I got into a conversation with one of my colleagues on this site, Gus Wood. He thinks they have value if they bring audiences back to the original movie. I agree with that.
However, that statement may embody precisely why I have trouble with them. In particular, with The Amityville Horror. The remake is half an hour shorter than the original film. It has no patience. There is less substance and characterization. Less is left to the imagination. Director Andrew Douglas has experience directing music videos, and it shows.
The Amityville Horror is a victim in having too much random, flashy imagery that is ultimately nonsensical. Suddenly, a ghost with decaying, yellow skin and blood coming out of its mouth appears next to him.
There are ghosts seen in the waters of the boathouse. Hands are holding her against the ceiling. Jodie is no longer an imaginary pig friend, but now one of the DeFeo children. Based on her age, she would most closely match the real-life Allison DeFeo.
Are we to believe that as a victim in the house, the other ghosts will bully Jodie for all eternity? The scares come off as cheap, ridiculous and pointless because of it.
There are other lame scares. More than once CGI shadows of ghost children run across hallways. There are sacrificial altars in the basement.
Kathy Lutz is discovering the John Ketcham legend at the library. George Lutz is discovering ghosts in the basement, apparently in a nightmare. The sequence is edited poorly together.
It comes across more like a montage. Or, hmm, maybe a music video? I have other problems. For one, they change the house. It looks awkward and unnatural. For me though, it was giving me flashbacks to when they pointlessly change the house in the Psycho remake. This is the memorable original musical score, particularly the main theme, from Lalo Schifrin. I hate his music. I will give this remake a little credit.
Andrew Douglas films the opening sequence on the DeFeo murders really well. I was also going to give him credit for recreating news footage of the era.
The camera is inside the house, looking out through a doorway. I wish the remake contained more of those moments. There are some deleted scenes on the DVD as well. I understand why the filmmakers chose to delete them. George tries to comfort his wife, brushing his hand across her face. It leaves a bloody mark though, causing her daughter to scream. The other deleted scenes are mostly of outside characters reacting to the house, such as a grocery clerk.
The window barely misses this time though. I also watched interviews with cast and crew as research. Those interviews have the actors on multiple occasions mentioning how the house was another character. I roll my eyes at this cliche. There, she was a bookish, prudish type. When the producers heard about this, they would force Kosar to change her.
Lisa arrives as a figure of seduction for the older Lutz boy, Billy Jesse James. As she arrives and Billy drools over her, George and Kathy awkwardly leave without even a goodbye. Lisa will ask Billy if he french—kisses before switching the conversation to the DeFeo murders. The humor the filmmakers try to bring out of this character feels out of place. There is one mildly amusing moment in the scene.
Ghosts apparently trap Lisa in the closet where Ronnie DeFeo murdered his sister Jodie in reality, the entire family was murdered in their beds. A smile appears on her face. This is the idea that living in the house causes George Lutz to go psychotic. He starts having the same murderous impulses that Ronald DeFeo Jr. During our exploration into the Amityville true story, we discovered that George Lutz did not kill their dog, Harry.
In the documentary My Amityville Horror , son Daniel Lutz claims that their dog, which was kept in a pen behind the house, went ballistic once and tried to jump the fence. The dog's chain wasn't long enough and it was left hanging over the fence by its neck, its paws unable to reach the ground. Daniel made his way over and rescued the dog from nearly hanging itself. He believes that the dog had been alarmed by a poltergeist of some sort that haunted their boathouse.
Even the controversial book, The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson, did not claim that George ever harmed or tried to kill their half breed Malamute. My Amityville Horror is a documentary starring son Daniel Lutz, who recounts his version of the haunting.
Yes, but it was actually a small storage space under the stairs which the DeFeo family had used to store toys. Left: A childhood friend of Allison DeFeo kneels in the real red room under the basement stairs. Right: Actor Ryan Reynolds explores the movie's fictional basement dungeon. As the real George Lutz stated in The Real Amityville Horror documentary from , blood never ran down the walls of the home. The real George Lutz never tried to kill his family like the Ryan Reynolds character does during the climax of the film.
This includes trying to kill his wife Kathy with the outboard motor of their boat and chasing the family with a shotgun.
George also never built coffins for his family and they never had to tie him up with rope like they do in the movie. The movie's Jeremiah Ketcham above is almost entirely fictional, though there was a Ketcham who came to Long Island from an area near Salem.
Yes, but the connection is loose at best. There is no record of him ever having tortured American Indians, nor was he a Reverend like in the movie right. John Ketcham was born in in Cambridge, England and came to America by ship with his father Edward, arriving in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a town not far from Salem.
He was appointed constable in There is no record of him committing suicide when he died in in Newtown, Queens, New York, where he had served as a deputy. There is also no history of him having any connection to witchcraft, as supported by the Ketcham family who have done extensive research with regard to their genealogy.
Ketcham was a common name in the Long Island area and other John Ketchams are also on record as having lived there, including but not limited to one of John Ketcham's sons who was also named John, in addition to a carpenter who resided in the area in the s. As George Lutz stated in a Long Island Newsday interview from , he never fell off the roof of the house, nor did any events take place on the roof of the house. Although they did have a boat, they left in their van which correlates more with what is shown in the original movie.
After leaving the house, they went and stayed with Kathy's mother, Joan Conners, before finally relocating to San Diego, California. Unlike actors James Brolin and Margot Kidder, who starred in the original version , both Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George have indicated that they believe that there is a significant amount of truth to the Lutz's story.
So, I think that they were driven out by this malevolent energy and that was our opportunity to showcase that in the movie. I was just playing a role. How the hell would any little girl wanna play with that thing? I for one stand by their decision to change it, because i felt Jodie as a little girl was far more terrifying than just a couple of red eyes in the window sill. The shot of George seeing the girl jodie in the window was scary as hell, and made sense within the context of the story!!
When George looks up at the window? Sorry, but that doesnt look like anything remotely friendly, and Miss Piggy doesnt compare in any possible way. They simply changed a pig into a girl, thats all.
Thats why they were very creative with Jodie, and the things she did. That would be Allison and an insult. If you cant, sorry bill, then you are basically twisting the film to make it worse than it really is. Ill be waiting patiently Thank you wild bill. When James Brolin looked at the window and saw a pig staring back at him is one of the creepiest scenes ever. I felt it lost something when they made it a little girl. Member since March And a "good" little girl at that.
Lutz into the demon and Jody into the "guardian angel under demonic bondage. And yes, the way the little girl Chelsea in this movie, Missy in the novel, Amy in the movie saw Jody the Pig could have been very different for her.
The father and others could have seen something far more horrifying. In fact, there is really no reason a pig need be shown at all. Children rarely actually "see" their imaginary playmates, even if they seem to believe in them. BTW, one of the scariest masks I have is a pig mask -- its very realistic, and on a human it just looks uncanny and freaky.
If we were to "see" Jody the Pig, it could just have something "wrong" and uncanny that a child simply might not see or notice. Those scary red eyes might have just been vampiristically hypnotic and the girl is brainwashed into believing a friendly encounter with Mr. This occurred in the middle of the night, and Defeo went to work the next morning as if nothing had happened. What Happened in the Movie: In the remake of The Amityville Horror , Ronald Defeo ends the lives of his family members after spooky voices tell him to.
In this adaptation, funny man Ryan Reynolds portrays George Lutz, the new Amityville homeowner following the Defeo family's passing.
What Really Happened: Nobody knows the true story of what motivated Defeo to go after his entire family in cold blood, but Defeo circulated about nine different stories as to how and why he did. In some stories, he implicated a demon in a black hood that gave him the weapon and instructed him to attack his family.
In others, he maintained that "the voices from the house made him do it. What Happened in the Movie: In the film The Amityville Horror , George Lutz keeps waking up at am - the actual time when the Defeo tragedy took place on November 13, - with an intense feeling to check the remote Long Island property's boathouse. What Really Happened: This is one of the statements made by George Lutz that he never backed down on, so according to the former homeowner, this depiction is accurate.
What Happened in the Movie: If you've seen any version of The Amityville Horror then you know flies play a huge part of the overall horror. The scariest part about the flies is that they shouldn't be present in Long Island during the winter. What Really Happened: During a interview with Good Morning America , Kathy Lutz maintains that they did experience unexplainable and ferocious swarms of flies after moving into the former Defeo home.
One of the Lutz children, Christoper, later confirmed this in a interview. What Happened in the Movie: In the adaptation, 5-year-old Missy Lutz makes a friend named "Jodie," a pig demon with glowing red eyes. Although at first Jodie is believed to be an imaginary companion, Kathy Lutz witnesses the demon pig eyes peering into her daughter's bedroom. What Really Happened: In reality, there was no "Jodie the Demon Pig," and this depiction was discredited by numerous parapsychologists.
However, Defeo allegedly mentioned a cat named Jodie that was so fat he called him "Pig. The haunted house is then attributed to this uncanny coincidence. What Really Happened: In reality, the Shinnecock tribe didn't live anywhere near Amityville, and the house was not constructed atop ancient burial grounds.
What Happened in the Movie: In basically every Amityville Horror movie, a priest shows up and usually gets his buns handed to him by the entity haunting the house. The most famous scene features Father Delaney being assaulted by the angriest flies in film history. What Really Happened: In reality, the priest that the Lutz family called, Father Pecoraro, told a judge that he never actually visited the house.
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