George and Kathy Lutz (played by Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George), along with their three children, move into what they believe will be their dream home on Long Island, New York. The house had previously belonged to the DeFeo family, where Ronald DeFeo, Jr. had murdered his parents and siblings with a rifle a year earlier. DeFeo had claimed that he heard voices urging him to commit the crime.
Also see: AMITYVILLE THE MOST HAUNTED FAMOUS HOUSES IN AMERICA - Haunted ...Most haunted house in America, Amityville The House Of Horrors: Facts and Fictions,
The Lutz family soon start hearing ghostly voices and witnessing apparitions, including the ghost of Jodie DeFeo. George is the most affected, and he eventually becomes a danger to those around him. The local priest is called in to bless the house and he fails, warning Kathy to leave the house before it is too late. At the climax of the film, George Lutz tries to kill the other members of his family but is unsuccessful, and they all flee the house.
The best known of these films is the first version, which was released in July 1979. The film was made by the independent production company American International Pictures headed by Samuel Z. Arkoff, and directed by Stuart Rosenberg. It starred James Brolin and Margot Kidder as George and Kathy Lutz. The part of the priest who blesses the house was played by Rod Steiger, whose name in the film is Father Delaney. The 1979 version and its two sequels were filmed at a house in Toms River, New Jersey which had been converted to look like 112 Ocean Avenue after the authorities in Amityville denied permission for location filming.
The real life George Lutz denounced the 2005 version of the film as "drivel" and was suing the makers of the film at the time of his death in May 2006.
William Weber, the defense lawyer for Ronald DeFeo at his trial in 1975, has since claimed that the story that inspired the original book was a hoax concocted between himself and the Lutz family.
This was the last film marketed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer before its 2005 merger.
The house used as the Lutz home in the film was in Silver Lake, Wisconsin while other location work was shot in Antioch, Illinois.
In December 1975, George and Kathleen Lutz and their children moved into 112 Ocean Avenue, a large Dutch Colonial house in Amityville, a suburban neighborhood located on the south shore of Long Island, New York. Thirteen months before the Lutzes moved in, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. had shot dead six members of his family at the house. After 28 days the Lutzes left the house, claiming to have been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there.
Much of the controversy surrounding The Amityville Horror can be traced back to the way that it has been marketed over the years. The cover of the book shown on the right implies that it is based on verifiable events. A quote from a review in the Los Angeles Times displayed on the front cover states: "A FASCINATING, FRIGHTENING BOOK... THE SCARIEST TRUE STORY I HAVE READ IN YEARS", while the tagline at the bottom states: "MORE HIDEOUSLY FRIGHTENING THAN THE EXORCIST BECAUSE IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED!" The reference to The Exorcist is revealing, since the 1973 film had been a huge box office success and was one of the major cultural events of the 1970s. Many of the incidents in the book recall the style of The Exorcist, and this is one of the reasons why it has aroused suspicion.
In the afterword of The Amityville Horror Jay Anson states: "There is simply too much independent corroboration of their narrative to support the speculation that [the Lutzes] either imagined or fabricated these events", but some people remained unconvinced. Almost as soon as the book was published in September 1977, other writers and researchers began looking into the events at 112 Ocean Avenue, and the conclusions that they reached were often at odds with those that had appeared in Anson's book.
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