It's Halloween, so it's time to get spooky with some real life ghost business.
For this episode we're looking at 'The Amityville Horror' three different ways.
- First we're looking at the book written in 1977 based on the true story of
the Lutz family getting the hell out of their haunted ass house.
- Then we're looking at the 1979 film based
on the book that was based on the true story.
And for good measure we're also including the 2005 movie that was based on,
I don't know, some combination of the 1979 film, the book, and the true story.
So I'm Clint Cage.
- It's your girl T.
- I'm Michael Druly.
And without further ado and
no restraint on spoilers it's time to ask, What's the Difference?
(Music)
First of all, one thing that's not different in all three of
these versions is the back story of the house.
112 Ocean Avenue in Amneyville Long Island was the scene of six grizzly murders.
One night in 1974 a young man named Ronny DeFeo shot and killed his parents and
four siblings.
That's a real thing that happened right here in the real world.
Another real thing that happened, a year later, George and
Kathy Lots along with their three kids moved into the house at 112,
Ocean Avenue, only to run screaming from it four weeks later.
They were even too afraid to go back for any of their personal belongings.
The account of what happened during the four weeks the Lutz family
lived in the house is the thing that changes quite a bit.
- So let's assume the book written by Jay Anson is what really happened.
Based on hours of taped conversations with George and
Kathy Lutz, Anson said he did his best to corroborate what he could.
But before he dives completely into the ghost story, Anson opens the book with
a fairly straightforward true crime account of the facts of the DeFeo murders.
- The 1979th film also opens with the DeFeo murders.
Immediately after the super long, super boring Super 70's title sequence it's like
come on guys can't we do something else while we look at these names,
the camera stays outside while we hear gunshots from inside the house.
Seeing the muzzle flashes lighting up the creepy as hell eye like windows
of 112 Ocean Avenue.
Even when they cut inside we only see the gun barrel and some bloody squibs
Spooky squibs.
Cut to 2005 and
we see Ronny DeFeo stalking through the house, offing his family one by one.
Lots of closeups, lots of terrified faces,
it's completely focused on who's doing the killing and who's being killed.
- What's wrong, Ronny?
- I love you, Jody.
(Music)
- So right off the bat we see that the 2005 film is focused on the ghosts that
will be haunting the unsuspecting Lutzes, as opposed to the 79 film that's
focused more on the house itself being the antagonist.
- But remember, this is a true story The book itself starts out
written in the voice of a reporter.
There's a preface from a Reverend,
a prologue about the media circus in the aftermath of the Lutz' time in Amityville,
even a diagram of the property.
The book starts with a very plain, these are the facts, kind of tone.
The 79 film features one title card that reads like a police blotter.
The date, the location, and the murder, just the facts.
But the 2005 version uses a ton of grainy old newsreel footage, and
a based on the true story title card in crunchy typewriter font.
Overall, it seems way more concerned with establishing itself as a true story.
- But enough of that, let's get to the scary shit.
When the Lutz' meet the realtor,
the book again features a lot of boring details about the layout of the house.
Whether they knew about the DeFeo murders before visiting the house is unclear.
But George won't let all that sex tuple homicide business ruin a chance that his
family's American dream which, damn it, this still isn't the scary shit.
- In the 1979 film, George and Kathy are played by pitch perfect,
70s corduroy-clad stoic man James Brolin.
And sprinting into the 80s fashion-wise, Margot Kidder.
They were aware of the house's history before meeting the realtor, and
have a similar, (Sound) houses don't have memories attitude about the murders.
- (Sound) A guy kills his whole family, doesn't that bother you?
- Well yeah, sure, but houses don't have memories.
- The realtor meanwhile is very cagey about being in the home and
we get these nifty little cross cuts of the DeFeo murders as they tour the house.
They're still just focused on the rifle and
still don't connect you to the victims in any meaningful way.
They're implying that this house does actually have a memory of the trauma
alone, not the people that experienced it.
Meanwhile, in 2005, George and Cathy are played by a way too ripped for the time
period, Ryan Reynolds, and Melissa George, who, well, she was just a solid choice.
She's good, she's great, she's totally good.
Anyway when they see the house, the realtor is much more cagey and
even sees a spooky shadow following it.
And it isn't until after they tour the house and basically decide they're going
to buy it that the Lutzes find out about the DeFeo murders.
But in the well-established canon of George Lutz' portrayals,
- Well, houses don't kill people.
People kill people.
- But this isn't the first time we meet 2005 George and Kathy.
We get to see them being all cutesy, happy, married first.
The 2005 film establishes the family dynamic right up front.
The Lutz' are recently married,
with three kids Kathy had with her now-dead first husband.
It's a family that's figuring out how to be together,
complete with surly oldest boy in a heavy metal t-shirt.
- This is something neither the book nor the 79 film were super concerned with.
You don't get a ton of that family dynamic established, and
Cathy's first husband is not really discussed at all.
So far, the book and
the 79 film are setting up the story to be scary just because it's true.
And the 2005 version wants you to connect to the characters.
>From the murdered DeFeos to the blissfully unaware Lutzes.
I'd also like to point out that we're still not to the scary shit.
- "T", I would be so happy to get into us to the scary shit.
The 1979 movie starts getting scary when Father DeLaney shows up to bless
this house.
Just as he gets down to business, he becomes painfully sick.
He's swarmed with flies and yelled at from the beyond.
- Get out.
(Music)
Get out!
- After that his car goes nuts, he gets the flu for like,
a month, and gets crazy blisters on his hands, then he goes blind.
All just for getting involved withg the house in Amityville.
- In the book, it's Father Mancuso.
And all that happens is this spooky ghost voice yelling at him to get out.
Zero attack by flies.
He does however experience extreme flu-like symptoms every time he
gets involved with the Lutzes.
Also his apartment starts smelling like human excrement which apparently is a sign
of the devil.
By the end though, he doesn't go blind, he just goes on vacation.
Seriously he just decides to give up trying to help the Lutzes, his fever
breaks and he's like, I'm going to head out to San Francisco for a bit.
- In 2005, it's Father Callaway and
he doesn't show up until an hour into the movie.
Well after all the scary shit has started to happen.
He also gets attacked by flies and yelled at, but
he only shows back up to tell Kathy to get the hell out of that stupid house.
It should be said that the rest of the scary shit in all three of these versions
becomes a complicated Venn diagram.
The 1979 film stays pretty true to the book and
the 2005 film pulls some things from the 1979 film and some things from the book.
And some things it makes up entirely.
- Some things are only in the book and the 79 film.
For example, in the book, George wakes in the middle of the night to hear
an entire marching band in the living room downstairs.
He jumps out of bed to investigate to find no marching band but the furniture in
the living room has been pushed back to the edges as if to make room for one.
There's also a ceramic lion that keeps moving throughout the house seemingly
on it's own.
At one point George trips over it and winds up with what look like bite marks on
his ankle (Sound) like the ceramic lion actually bit him.
And since that's [BEEP]'d up, they then move the lion upstairs.
Then the next day Kathy walks into the living room and
screams as soon as she sees it because again, the thing bites people.
- But in the 79 film George wakes up to a drum roll,
not anywhere close to a full marching band.
In fact, it seems like it might even be part of the score.
(Sound) Then he walks downstairs,
trips over the ceramic lion, sprawling on to the floor.
Scared and exhausted, he yells at whatever is haunting his house before he
gets up and rolls the rug back out over the bare floor.
The thing is, the drum roll isn't clear.
The ceramic lion isn't treated with any significance.
In fact, it's only on screen a few more times,
but not in a isn't it creepy this (Bleep) lion is moving on its own sort of way.
Plus, no point is made to show where the furniture was in the first place,
or that it's been moved and the rug rolled up.
And then the next morning, Kathy finds a bite mark on George's leg, but
they don't even talk about it.
So the 79 'Amityville Horror' is basically a faithful adaptation just with
way less context.
It's like the filmmakers assumed everybody had just read the book.
Meanwhile in 2005 there's no ceramic lion or marching band, but
there is a ton of this creepy little girl.
Going back to our point about the 2005 version being more connected to
the ghosts, little dead Jodie is almost a co-star of this movie.
While the book and the 1979 movie both feature a little chair rocking on its own,
the 2005 film just straight up shows the little dead girl hanging out in the chair.
And half the time the scares are specifically for us the viewer and not for
the characters on screen.
But most tellingly, in the book in the first film,
Jodie is a demon pig with glowing red eyes.
The book claims this is the physical form chosen by the demon
that's dwelling in the house.
And the 79 film just cuts to a few shots of a spooky-ass pig in the windows
with no explanation, but
the 2005 film just makes Jodi the youngest of the murdered DeFeo kids.
But there are also some things that are just in the two movies.
In 79 the Lutzes go to Cathy's brothers wedding and
leave the kids at home with a babysitter.
A nerdy teen complete with head gear.
She gets herself locked in the closet when invisible Jody,
the demon pig, slams the door closed.
Then the baby sitter pounds her fists bloody until the Lutzes get home and
let her out.
Then in 2005, the Lutzes have a baby sitter come over so
they can just have a night out away from the house.
The baby sitter is a weed-smoking hottie who for
some reason starts flirting with the oldest Lutz boy.
- So do you french?
- Do I what?
- As she tells the kids the grisly history of the house,
angry little ghost girl Jody locks her in the closet and
proceeds to put the sitter's finger into her bullet wound.
It's gross, and the babysitter freaks out appropriately.
- But none of that happens in the book.
Cathy's brother gets married but the whole family goes to the wedding.
The babysitter is an addition the 79 film made to the book and
the 2005 film chose to adapt from the 79 film.
It was clearly an opportunity to make an invisible demon pig Jody more cinematic
in 79.
And to build up the scary little girl shit in 2005.
But the 2005 Amityville borrowed a bit from the book that the 79 version largely
ignored.
In the book, Anson goes into detail about the native American history of the area.
How they used to send the sick and
insane to live on the spot where the Lutz' house now sits.
So yeah, a lot of bad vibes.
- The 2005 version uses parts of this.
By the end of the film Kathy discovers a history of demonic rituals performed where
the house now stands by a crazy dude named John Ketchum.
In real life his name pops up in connection with the Salem witch trials,
but who knows how true that is?
Movie Ketchum, meanwhile, used to do all kinds of occult experiments on
Native Americans and ultimately killed himself on the spot as well.
Spewing blood all over bearded and
too ripped-for-the-era Ryan Reynolds in a hallucination.
- Then some of the scary shit from the book neither of the films used.
The biggest example is of the levitation.
George, Kathy, and their two oldest boys all reportedly floated out of their beds.
And after they finally decide to flee the house, they stay with Kathy's parents.
But the first night there, they begin floating again because the demon pig,
Jodi, found them.
- But both film versions did keep some of the scary shit in common with the events
reported by the Lutzes.
For example, George is the first to feel the effects of the haunting.
He's always cold and obsessively chopping wood.
He woke up at 3:15 AM almost every night.
He becomes more and more of an asshole as time goes by.
- We're friends.
We're having fun, right?
(Music) - There's also the idea of a secret
room in the basement.
The book and 79 film feature a red room that's hidden behind a wall and
doesn't show up on the plans for the house.
The 2005 version shows an entire torture dungeon behind some paneling
in the basement, but it's hard to tell just how much of it is real or imagined.
Hopefully this dude hanging from the hooks is a hallucination, but
I bet the dungeon is actually there.
- But maybe the most important similarity between the book and
both the movies is that they're all very probably fiction.
In the years since the Lutzes lived at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville,
nearly everybody involved has changed their story.
Even the book changes slightly from edition to edition.
Little things, like the priest driving a tan Ford in one version and then
a red Chevy in the next, but within the book itself, little things don't add up.
Like on page two in the prologue, it claims the the Lutzes moved on December
23rd, then three pages later in chapter one they moved in on December 18th.
- A quick googling of the true story shows that the book also neglects to mention
that George dabbled in the occult and was, by the account of Daniel,
the oldest Lutz kid, just a really shitty guy to live with.
George and Cathy were also mired in ego and financial troubles as well,
which skeptics of the events at Amityville are always quick to point out.
Apparently, even the priest's story has changed over the years.
But perhaps most damning is the Lutz' family lawyer.
He and the family had a falling out in the years after Amityville and
he claims that he and the Lutzes made the whole thing up over a few bottles of wine.
Some of the independent investigators that came to look at the house also called
it a hoax, even writing their own book called The Amityville Horror Conspiracy or
cash money get into my pockets.
So what do we wind up with in this spooky Venn diagram?
A probably made up account of a haunted house that spawned
decades worth of horror pop culture.
But whether or not the Lutzes made up the story is irrelevant.
The fact that so many people were willing to believe them that the house at 112
Ocean Avenue became known at the most haunted house in America,
speaks volumes to what we want out of our scary movies.
In 1979, audiences latched on to the story of a family unwittingly
stumbling into a demon infested house.
That it was based on a true story just means it could happen to any of us.
By 2005 though we see a family just trying to stick together while the ghosts of
a family that was ripped apart by violence try to do the same to them.
- But most of the scary shit was made up so
maybe we should have done the Texas Chainsaw Massacre instead.
- You are probably right.
That will do it for this episode.
Let us know in the comments what your favorite ghost story is.
And be sure to subscribe for more What's The Difference
(Music)