The pitch: This 1979 haunted house hit (remade in 2005 with Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George) is the daddy of all "based on a true story" ghost films. James Brolin and Margot Kidder feature as the young couple moving into a New York house where a series of murders took place and which is built on a tribal burial ground. No wonder it's haunted. The real story: We return one last time to the casebook of Ed and Lorraine Warren for their most famous ghostly incident. The Warrens were involved in the investigation of reported paranormal activity at the New York suburban home of George and Kathy Lutz (Brolin and Kidder in the film). The film's story is, however, based on Jay Anson's 1977 book "The Amityville Horror: A True Story". Despite its subtitle and marketing, Anson's book is classed as a novel. While it features the real Lutzes as characters, so much of the events in the book have been heavily and legally debated that it is hard to view it as anything but fiction. In common with The Haunting in Connecticut, the accounts of those involved are consistently inconsistent with one of the priests involved appearing to be unsure whether he'd even been to the house or not, let alone been slapped by a spirit.
As with Anneliese Michel, the recent phenomenal success of The Exorcist may have provoked accounts of suspiciously similar activity in Amityville.
For the record, the family that moved in after the Lutzes reported no supernatural happenings and were more bothered by movie fans than the undead. They stated that all the fixtures and fittings of the house remained the originals, so there could not have been any property damage from poltergeist activity as suggested in the film.
And what about you, horror fans? Do you believe in any of these "true" stories? And does it make a film scarier if you do? Let us know in the comments.
