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Thanks to that crazy haunted house house that resides in Amityville, N.Y. we've seen ten films based on the house, and now this latest addition to the Amityville collection that will supposedly be the "first time ever that the true prequel to the Amityville horror will be told.”
Just a little refresher course... Amityville is home to the infamous house in which Ronald DeFeo, Jr. murdered six members of his family in 1974. George Lutz and his family moved into the house a year later. They were forced to move out of the house 28 days later due to a series of terrifying hauntings they encountered. The case became the subject of Jay Anson’s 1977 book The Amityville Horror: A True Story.
This latest project comes from producer Tony DeRosa-Grund, and it will be based on the experiences of two reporters who investigated the incidents for New York TV station WNEW, Laura DiDio and Marvin Scott. On March 6th 1976 a 19-year-old Didio got permission from George Lutz to visit the house, where she held a séance that apparently resulted in seeing ghostly presences, one of which included a young boy. DiDio had this to say in a statement,
Marvin and I are thrilled to be working with Tony and Evergreen. I lived through this horrific ordeal and I am the only person who has the ability to tell the true Amityville prequel story in its entirety. Even after all these years, after what I personally experienced, there is nothing anyone could ever do or say to get me back in that house.
The project will be shopped around as a found footage film, and video of the news report’s séance will be used in the film. According to THR, the producer tracked down a copy of the report as well as additional video footage that Scott had in his possession. The footage was thought to have been lost. The movie will be built around their experiences investigating the Amityville house and their discoveries about what happened there before the Lutzes moved in.
The producer adds, "They discerned certain things during the sequence, which heretofore had not been corroborated. With a lot of help from Laura and from the Catholic Church, we’ve been able to get confirmations and connective tissues, in terms of the evil and the origins of evil in the house that was there before the Lutzes moved in."
This film project has sparked my interest. It definitely has potential to be great and scary horror film. Dimension and Miramax announced last year that they would be developing a project of their own called The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes, that would be produced by Paranormal Activity’s Jason Blum. That project also involves found footage and a TV news intern investigating the Amityville case.
What do you think about this Amityville Horror movie idea?
Here's the list of ten films that have previously been made...
The Amityville Horror (1979)
Amityville II: The Possession (1982)
Amityville 3-D (1983) (made in 3-D, and has also been released as Amityville III: The Demon)
Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (1989)
The Amityville Curse (1990)
Amityville: It's About Time (1992)
Amityville: A New Generation (1993)
Amityville Dollhouse (1996)
The Amityville Horror (2005 remake)
The Amityville Haunting (2011)
