited to have a long-running and recognizable franchise than this trash heap. Most people think that The Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, or Friday the 13th have too many sequels. But those three franchises combined barely have more movies than the Amityville collection, and I’m only counting the “official” movies! Do a search on IMDB of “Amityville” and see how many entries come up. I dare you.
The discovery of the fact that there are so many of these movies was a recent one for me. My girlfriend and I were excited to see a live broadcast of a Rifftrax performance and we wanted to do a bit of homework beforehand. The movie they were going to riff was Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes. So in an attempt to catch us up to that point and make sure we didn’t miss any important details from previous films, we watched 1 through 3. Before we did so, however, I wanted to see where these movies were available for streaming. That’s when I conducted my horrific search and saw the ungodly amount of movies with “Amityville” in the name. Of course, the Rifftrax experience was fantastic and hilarious, but it has come at a cost. I know too much. This knowledge of the immeasurable number of movies made to capitalize off the name carries a heavy burden on my mind. It’s a fact I wish I didn’t know. Yet, with this knowledge I am also maddened by the single, simple question: Who the hell asked for this?
What Is It?
For those who don’t know, the original Amityville Horror came out in 1979 starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder. It was based on a true story in which a family that had moved into a house in Amityville claimed they were being haunted. It is one of the more infamous cases in which the ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren were involved. The Warrens, as you might recognize the name, have most recently been played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in the Conjuring films.
Somehow, this single movie in 1979 managed to spawn countless sequels, spin-offs, and a remake in 2005. You would think that a film with that much of an impact and recognition to the point that other movies would try to capitalize on the name would have to be amazing, right? The first Exorcist film was amazing after all, and there are numerous movies with “exorcism” in the title, even if they weren’t officially related in any way. Of course, you know the answer to that question is an emphatic “No.”
I’m not going to say the 1979 Amityville Horror film is bad, but it certainly is not good or even comparably close to the quality of The Exorcist. It’s a relatively boring film that takes its time getting to anything really scary or intense. Aside from the scene in which a priest is bombarded by flies in a room, nothing really significant happens in the first half. The main characters all eventually see or hear things and act a little mad as the spirits of the house try to strain their sanity, while the local priests argue whether or not the house is evil. Only in the last 10 minutes do things get crazy and dramatic, but no important people or pets die in the process and the family manages to get away safely.
The sequel that followed, is more or less the same plot. A new family moves in, another individual within the family is singled out as the primary target of possession by the evil spirits, and weird things happen that scare the inhabitants of the house. Theoretically, you could keep making the same story of a family moving into this house and going a little crazy, over and over. But when the bar is already set relatively low, it would be difficult to keep doing so. Apparently, many of the filmmakers who would make the sequels felt the same as me.
The True Horror
Perhaps you’re skeptical of what I’ve said so far. You might not believe me when I tell you that there are so many of these movies, or that they’re so bad. Well, let me point a few things out, starting with the films I have actually seen.
The Amityville Horror (1979)
Amityville II: The Possession (1982)
Amityville 3-D (1983)
Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes (1989)
The Amityville Curse (1990)
Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (1992)
The Amityville Horror (2005)
I can tell you that somehow the original and remake are the best of that list and not by a huge margin. By the time we had gotten to the fourth movie in the franchise, it was no longer about a haunted house on Long Island with evil spirits that are hell bent on possession. Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes decides to leave New York behind and take the evil on the road to California. How does an evil house make its way across the country? It doesn’t, but the evil manages to place itself within a hideous lamp that becomes the new source of malicious manipulation and hauntings in the home of an unfortunate family. It’s as dumb as it sounds, I assure you.
The movie that followed the fugitive lamp in the timeline of garbage tried to bring the horror back to the house. However, it’s the first and only official sequel not to feature at least a picture of a house that slightly resembles the one that was featured in the previous films, which has its own amount of stupid irony. That movie was so boring and uneventful that I barely can recall what occurred. Since Amityville Curse must not have done so well, it was time to try the haunted appliance bit again with the next movie. That’s right! The lamp idea worked out so great, it only made sense to make the haunted object a clock in Amityville 1992: It’s About Time. Once again, since it’s just an object causing all the horror and mischief, no need to place it in New York. Bring the horror wherever you want!
What haunted object would you want to be the main plot point of an Amityville sequel? Toaster? Microwave? Hairbrush? How about a vibrator? Too late! That movie already exists too! Don’t believe me? Look it up! More horrific than a movie called Amityville Vibrator, is the fact that if you look at the IMDB list of movies with “Amityville” in the name, you’ll notice that just in the past 3 years, more than 10 Amityville movies have been made! One is in the hood. One is in space. One involves a police officer. Another involves a scarecrow. One involves vampires, while another has evil, killer sharks. Of course, not all of these are official and look like low-budget passion projects. Perhaps the most haunting of the recent blitz of unofficial Amityville movies that I am cautious of ever witnessing is Amityville Karen. The plot synopsis for that is exactly what you think.
Once again, I must raise the question: Who the hell asked for this?!
It’s About Time To Stop it
If you are still unconvinced that this plague of bad Amityville Horror movies is a detriment on humanity, just think for a moment if the world could possibly be a better place without such an extensive proverbial film dump, overflowing with terrible movies, cluttering up the cultural library of mankind with filth. You know it in your heart that the world would be better off without them. Now, think a little bit more. Did you ever consider that perhaps the Amityville evil exists in reality, in its own form beyond what was shown in the various films that make up its extensive catalog? Perhaps the true evil of the Amityville franchise, as I have attempted to lay out here, is not in a haunted house or its appliances that manage to escape their home turf. Perhaps the evil is, in fact, a plot to pollute the world with bad movies about the Amityville evil! What if this is just the beginning of the flood of bad movies to destroy all humanity? What if we are witnessing the dawn of humanity’s demise through the slow, but ceaseless pollution of human culture with terrible movies. The only way the evil can be stopped is to pull a Wes Craven and make a meta movie about how the true horror of the Amityville Horror is that there are so many damn movies. Thus, it will complete the cycle, close the circuit, conduct the magic spell, and free us from this horrible curse. God speed to any filmmaker brave enough to get that close to evil and make the movie to end all movies!
