10 Horror Movie Franchises That Overstayed Their Welcome
1. The Amityville Horror
1979's The Amityville Horror focuses on the Lutz family as they move into 112 Ocean Avenue in the titular town, with that house the scene of a massacre just one year prior. Said massacre involved the DeFeo family, where eldest son Ron Jr. killed his parents and siblings with a rifle, before placing their bodies face down on their beds.
For the Lutz clan, things soon start to take a turn for the eerie when patriarch George becomes aggressive and distant, things go bang in the night, and blood eventually starts to pour from the walls of the property. The film is solid if not spectacular, and ends with George and his family abandoning the house and all of their belongings in order to be free of its sinister grip.
When Amityville II: The Possession rolled around in 1982, that was a prequel which told a fictionalised account of the DeFeo murders; just with the family name changed to the Montellis. A hugely underrated offering, The Possession is actually a better film than its predecessor, with Burt Young and Jack Magner on particularly fine form.
Then, well then came a whole slew of needless, stupid or just outright bizarre follow-ups carrying the Amityville name. If the Amityville movies ended with The Possession, we'd have had a fine pair of films that brilliantly tied together. We also would've been saved an awful 3D outing, films based around possessed lamps and mirrors, one picture which takes the Amityville house to space (yes, really!), and another that somehow features a possessed sex toy (again, yes, really!).
Due to Amityville being a real place and the DeFeo and Lutz families being real people, that means there's no copyright restrictions, per se, and thus we find somehow find ourselves with over 40 movies with the Amityville name.