Amityville Double Feature

Join Sarah, Jamie Loftus, and their best friend Six Pack Man for a discussion of The Amityville Horror's two film adaptations and 17,000 spinoffs. Included in this discussion: Ryan Reynolds' flop era, putting honey on your head, and at least one haunted vibrator.

Transcript:

Sarah: Welcome to a bonus episode, where I can say whatever kind of sentence I want. Hi, Jamie Loftus.

Jamie: Hi, Sarah Marshall. What's up?

Sarah: I'm so good. Life is complicated, but I just spent three and a half hours watching two Amityville horror movies. And now we're going to talk about them together and I'm very thrilled about that.

Jamie: I echo everything you just said. Life is complicated, and yet there is profound simplicity to be found. I will say that I thought that the runtimes of these two movies would be reversed. I assumed that the second version would be much longer, but it wasn't. It was much shorter and much less happened.

Sarah: I think that's normally true. Yeah. And I feel so conflicted about the new version, because it's one of those glossy, soulless, Platinum Dunes. Like why would you name your production company Platinum Dunes, unless you wanted everything to be smooth and sexy that came out of it.

Jamie: That was also my first note was, “Platinum Dunes?” Yeah. I mean really, Ryan Reynolds in his flop era.

Sarah: Yeah, that was an era.

Jamie: Maybe he'll get back there, but it's interesting that he started in his flop era and then graduated to something better. I guess that's how you would want it to go versus the opposite.

Sarah: Yeah. I just feel like he's changed paths so many times. Because he started off as a sitcom guy and then he did just a ton of movies, and he was a contested superhero, and then a superhero people liked, I believe. And also Blake Lively’s husband. And that's kind of what he does now. And it's comfortable, it seems good.

Jamie: Now he has a vanity liquor brand, and he does viral marketing. Did you know that's his main thing now?

Sarah: No, but that makes total sense.

Jamie: Yeah, he's a man of many pivots. I feel comfortable saying that this span of years is his flop era. They're trying to make a version of him happen that was never going to happen.

Sarah: Is that version of him anything like James Brolin, or like who is that?

Jamie: I feel, I don't know. How would you describe his interpretation of George? I also feel like both of the actors playing the parents in the 2005 one, they feel too young. Both are in their late twenties. I don't know. I just, I think he was trying to be like a very like hyper-masculine movie star in a way that just doesn't feel like the version of him that people like. I don't know what he's actually like, who knows.

Sarah: I swear to God that something must have happened in I guess the eighties and the nineties in terms of skincare. Like how to make people attractive by throwing money at the situation. I love 70’s movies because I think everyone looks haggard and overly tan, or like prematurely wrinkled, or just sweaty the whole time. Like, people just feel very real. And there's something about, especially 2000’s movies, I think that movies then we're like so glossy that we've actually really bounced back from that. Big budget movies have a lot of texture now, I think because we did have this era of no texture, which this falls right into.

Jamie: So smooth. I mean to the point where I was laughing. I mean, James Brolin as George is very hot. I think he’s a very sexy guy. Ryan Reynolds is bringing the same body, but it's so smooth. It's so smoothed out and it's so like aesthetically… It just feels, yeah, like you're saying like, just faker in a way. That's not a comment on the actor at all. But I do think with Ryan Reynolds, once he got focus grouped as ‘wife guy’, there was no looking back for him. And now he's in a permanent state of ‘wife guy’, which seems like it works for him.

Sarah: A permanent state of ‘wife guy’ is great.

Jamie: That's what you would hope for, right?

Sarah: Yeah. Ultimately that's the dream. And there are moments in this performance that remind me of the times in Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, where Ryan Reynolds’ character would do a Captain Kirk impression, which is not what you want in your horror movies.

Jamie: That’s not what you want. Well, that's the other thing is Ryan Reynolds is simply not scary. Maybe that's the real thing. It's a combination of the 2000’s aesthetic and storytelling style, compounded with the fact that he's just not a scary person.

Sarah: He's so boyish. Yeah.

Jamie: Can I mention the biggest change between these two?

Sarah: Yeah, no. Okay, blanket statement, spoilers everywhere as far as the eye can see, falling ripefully off the spoiler trees. Okay. Let's go.

Jamie: The fact that they had Ryan Reynolds kill the dog.

Sarah: I know!

Jamie: Going into this, I had seen the 70’s version before, and I had really enjoyed it. I didn't realize at the time that Amityville Horror was like the pop culture origin of the Indian burial ground trope that flourished in a lot of negative ways from there. I didn't realize that, but it's very surprising. I just assumed that it had been around before the 70’s, but it seems like Stephen King just ran with it from there. And it showed up in The Shining and it showed up in Pet Sematary. And there's so much to talk about there.

But I had seen the 70’s, and the point is as it pertains to the dog, the last thing, the most dangerous moment in the whole movie is when James Brolin goes back to save the dog. But in 2005 they’re like, we're going to have Ryan Reynolds murder the dog in the second act of the movie, not even at the end. And that's not even supposed to be, I think that's the scariest thing he does. And then there's multiple set pieces with baby Chloe Grace Moretz almost walking off a roof. Why does that happen so many times?

Sarah: This kid loves to be at the top of tall buildings. And I was thinking about how that seems like so much more a 2005 parent's nightmare. Because I feel like in the 70’s, parents were like, “Oh yeah, the kids get on the roof. It's good for them.”

Jamie: That very well may happen in the background of many shots of the 70’s version. But yeah, Chloe Grace Moretz walking off the top of a roof is such a repeated motif in a way, that I just don't know what they were going for at some point. Because they just kept throwing her back on the roof. They're like, when in doubt, throw her near a body of water.

Sarah: Well, there are a lot of big differences between this and the 1979 version. And there were some ways that I thought that it really departed from the source material in a really good way, generally, honestly. Because first of all, there were more things in this movie that were actually scary. So you'd think that would work.

Jamie: We're talking about the 2005?

Sarah: Yeah. Where like immediately, actually scary things start happening as opposed to like, there are flies and the crap in the toilet.

Jamie: See, I thought that the flies are so much more effective in the 70’s and they were in the 2000’s.

Sarah: I do think that's true, because they're so exaggerated in the 2000’s. They're like CGI magic flies?

Jamie: They really go for it. Yeah.

Sarah: They work for Platinum Dunes.

Jamie: I did laugh out loud when the Platinum Dunes flies blew the whatever it is, the vent, into the priest’s face and knocked him over onto the ground with a bunch of CGI flies. I did get a kick out of it.

Sarah: I love that the priest is played by Philip Baker Hall, from all the Paul Thomas Anderson movies. That's very funny to me.

Jamie: I just wish he'd been in it more, because they bring him in so late. Meanwhile, there's so many characters in the first one. There was an embarrassment of characters, many of which disappear. But my favorite character… I had not heard, you had not yet told me the story of the book when I saw the movie for the first time last year. And so I didn't realize that my favorite character is in the 70’s movie, the bartender. It felt less jarring when you, I think that he played it out about the same, but it just felt less jarring when you saw it where he was like, “Hey, you look exactly like a murderer who lived here until very recently.” And then George gets, I think, understandably he's not happy to hear it. And then the bartender is, “Oh. no offense, my bad. Next round is on me.” And then he just gives them a free beer, I think.

Sarah: Yeah. That's total skunky behavior.

Jamie: I love it.

Sarah: He’s just like a good sport in this story. Yeah. And I feel like the 2005 movie really streamlines the whole thing. They keep the family and the babysitter, who was an addition for the first movie. And then I can't even think of what other, and then there's the priest who shows up in the last 20 minutes. \

Jamie: Like the babysitter character's there, but she's significantly altered in a way that I also found to be very 2005. Whereas like in the seventies, like you're saying in the way that it's like people looking like people, versus people looking like sexy ideas. Yeah. In the seventies, it's an actual teenager who's doing the babysitting. She's got braces that they don't even make anymore with a full wire across the mouth.

Sarah: She feels like she's being played by Cynthia Nixon. I know it's not Cynthia Nixon, but like it could have been a Cynthia Nixon role.

Jamie: Yeah. That is actually the perfect comparison. But then in 2005, they bring in like basically a Manson girl where she's like wearing a crop top. She tries to hook up with a 12-year-old?

Sarah: It's very uncomfortable.

Jamie: Because I also really like 70’s movies. And a lot of the time if you're looking at 70’s movies versus 2000’s, and even like some 2010’s movies, they really got it right the first time.

Sarah: And I feel like this girl is so the 2000’s version of sexy where they're like, okay, we need as many uninterrupted inches of torso as we can possibly get. I'm so mystified by this fashion, which I lived through. Because the thing about these pants is that you had to walk in them carefully. It feels like it was about restricted movement.

Jamie: There could have been a real slip.

Sarah: Yeah. So one thing that I think is a positive attempt to do something with some really weird material, is that they take the Ketchum character, who we talked about being a made-up Salem resident who practiced real witchcraft. And I thought it was interesting that in both movies, they had Kathy go to the library to do the research because I assume they were like, “No one will believe that George went to the library.”

Jamie: Well, he goes in the 70’s one, right? Like, they both go to the library.

Sarah: Oh, that’s right, they both go. Yeah, you're right. Okay. So that it was believable then.

Jamie: Were you to just describe their personalities, you would guess that Kathy would be the only one to think to go to a library. It is kind of a fun twist in the book that George goes to library.

Sarah: Yeah. It feels like bad exposition more than anything. But yeah, he's like, “I'm being possessed. I need to go to this bar, but first to the library, because that's how we're going to learn this house’s scary history.”

Jamie: I wish I could say that I hadn't gone to a bar and then a library, but I did that literally last week.

Sarah: Oh, well, yeah. That's really what grad school was for me. Just bars and libraries. That was great.

Well, and so in the 2005 movie they take this Ketchum character and they're like, “Ketchum used the house as a place where he tortured indigenous people and killed them all. And he's the one who's possessing George.” And the main difference that I thought was interesting is that the two entities who are most worried about who is this Ketchum guy who's possessing George and trying to get him to kill his family, and Jodie, who in this version is a little girl who is one of Ronnie DeFeo’s sisters who he murdered, they're both ghosts of people who once lived. They're not demons.

Jamie: Right. Again, it's I think I'm getting caught in the mire of now feeling attached to the original version of this story. I feel like taking the pig out of the Amityville Horror, that's no fun.

Sarah: I agree. I was like, where's the pig though. She can be a little girl and a pig.

Jamie: Not a single snort in the entire movie. To the point where the windows kind of felt meaningless, because that was supposed to be scary pig. I dunno. I felt cheated by the lack of pig imagery. And also, I feel like if you make Jodie a little girl, they're implying that Jodie is a demon. When it's no, that's just a murdered child. That's the opposite of a demon.

Sarah: This is one of the many times we get into the area of, well this was a real family with real little kids that we are now slandering in this Ryan Reynolds film.

Jamie: In the service of Ryan Reynolds flop era, I don't know.

Sarah: And this is definitely like a Warren's area, too, ss just okay. But like, how can we tell ghost stories without libeling people?

Jamie: It's fascinating. Yeah, because I wrote that down as well. Where the 2005 version reminds me a lot of the most recent Conjuring movie. Like the one that came out last year because of its heavy reliance on real children who, unlike previous Conjuring movies - and I would need to go back and fact check myself on this - but as far as I know, at least the children profiled in previous Conjuring movies had participated in some public record. They had written a book or like they had put out their version of the story with the Warrens. But in the most recent one, The Conjuring - The Devil Made Me Do It, there is like active lawsuits of the then possessed child being, “Please stop doing this to me.” It's obvious that the DeFeo’s cannot speak for themselves because they were murdered. It just feels a little fucked up. He put Kathy's head in a propeller, a boat propeller.

Sarah: Yeah, Jesus Christ! So the thing about this movie is that it just has George behaving in like a way more overtly possessed demonic - well, I guess there's no demon in this - possess very Puritan guy, murderer ways. He's just like running around, trying to murder people for kind of a long time.

Jamie: It's funny because I feel like there's some borrowed images from movies and properties that were popular between the Amityville horror and 2005, including the balloon from It.

Sarah: Oh my God. That's true. Oh, no.

Jamie: The balloon from It. Isn't it like three different times? It has something to do with baby Chloe Grace Moretz. I don't even know. I'm sorry. I'm being a real hater on the 2005 version. But I had thought it would at least be funny bad, but I just didn't like it. They were like watering down lines from, you know this better than I do, at least lines from the 1970s movie, if not lines from the book. But I had a small comparative study. I feel like there's really only one, but there's a couple of lines that James Brolin says in the 1970s movie that Ryan Reynolds just says a worst version of. They're like, let's change the line and make it less coherent and put it in a less, sorry, capable actor's hands. Like why would you do that? James Brolin says when they're buying the house, “A house doesn't have memories.” He says it in a great way. It's like when he and Margo Kidder, who also no disrespect to the 2005 actress, but Margot Kidder, the outfits they're putting her in, she's got pigtails, she's got flowers in her hair, she's wearing a schoolgirl outfit. You’re like, what is going on here. But James Brolin's, “A house doesn't have memories.” And then Ryan Reynolds’ version of that line is, “Houses don't kill people, people kill people.”

Sarah: And I was totally taken out of it. Because I was like, I don't think the NRA had said that in 1975. So why does that joke make sense? And that's the part that reminded me of when he would do the Captain Kirk impression on Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place.

Jamie: Yeah, I see it. Yeah, it's true. And they're like, we can't remind people of the thing they know. And it's like no, you could do that. That'd be better than making it worse.

Jamie: I think just as a general rule, no need to make it worse. But the 2005 version, I feel biased because I do find the wealth of useless characters in the book, and then in the 1970s movie ,to be very charming.

Sarah: Exactly.

Jamie: But I get why, like for the second version, they're like, “All right, maybe we don't need Jeff and Carolyn.” But I liked Jeff and Carolyn.

Sarah: That's the thing. I was like, ah, they didn't even do Carolyn. Who by the way is the girlfriend of the guy who works for George, who comes to their house and sees into hell.

Jamie: Is Carolyn in the book?

Sarah: She is. Yeah. She's the young lady.

Jamie: As is the nun aunt. Which is so funny in the 70’s movie. Another laugh out loud, hilarious moment of which there are a few. In the 1979 movie where Kathy's aunt - and Kathy's family in general, I feel like it's good to have them there - because it just gives her a personality and depth that she does not have in the 2005 version. Like both of them exist in this void. But Kathy's family is as present in the 70’s version as they are in the book. Which I guess makes sense because everyone would have read the book and they would have been like, “Hey, where's the nun aunt?” But the nun is in it for three scenes, same as the book. She like comes in the house and she's like, “Oh, something's not right.” Oh no, it is three scenes because then she abruptly tells Kathy, “I gotta get out of here.” And then Kathy starts crying, even though she didn't ask a single follow-up question about what's going on. And then the next scene she's in, she's driving her car away. She throws up and it's so funny.

Sarah: It's so dramatic. And it goes on for a while.

Jamie: She’s throwing up. She's she just keeps going.

Sarah: They were like, make it clear that this is not normal throwing up, this is the demonic kind.

Jamie: But you don't even see anything come out of her mouth, she just kind of like screams. I couldn't stop laughing. She shows up one more time and it's like at a party later, maybe her brother's wedding. And she's just like, “I’m sorry. I don't know what was going on the other day, but I just threw up the second I left your house.” And that she never comes back. It's so funny. A very valid critique of the book is people are just coming and going.

Sarah: And again, I think that's one of the things that makes it feel real. A fiction writer would have condensed any given three characters into one. But it's like, nope, they're all different people. I just love it so much.

It cracks me up and just like the amount of Father Mancuso. From what we've discussed of the book, for every three scenes of anything else, there's a scene of Father Mancuso looking at the sores on his hands. And it's weird. I feel like it's such bad storytelling that I'm like, how dare you only bring the priest in at the very end.

Jamie: What do they call him? They call him something different in both of the movies, too. He's like Father Donnelley or something. Father Delaney.

Sarah: He’s Father Delaney. Yeah.

Jamie: I think that he is still a different name. And let me check the 2005 one. I'm like, this man was never real, you can use the same thing over and over. He's Father Calloway in the 2000 one. I don't know why they keep changing it, because as far as we know, he never existed. Yeah. They just keep, they're cycling out the hits of like Catholic names you can have.

Sarah: He’s related to Caroline.

Jamie: He's Caroline's great uncle. And he was the original influencer of the family.

Sarah: That's so true. Yeah. What with the exorcisms.

Jamie: I liked that he had, and in the 70’s, I feel like they go even further into giving him an arc. They give him a detective friend.

Sarah: There's definitely like borrowed Exorcist DNA in here, I think. But also, did you notice that his priest boss, I don't know how this works, but some guy ahead of him who's basically poo-pooing his concerns.

Jamie: His secular education.

Sarah: Is played by the mayor from Jaws, Murray Hamilton, reprising his role as the mayor of Jaws.

Jamie: Good for him. I love that for him.

Sarah: He's moved on from being reckless about human life on the beach. Now he's doing it with souls.

Jamie: You know what? I just love the wealth of useless characters in the 70’s. It made me smile. Margot Kidder is, I like Margot Kidder in general. The outfits they were putting her in were so confusing.

Sarah: They really were. The pigtails were intense. It's like Margo, you're 30 years old. This is quite a decision you're making.

Jamie: And look, I'm almost 30 years old and I'll occasionally. But they really, like they're high. But yeah, they're like Pippi.

Sarah: Yes. For one thing.

Jamie: Not something that 30-year-old women generally do. But I appreciate that both she does it and no one addresses it.

Sarah: That's the thing. It's every scene she has a new, really intense outfit and nobody ever says anything or acknowledges it. And also, I love that there's a scene where she's like listening to classical music and painting a statue of the Virgin Mary. Which I guess is what Catholics do at home. I honestly don't know.

Jamie: I was also wondering, okay. I wanted to check that with you. Is it ever referenced in the book that she is a painter or interested in painting?

Sarah: That doesn’t come up. I feel like this is something they would do to round out a female character in the 70’s if they didn't have anything else.

Jamie: Okay. And I guess it was like maybe the 70’s version of, ‘I own an art gallery’ or ‘I just started a bakery.’

Sarah: Kathy is just all about canned goods. She really is.

Jamie: And I feel like her, she's got that second wave feminism energy of, are you going to help me bring in the groceries or not? But I still think that she had more of a character in the 70’s than she did in the two 2000’s.

Sarah: Margo Kidder just exudes personality. She can't help it, but I think about it. I really love her.

Jamie: I do want to shout out the other actor. Wasn't it Melissa George, who I've seen and enjoyed in other roles? I just think that no one in the 2000’s version was set up for success.

Sarah: No. I want to talk about the finale of the 2005 version, which I think is amazing where we get Action Kathy, which I think is nice.

Jamie: I did like that. Yes.

Sarah: This house also compared to the original house; it's so fucking tall. Like how tall is this house?

Jamie: I also had that question of like, where was each movie shot?

Sarah: Off the top of my head I want to say that the 70’s movie, they built sound stages and filmed it in California primarily, if not entirely. And the 2005 movie they found an old mansion somewhere in Wisconsin, I think actually in the greater Milwaukee area. Which I want to imagine was owned by somebody who was like a beer millionaire.

Jamie: Okay. 2005 shot in Illinois and Wisconsin. And then in the 70’s, a private residence in New Jersey that had been converted to look like Amityville. Okay. So, but like different houses, different locations. Yeah. Maybe that's why they added in all those roof shots, because it was so looming.

Sarah: Yeah, so they had a real giant roof to work with apparently. And so they all have to end up on this giant roof in the climax, because they're running away from George who was just fully chasing after them with an axe, trying to kill everybody. And we've heard the scary, Puritan ghost man saying, “Ketchum, kill em”, to him for a really long time. And I was just like, George, you can hear a voice and not do what it says.

Jamie: Try telling that to detective Pikachu over there, it’s not going to happen.

Sarah: George is like, “Kill me, kill me before I kill you.” And then Kathy fakes, she is very clever apparently, and figures out that she needs to knock George unconscious, and then they all have to get into the motorboat and go out into the sound in this. And if they even just get away from the property line, I guess, then George will be freed of the spirits. Which is backed up by what the book talks about, about how spirits can't travel over water. So it was like, well, it is canonical. But it's so funny to me that they just motor out. They can still totally see the house very easily, it's like right in front of. And then George wakes up and he's like, “I'm all better. Yay.”

Jamie: Okay. So again, I'm realizing I'm very prejudiced towards the 70’s version. Because I thought the ending to the 2005 version is so funny to me because it's like, Kathy is definitely more active. But also, if she's wrong in the 2005 version, if she doesn't know how the Amityville Horror made up book ends, she has just put her entire family in the center of an isolated body of water with someone who wants to kill them.

Sarah: In a tiny little boat that's tippy,

Jamie: She's made maybe the least responsible, like she's empowered by the movie to make a decision. But she takes such a big risk in the one decision she’s given.

Sarah: She could have put everyone in the car and driven to New Jersey.

Jamie: Right! But she puts them all in a boat and drives them into the middle of a lake where no one will hear them screaming if Ryan Reynolds happens to just be an abusive husband.

Sarah: She's, one might say, overly confident in her theory.

Jamie: I like that, though. I think that's like a fun part of movies. When someone at the height of the action acts like they know how the movie's going to end. Because if you put yourself in their shoes, you're just like, that's actually a huge risk.  But you know, the Kathy of the movie knows that demons are real, ghosts are real. Her new husband is possessed by an evil colonist. And that she just needs to drive her whole family into the most remote area where they can get the least help if they need it.

Sarah: Yeah. It's not a good moral. I feel like the moral of both movies, I guess because your husband tries to kill you once doesn't mean that's going to become an ongoing thing.

Jamie: Blame the house. I have another book question for you. The doll appears in both of the movies. Does it appear in the book?

Sarah: If it does, then it has a very minor role. I think we just all know dolls are creepy and they get included accordingly.

Jamie: Okay. I was just checking to make sure I was not misremembering. I wasn't bothered by either of the dolls.

Sarah: One thing I find funny is that I think Jodie is a little girl in the more recent movie because Jodie shifted from being a unisex name to a girl's name in the past 40 years.

Jamie: Interesting. You're right.

Sarah: It's funny because I feel like the 2005 movie, Michael Bay is involved somewhere, probably producing or something. I don't know. But it does have the hallmarks of a movie made by people who in a general kind of way know how to make a movie. Yeah. It's not like full of extraneous characters. There's more actually scary things that happen. And I don't know, to me for that same reason, it feels like it doesn't have texture. And the 70’s movie, because it's so closely based on this weird idiosyncratic book that people became obsessed with at the time. And I just feel like it means more to me, partly because it's like really depicting that moment when people couldn't get enough of the story for some reason.

Jamie: The 2005 one, what it adds makes sense. It scales back things that don't really need to be there. But if there were they were there, you miss them.

Sarah: Right. Like the marching band. Where's the marching band?

Jamie: Where's the marching band? Where's Carolyn? Where’s the bartender? Like, where is everybody? Where's Jeff? In neither of the movies, the neighbor that comes over with a six pack and is like, “Well, I'll see myself out of here.” Where's the $1,500 at the wedding.

Sarah: Where’s the ceramic lion that bites you?

Jamie: Which I also didn't realize was cannon when I saw the s70’s one for the first time. Wild that they included it.

Sarah: Right. Why would you think that?

Jamie: Useless, useless. Because they also add in that storyline that again, movie-wise makes sense, of I'm a firm believer that 95% of movies are ultimately about fathers and sons. And I don't have to love it, but most movies are about fathers and sons. Or some parallel relationship they're in. And so they add in that storyline between Kathy's oldest and George, of like this new father/son relationship, it's not working. The young 12, 13, 14-year-old is not so sure about George. And he's given like more of a presence. Like it all makes sense, but maybe it's just like too competent because part of what's fun about the book is that it's like, not a competently told story in a way that, like you're saying, that's probably why it feels more real. Because it's based on random stuff that real people were telling them that were just spun in a certain way to hit all the fake stuff. But it's still as messy and people are coming and going. Yeah. Maybe it's just too competent.

Sarah: I think so. I think this was like a too competent era of filmmaking. When you could have all the Owen Wilson romcoms you could handle, and you just forgot them all immediately. Maybe there's like multiple cannons at this point. Because there's so many movies, and I think some of them are part of a defined series, and some of them are just made by random other people. But I have written down the summaries of the canonical eight that came up before the Ryan Reynolds movie came out.

Jamie: There's eight cannon? Or are they all different families?

Sarah: Yes, they are. And they have almost no connection with each other because, very funny, the first Amityville movie, 1979, the Lutz’s move in and out. A lot of stuff happens. We've been talking about that elsewhere. Amityville 2, which came out in 1982, this is a prequel based on a thinly veiled version of the DeFeo’s, which very inflammatory only alleges that Ronnie DeFeo became possessed by a demon, which then made him act upon incestuous thoughts about his sister, who's played by the french exchange student from Better Off Dead. There's also a priest named Adamsky, who possesses the boy after he murders his family, the thinly veiled DeFeo’s, and he exorcises him, and then the demon jumps into the priest and that's the ending. I want to watch that one. I want to watch, let's be honest, I'll probably watch all of these. We've got a few variants to go. Okay, Amityville 3D comes out in 1983, and I'm going to send you an image from the trailer.

Jamie: Oh, love it. Yeah. Sorry, this is an audio medium. Things are careening at this screen. This movie was shot for $40. This is great. It looks so good. Ah, they just played the whole movie. Dino DeLaurentis presents, interesting.

Sarah: Do you see what it says under Amityville 3D? No.

Jamie: Wait, what did it say?

Sarah: It says in tiny type. So first the words Amityville 3D come flying at you, obviously. And then in tiny type, it says, ”This picture is not a sequel to the pictures Amityville Horror or Amityville 2: The Possession.”

Jamie: Well then what is it?

Sarah: Nobody knows. This is because of a lawsuit by the Lutz's. So they're just like, this is unrelated to those other two Amityville movies. It just is called Amityville 3D and is about Amityville.

Jamie: That is really funny too, because it's like, “Hey, these are not related to the Amityville movies, which are true by the way.” So don't be smearing shit all over our very true story that we've been telling. I think that's so good. I love it.

Sarah: So in this movie, did you spot two or perhaps three celebrities in it?

Jamie: No. See I, okay. You need to update me on celebrities of that eighties and then of 1983.

Sarah: That's perfect. We see Tony Roberts in it, who I mainly know for being in a ton of Woody Allen movies. And then playing with a Ouija board are Meg Ryan and Lori Loughlin.

Jamie: Oh my God. Wow.

Sarah: Very brief Meg Ryan shot.

Jamie: I have to imagine this was like pre this being embarrassing for them, right?

Sarah: It's good. Yeah. This is ‘83. So I imagine, if I were a Meg Ryan at this point in time and I got cast in Amityville 3, I would be pretty excited. I would imagine people would see that and be like, who is that Ouija board girl?

Jamie: It's not too late to make another Amityville 3D now. I feel like there's, I guess now every movie's kind of 3D, if you want it to be. Like, when a movie was made to be 3D in a way that couldn't be seen in another way. And if it wasn't seen in another way would be really annoying to watch. That's that shit that I like.

Sarah: Friday the13th, I think, is such a great use of 3D because when you watch the normal version of the movie, you're like, why is this an overhead shot of someone juggling? The first experience I had of that kind of thing was I think it was called Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, which was a ride at Disney World theme parks. You get the experience of being accidentally shrunk by Wayne's Zelensky of the Honey, I Shrunk the etcetera franchise. It was great.

Jamie: I think my original 3D experience was, oh, actually it might've been Muppets 3D. That was a fun one. But then the one I've been on the most that just closed forever, was Shrek 4D. Oh, it just means that at one point they spray with water in a way that I don't think is COVID safe anymore. And at one point Shrek farts and the whole room smells even worse than it did when it was just full of tourists.

Sarah: I feel like the thing about theme parks is that like it's possible to mitigate the amount of contagion that you expose yourself to if you go to one. But I feel like in a way, the point of a theme park is to be like vulnerable with other people and just to share an experience being crammed into a small room or something like that.

Jamie: I really like going to theme parks not in a group, for that reason of you get to really sit in listening to people in line and sitting next to people who are on a ride, but you're not really perceivable to them is so fun for me. I really like it.

Sarah: Yeah. Wandering through other people's vacations.

Jamie: Yes. Yeah. Like you just really see people in the raw.

Sarah: Theme parks and Las Vegas are both places that people go to hoping to have a particular kind of experience.

Jamie: And then it shakes out or it doesn’t.

Sarah: All right. So the plot of Amityville 3D, Tony Roberts buys a house, the realtor is killed by flies. His girlfriend takes pictures with a demonic face in them, and then dies in a car accident. And then his daughter, Lori Loughlin, plays with a Ouija board with her friend, Meg Ryan. Ouija board tells them that Lori Loughlin is in danger, and then she dies on the river. Her mother sees her ghost and refuses to leave the house until they get paranormal researchers to see if her ghost is haunting the house. But it isn't her ghost, it's a demon who pulls the paranormal researcher straight down to hell. Tony Roberts and his ex-wife escape and the house implodes. And then this is Wikipedia phrasing, which I think is perfect, “An eerily glowing fly emerges from the well.”

Jamie: I liked that there is a version of this that really goes in on the Father Mancuso flies. Such a memorable scene. I feel if I had seen the seventies movie as  kid, 100% the flies, even more so than James Brolin stepping through a board and falling into a vat of blood. The flies really stuck with me the most. Because like you were saying, they're not afraid to let people get so sweaty that it's hard to look at. And I feel like Father Mancuso. Wait, I want to shout it, because I know that he's a famous character actor, Rod Steiger.

Sarah: Oh, Rod Steiger. Yeah. He didn't have to do that.

Jamie: But he did. And he got so sweaty when he was covered in all those flies. Now there's a man who could commit to the bit.

Sarah: Right? According to IMD, they put honey on him so that the flies would crawl on him. So awful. I think the flies are so creepy because we all deal with flies, and I think most people agree that flies are really gross. That having a fly on you or that won't stop flying around the room that you're in is unbelievably distracting. And they're like, I don't know. There's something very smart about the flies thing. It's like kind of an unconscious connection with the idea of death or like being a corpse or something like that.

Jamie: I agree. It's a good visual signifier. And I like that there are certain movies that are, I get it, not technically related to the original that pull from that same fly well. Again, not the actor's fault, but the CGI flies I'm like, do it or don't. Cover this man in honey or let him go home early. Don't give me CGI little dot flies like this is a goddamn Ted movie. Okay.

Sarah: There used to be a thing called acting. And in the seventies, people would just put honey all over their bald, little heads and let flies crawl on.

Jamie: Do you remember when actors used to be actively abused? Where did that go? I miss that.

Sarah: I don't know. To me, that's a good area of that, where it's experiential. One thing about being assaulted by flies in a realistic way is that it would tickle, which I think it's hard to express if it's not happening.

Jamie: I don't know. I just feel you can tell when someone's not being attacked by a swarm of flies that can't kill you. So just insist that they dunk you in honey, like Winnie the Pooh. Welcome to my acting class.

Sarah: And I think George Lutz was trying to sue the filmmakers, I believe, at the time of his death. Both he and Kathy died pretty young. And I think one of the things that motivated him was he was like, how dare you depict me killing our dog. Oh really? That's very sweet. George Lutz isn't perfect. Yeah, he has his limits.

Jamie: You bump up with some of that stuff with the Warren’s as well, of wow, don't depict me as doing something despicable on screen. But in George's case, he really didn't kill that dog, correct? There's no mention of him murdering a dog in cold blood in a boat house.

Sarah: Harry, as far as I know, survived very happily and was accounted for. I don't think he was even fictional. One thing that the sequels and also the remake immediately start improving on is the fact that in the original, nobody dies aside from the DeFeo’s, obviously. But after that, it's like this family that's confronted a portal to hell itself ,and we're fine. We live in California. And so of course in all the sequels, they're just slashers essentially.

Jamie: Yeah. Which makes sense. The ending of the first movie, I remember the first time I saw it, I was like, oh, this is abrupt.

Sarah: It's like ‘the end’. In both of them there's really no, to me, like sense of a plot or like a rising action or anything. It's just like a list of things that happen until they've killed enough time for it to be over.

Jamie: I do feel like, yeah, there's the implication of like almost an end slide. That's we are not taking you further questions at this time.

Sarah: This has been the Amityville Horror. Thank you. Goodbye.

Jamie: I knew the 1979 one was very successful because it spawned a whole franchise. My mom used to tell me about 3:15 AM when I was a little kid, and we had this little answering machine that flashed like Jodie's eyes. Like it was a whole, I heard all about it. Yeah. I knew it was very influential. I did not know that the 2005 one actually did very well. It was like a budget $19 million. And then it made $108 million. That's a lot of money.

Sarah: It is. I feel like that name is still doing a lot of work. I feel like people are like, yeah, I'm confident this will be scary, but also familiar.

Jamie: I'm sure that The Conjuring franchise probably was able to be made partially because the Ryan Reynolds Amityville Horror did so well. They're like, well, people are still interested in this, in 70’s, haunted houses.

Sarah: In the first movie they like wink at Amityville quite a bit, right?

Jamie: Yeah, I think that they're like much like our claim to fame. Oh, you thought that was wild. So there's like this first wave. And by wave I mean over 15 years off of the first one, and then it goes dormant from 1996 till 2005. And then Ryan Reynolds, Detective Pikachu himself, Mr. Deadpool. I could keep going. Mr. Tequila at the store, brings it back to life. And then there's a million more direct to video sequels.

Sarah: And so many of them seem off-brand, they're made by a bunch of different people. And I have to assume that this concept has like, if it's not in the public domain, then like some kind of date has passed us by that allow there to be all these knockoff Amityville stories.

Jamie: Sarah, they're so random at this point that I feel like we could be in them.

Sarah: Yeah, that's a good resolution.

Jamie: Since 2020, since pandemic lockdown one, there have been 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Amityville properties that have been released. Amityville Island, Amityville Vibrator. What is that?

Sarah: I assume it's a possessed vibrator, incredible direct to streaming perhaps as well. Yeah. Now I'm like, well, I need to figure out why there are so many Amityville’s now and everyone gets to make their own Amityville at this point. But okay, Amityville Vibrator, one hour and three minutes long, features Corella Waring and Mallory Maneater. Summary: “Cathy moves into a new home and soon comes into contact with a vibrator with ancient, evil powers. Two researchers must locate this possessed item before Kathy and anyone else she encounters becomes a sex slave for Satan.” That's like really good stakes. I'm invested.

Jamie: Say no more. Movie night, everyone's invited.

Sarah: Oh my God. Okay. The art makes me think that they're attempting like a sort of winking, like old school, like love letter to 70’s porno here.

Jamie: Ooh. Oh, wait. I'm looking at the poster now.

Sarah: Yeah. Read the poster to me, for God's sake. Get off. That's so good.

Jamie: Amityville Vibrator. That's great. There's a huge, bleeding vibrator cutting through the Amityville. Yeah, there's a horny fly person. Oh, they bring the fly thing into the Amityville Vibrator.

Sarah: See, so they're like, we know their fans. We know they're really thinking about the original. Are you still looking at the poster?

Jamie: There's I think Father Mancuso is in the second window.

Sarah: Oh yeah. That makes sense.

Jamie: Cathy, as a fly woman, and then Father Mancuso, and then there's this big throbbing vibrator between them.

Sarah: Wow. Looking at images from it and it looks like just a bunch of goths went to the forest and made a porno together. I assume it's porn. But what else could it possibly be?

Jamie: I got an iPhone 10 and the rest is history.

Sarah: Here's a quote by director Nathan Rumler in it. “I've always been a fan of the original Amityville franchise. Sometime back in 2017 I decided to finally check out some of the direct video Amityville sequels that have been flooding the market for a few years, as you probably know, most of them are fucking terrible. I laughed to myself and thought I should make Amityville Dildo just to make fun of these, but actually make an entertaining movie in the process. It's also a joke about where I saw the franchise headed, porn parody territory. Though we don't consider this movie pornography, it's a parody of a porn parody.”

Oh, okay. It seems sexy though. We've got somebody wearing a Kum & Go shirt, which makes me think there's an Iowa connection.

Jamie: Wait, I'm seeing it on, it's on eBay for $15.

Sarah: That's expensive. Nathan, I thought it was a joke.

Jamie: You can't put it on. It's a joke. You got to put it on YouTube buddy. But also, life of an artist it’s not easy.

Sarah: Yeah. Ah, maybe this kind of explains what Amityville is as a property at this point. It's just so. It's just I don't know. I keep coming back to the idea that it's 20th sanctuary American folklore, and it just belongs to everybody now. And it can't be taken back.

Jamie: I think the further that the Amityville franchise distances itself from the actual DeFeo tragedy, the better the original movies and like books appeal relied on the DeFeo fail tragedy. But as time goes on, it's like that matters less and less because it's more of like the symbol of the house and the symbol of... I don't know. I feel like the two real net negatives here are relying on actual murdered people and the heavy reliance on Indian burial ground tropes. I don't really, I, who gives a shit about George and Kathy, to an extent. And eventually it's just like, it’s the house.

Sarah: Yeah, that's the thing. The house is like the least hurtable in all this, and the icon of it is like those two, eye-looking upper windows. And people love to complain about, especially horror franchises that have a million sequel, all these terrible movies that they keep churning out, et cetera. And I've always been a fan of really long SQL franchises, because I think that if a character or a series is enough to be a name brand that convinces whoever needs to be convinced that something will make enough money than they can. A lot of weird and fun stuff can happen. And also the idea can get laundered so far away from the original premise that like, if it was on shaky, ethical ground, by the time we get to sequel number five, we end up with a story about a priest being murdered during confession and then the confessional booth becoming possessed, and then a couple moving into the rectory where the priest used to live. And one of their friends becoming possessed by the ghost of the priest’s illegitimate child who murdered him.

Jamie: It becomes like a soap opera premise. Yeah, I like that. And it's also, I'm sure that if someone took it upon themselves to watch every Amityville thing, I'm sure that there's a way to like trace movie making tropes and ideas and stock characters in fashion, and just all that shit. I guess it's a little boring if you only watched 1979 and 2005, because both of those movies feel so aggressively of their era. But it's if you watched all the ones in between, I feel like you would just be broad in this little, haunted, dark ride of late 20th century movie tropes.

Sarah: You're like watching the years passed through the lens of Amityville stories.

Jamie: You’re like, I guess this was a Reagan year when this came up.

Sarah: This was, yeah. The even years for Amityville are good. The odd years are bad. Yes. What a journey. And of course, we are going to finish our journey through the book in an upcoming episode. But here's someone who creates a lot, and you're a storyteller, and you're confronting the work of other storytellers. If you were to write an Amityville story of any kind, what would your take on it be?

Jamie: Well unfortunately, the one that I would have written was made already, which is Amityville Vibrator.

Sarah: Yeah. That is the perfect idea. I don't know and begs to be made.

Jamie: That's a really good question. I feel like it's either, the two options I see are either you re-interpret the first one in a way that is modern, but it's hard to do that. I feel like it's the Amityville Vibrator solution is the way to go. Like, you got to just choose an idea that you want to execute anyways. I think that's the funniest, like at least the funniest, I don't know if it's like the best or the most watchable. But an Amityville movie I want to see is in the spirit of Amityville Vibrator. Where we’re like, here's a fucking wacky idea that I have. And let me reverse engineer and put it in the Amityville horror house and see like how it gets funnier and better. I don't know. What Amityville movie would you make?

Sarah: Well, I guess to that end, I think there is totally an Owen Wilson romcom begging to be made. Where Owen Wilson and Sarah Silverman have moved into the Amityville house, and there's goo and all the classic content stuff, but it's just Owen Wilson being like, “Hey, could the marching band keep it down to a low roar?” That was my Owen Wilson impression.

Jamie: I think it was really good, I liked it.

Sarah: 2022 is going to be a fruitful year. And I think Amityville is just, it's inspiring. I just love it when an idea has this many weird babies, and now we are a part of that.

Jamie: I agree. Hey, if the creators of Amityville Vibrator could do it, why not us?

Sarah: Why not us and why not you?

Jamie: I agree. We’re putting out the call to everyone listening, make your own Amityville. Apparently, it's legal.

Sarah: Yeah. Check on that.