'Based on actual events?'

Well...That house did physically exist...so there that? lol

Both of George Lutz's sons have stated the Amityville house was haunted. Their sister hasn't commented yet to date. Christopher's book should be coming out soon. Jay Anson, with his attorney's support, published a fiction story. Everyone agreed with that long ago, and the Lutz family were never given an opportunity to tell their story, until recently. The initial local film crew was, and still is, convinced the paranormal could have occurred since so much, including motorcycles, was left behind when the family left the house. The house was cleansed after the Lutz family left, so further haunting, (assuming it was haunted) wasn't expected anyway.

Are Asylum and Haunting actually Amityville movies? I don't think they are but both of them have managed to creep in there, I think Wikipedia is to blame, the last official Amityville movie was the remake in 2005.

Wikipedia currently lists the following films as part of the Amityville Horror series

The Amityville Haunting ·
The Amityville Asylum ·
Amityville Death House ·
The Amityville Playhouse ·

I don't know how they have got away with this, but, I don't think any of them officially are, however, if they are I hope the trend continues of them release a few quietly even if they are DTV and then a theatrical one, I just hope that they at least try to keep the quality up, although I also hope that the better plots get the theatrical treatment, Playhouse, Death House and Asylum all sound interesting but Re/Awakening just sounds bog standard. What *beep* gives!?

The problem with your dismissal of the haunting is that DeFeo's attorney was the only one who said they made it up (over several bottles of wine, I believe) and there's no evidence the Lutzes ever even met him prior to fleeing the house (and why would they have met him before that?). Weber isn't exactly known for his honesty and he had an agenda, but let's move on from that (because you probably won't accept he lied anyway) and think about these facts:

- The Lutzes maintained their story (their more subtle story, not the overly dramatic one Anson published) until they died, despite false claims they admitted making it up. People have said their confession to making it up was "on TV in the 80s" yet conveniently NO ONE has ever been able to track this mysterious recording down and show it.

- As stated above, inconsistencies in the editions of Anson's novel mean NOTHING as the man was taking their original story and embellishing it for dramatic purposes to make a better novel. The Lutzes had nothing to do with that.

- The Lutz children continue to support the story, despite all being adults no longer under the sway of their parents. One of them had a bad relationship with George and would have no reason to continue lying for him when he could come out and completely discredit the entire thing.

- If nothing happened in the house, the memories the kids have to this day would be the result of coaching by the parents, which sounds ridiculously far-fetched. They are the same memories the Lutz parents shared, so if none of them actually occurred, that means that entire family sat down together and rehearsed this story and the children were compelled to back it up. Not only is this ludicrous, no one can expect children to continue maintaining the lies well into adulthood, especially when the parents are now long gone.

- For the "they made it up because they couldn't afford the house" group, a month's time is not long enough to ruin your finances enough to consider fleeing your house and leaving everything you own behind on the hope a fabricated story about a haunting will eventually pay off. Your finances don't reach an irredeemable level of suckage in 28 days when you were just financially stable enough to buy a house less than a month ago.

- Completely flying in the face of the "financial trouble" crowd, they have proven the Lutzes continued making payments on the house until that following summer, despite not even living in the same state any more. If they were "broke" or "couldn't afford it", how did they continue making payments? If the house never was haunted, you're basically saying they decided they'd rather flee a perfectly fine house they could actually afford all on the long shot that some story they made up and coached their kids on, no less, would take off with the public. Come on, people. This is ridiculous and you know it. If they weren't actually in financial trouble, which I'm guessing they weren't considering they could continue making payments, what on earth was their motive to do all of this and disrupt their lives in such a way?

- The Lutzes left everything they owned behind, which makes the "financial crisis" story even more implausible. People in that dire straits don't just relinquish everything they own when they can sell the stuff. If you claim they did it to make their story more believable, you're saying the Lutzes had no emotional attachment to anything they owned and were just fine letting it all go, which flies in the face of human behavior. If your house went up in a fire, you would be devastated at seeing everything you loved go up in flames.

- The Lutzes both passed lie detector tests, both administered by a top polygraph expert. Polygraphs are not admissable in court, but they do serve as a tool to help investigators narrow down a suspect. It would be difficult to fool one, yet somehow both of them passed.

- No explanation has ever been given for the extremely odd circumstances regarding the DeFeo murders and why no one in the family got out of bed when the shooting began. This doesn't necessarily have to be included with the Lutz story to make it believable, but it does indicate there was already something wrong with the house before they moved in.

- The Lutzes had to move in with Kathy's mother after fleeing the home. If they knew such a stressful living situation was their only backup plan before fleeing, it lends even more credence to the idea something definitely drove them from the house. You don't uproot your family, leave everything behind, and enter into a stressful situation such as that for the crapshoot idea your haunting story will garner any attention.

- Despite what you may believe regarding their morals or credibility, the Warrens backed up their story (and Lorraine continues to do so).

- The original news crew from the time backs up the story that they experienced something as well.

- As for the fact no other family living in the home has had issues, as has already been stated, the house was exorcised (or "cleansed") before another family moved in. Also, according to paranormal experts, not everyone is susceptible to paranormal activity in the first place, and some forces can move and follow the families, which, according to the Lutzes, is exactly what happened when they fled. If the Lutz family was the problem to begin with, it makes sense that no one else would have any issues.

"Based on" is Hollywood's way of getting the excuse do whatever they want. They just want to bank on the whole "true story" thing that we, as humans, crave.

Here is my understanding of the series. The original and remake of The Amityville Horror is based on what the Lutz family claimed happened in the same house that the DeFeo family once lived in. The second film is a prequel, that tells the supposed story of the events that lead to Ronnie DeFeo Jr murdering his family. Number 3 is a bad 80s horror sequel that jumped on the 3D bandwagon. Also while taking place in the same house. Number 4 and 6 (1992) explore the idea of what if the haunting went beyond just the house itself, and if you took one of it's objects out of the house, and placed it into another home. The result being that the new home that the objects are placed on become haunted, as well. Curse expands upon that idea and asks us "what if the famous Amityville house isn't the only house in the neighborhood that was haunted?"

Pause to roll my eyes at the fact that the remake of the original is considered the ninth in the series, according to Wikipedia.

Dollhouse just seems to be a dollhouse that looks like the original house randomly shows up at a new family home and somehow passed the haunting through that. At the same time, it was a decent watch. Haunting is the biggest joke of them all, in my opinion. Wanting to bank on the whole "found footage horror" trend, they claimed that it took place in the same house that the DeFeo and Lutz families lived in, yet it was quite obviously noting like the house. Asylum, Death House, and Play House are all examples of horror films that are really standalone, but someone decided to slap the name "Amityville" on them, so that fans of the series would check them out. Sadly, I fell for it.

The Awakening seems to not follow the trend given to us with the last three films, and appears to be getting the series back on track. I, for one, actually enjoyed the trailer, and am looking forward to watching it.

An old marketing ploy. THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and its remake did it, even though they were merely based loosely on Ed Gein, and there was never a real Leatherface.


http://www.freewebs.com/demonictoys/

As a person who has had some really weird stuff happen to me in my life, one thing I've learned is that it is exceptionally hard to explain a paranormal occurrence without sounding like you are either crazy or a liar. And the fact that sometimes events can occur, but may not ever manafest again, makes trying to present your case even harder.

With that being said, I was always fascinated with the Amityville case, starting as a young child reading the book and wacthing the movie and then as a teen and adult researching allegations that the entire thing was a fraud set up to generate money. There's been several books, interviews and more, with people coming forward who have given somewhat credible evidance to the idea the entire thing was a sham, conflicting documents proving that things the Lutz family claimed were either not possible at the time or an outright lie.

I am not going to get into that, you can go online and find all of this information yourself.

What I will say, is given that the Warrens were involved, puts a particularly sour taste in my mouth for the entire thing. Many people have come forward in the past that have suggested that the Warrens were frauds to a massive degree, some even saying the Warren's suggested people make stuff up in a bid to sell the story. In cases where people claim they really were suffering from a paranormal occurrence, often, the Warrens were either no help or actually made the problems worse.

This is what I personally think was what happened; the Lutzes purchased a house and suddenly found themselves in financial trouble and so they fabricated a story to either get out of their mortgage or generate additional income. I say this, because it's a pretty common theme in a number of "documented" hauntings, families purchase a house, the house is haunted and the family invested so much money in the house (or repairs) they just can't move. Which is a pretty stupid, no one should be draining their accounts that badly one wrong move could send them into financial disaster, but it's a pretty common thing for people to do, when my friend got married, he drained his savings to buy a house.

As far as the Lutz children are concearned, they have no more credibility than their parents. Children can be easily manipulated by their parents, that's a fact. And as adults, they don't really have anything to lose by sticking to the story. Daniel Lutz appeared in a documentry that backed up their parents claims, all the while insisting he pretty much hated George Lutz. He wasn't on good terms with him, so of course, why would he lie for him? There's no way that the possibility of interviews, documentaries, or whatever else effect their decisions to come clean on the entire thing.. Right?

Did something really happen to the Lutz? Maybe, but the reality is, the truth was lost a long time ago, obscured by conflicting information and sensationalism. As it stands, I consider Amityville a favorite, cheesy b-horror film franchise.