10 Horror Movie Franchises That Overstayed Their Welcome

1. The Amityville Horror

Leprechaun 3 Elvis Presley
Orion Pictures

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.

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Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.