Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Jen Maravegias | Film | October 7, 2026
When we talk about feral GenX kids and the media we consumed too young that scarred us for life, the original Amityville Horror is at the top of my list. I have a very vague memory of experiencing a complete freak-out while watching it on VHS at my grandmother's house before I was 10. If you must know, it was this scene when all of the flies attack Father Delaney that caused me to scream loud enough to have all of the adults running into the room:
Truly a nothingburger by today's standards. But The Amityville Horror was very real for me because my grandmother lived a town over from Amityville, and I was obsessed with it. I used to make her drive past the house, on the off chance we'd see something terrifying from behind the wheel of her giant, silver land yacht.
There's only one legitimate sequel that I recognize: Amityville II: The Possession. It stars Burt Young as a violently abusive father and Jack Magner, who turns green for some reason. Maybe the spirit wasn't feeling well. At least he didn't experience a ghost pig.
There's also a 3-D sequel, because the rule at the time (1983) was that the third movie in the franchise had to be 3-D (see also Jaws). Meg Ryan made her feature debut in this one. Never play with a Ouija board in a haunted house, y'all.
The 2005 remake gave us this icon, and little else. Listen, just enjoy 2005 RyRy before we all got sick of him, OK?
If you ask The Internet there are somewhere between eight and a dozen sequels that are considered part of the Amityville franchise. If you go to Tubi, there are FIFTY-SIX movies with Amityville in their titles. FIFTY SIX!
Have I watched them all? Nope. Have I watched any of them? I've watched parts of some of them because I'm a sucker and a glutton for punishment at this time of year. They're all shot in such a way that it looks like they'll get smutty any minute.
And some of them kinda do. Amityville Karen has some topless scenes, but it has nothing to do with THE Amityville house and doesn't even pretend it was shot anywhere near Long Island, NY. It's just about a mean lady with a bad haircut who goes crazy and starts killing co-workers who piss her off.
Amityville Emanuelle SHOULD be an "adult" movie, right? It has a few disappointingly lackluster sex scenes in it, but nothing exceptionally titillating or scary.
I watched enough of Amityville Death Toilet to know that it was not worth watching. The death toilet is just a toilet that can somehow hold weapons and use them to kill people. Imagine being shot by a toilet. What do you put on that gravestone? The most notable moment for me is when the mayor (?) of Amityville is on the phone with a ghost hunter telling him that he's got to come and find the Death Toilet before it ruins tourist season.
First of all, Amityville, Long Island, does not have a "tourist season." Secondly, how much damage could one Death Toilet do to a town's tourist industry? Just stay away from the one bathroom.
Also, this is definitely NOT the Amityville house. It's some rental home, possibly in Pasadena. The exterior is featured in more than one of Tubi's Amityville movies.
There's Amityville Apartment, because even evil needs to downsize in this economy. A series of films where Amityville meets different movie monsters à la Abbott & Costello. Amityville Cop (IRL actually terrifying). Amityville In The Hood (confused shrug emoji), Amityville Island, and Amityville Mt. Misery Road leading me to believe that the horror of Amityville is not confined to one memorable house on the canal; it can travel. Sometimes it's also in a backpack, or in a tornado. Amityvillenado does not slip off the tongue as easily as Sharknado does, though.
My favorite might be Amityville In Space. Or it's just the only one I accidentally watched all of. A priest blesses the house to drive out the demonic force, and whoops, up it goes into a wormhole. It just chills out there in the cosmos until some space explorer types come by in the year 3015 who don't know what a "house" is and accidentally unleash the evil within it. The evil looks like a low-budget Sardaukar. The evil perishes when the house explodes. (Spoilers?)
Everything in every one of these movies is low-budget. There's a lot of foil, people in mismatched outfits that pass as "costumes," reused locations, and terrible acting. What is this woman, the "Karen" of Amityville Karen, wearing? Why is she napping with a pair of pink vinyl booties on? Who thought this was a good look for a movie?
I don't know the answer to any of those questions. I don't feel like I know anything anymore after spending the better part of the day aimlessly wandering through the extended Amityville Universe.
But I do applaud the filmmakers for getting all of these movies distributed on Tubi. It's some sort of Halloween Miracle that somebody, somewhere out there, had a dream to make a derivative movie based on historic events in the public domain and came up with Amityville Christmas Vacation.
Anything is possible, kids. Anything.
