AJ’s 31 Days of Horror Movies: ‘The Amityville Horror’

Pick either the 1979 or 2005 version and you're gonna be satisfied, in my opinion.

If you're really hardcore, you could read the book, too. But if you're a busy parent who has a limited TV-time window, may I suggest one of these films?

The Amityville Horror is reportedly "based on a true story." Luckily, it's 2019 and we know full-well that this tagline can be loosely interpreted. The true part is that Ronald, Jr. DeFeo (known as 'Butch') killed his entire family in the house in Amityville, New York in cold blood and was sentenced to prison.

The rest of the story is up for interpretation; the Lutz family claims that they moved into the Amityville house and was driven out by demonic forces. Butch DeFeo's lawyer claims that he and the Lutz family came up with this horrific story over some bottles of wine and Jay Anson embellished it to write a book about it and the rest is history.

Whether the haunting is true or not, it makes for a couple of great scary movies. There's a part of me that looooves 70's horror films; I think they have a charm and a raw-element that makes them scarier than some of the current CGI horror movies. But either one of these are a decent choice for a Friday night in October.