Count the Ripoff scenes: the new "Amityville Horror" (unboxed spoilers)

Cafe Society
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Some friends & I went to see the new “Amityville Horror” this weekend. (“Sin City” was sold out.) The flick was a marginally competant horror flick - not outright shlocky enough to qualify as a guilty pleasure, but certainly not a must-see. Afterwards, my friends & I had more fun by enumerating the amount of scenes from it that seemed blatently lifted from previous films (in some cases, practically shot for shot). Our list -

  1. The ghosts communicate with the Defao family killer via a television test pattern - remarkably similar to "Poltergeist. "

  2. George & Kathy Lutz have sex in exactly the same way that Sharon Stone’s & Michael Douglas’ characters did it in “Basic Instinct.”

  3. Jodie (a “demonic pig” in the original book & movie, now inexplicably changed into the ghost of a young Defao family member) looks remarkably like Samara, the evil little girl from “the Ring.”

  4. We get an ariel shot of the house a la the ariel shot of the asylum from “Session 9” (which itself seems to have been lifted from the ariel shot of the Overlook Hotel in “the Shining.”) [aside: the actual house - which was realistically duplicated in the original movie - was a comfortably large, but otherwise not especially noteworthy clapboard barn-style house. In the remake, it’s been transformed into a sprawling gothic mansion more reminiscent of Collinwood from “Dark Shadows” than any suburban L.I. homestead.)

  5. George gets attacked in the bathtub in a way that looks very similar to the way Freddie Kruger attacks Nancy in the original “Nightmare on Elm Street.”

  6. The climax of the film is a chase over the rooftop much like that in one of the Halloween movies (Halloween 4, I think).

  7. After falling off the roof, George sits bolt upright just like Michael Myers in the original “Halloween.”)

  8. Kathy gets axed in the stomach just like Scatman Crothers in “the Shining.”

  9. The ghost of Jodie getting sucked up into the house - now I cannot recall the name of the movie, but it is a direct steal from an early 1980s horror film. (The widow of an expatriate from an amish-like community inherits his rural farm. She gets denounced as “the succubus” a lot. Violent things happen. In the finale, she gets sucked down into the floor by the real succubus. Ring a bell anyone?)

And this list doesn’t include the number of direct swipes from the original “Amityville Horror” (George seeing Jodie staring out the attic window for example.)

My friends & I fell into lamenting how often this occurs: movies that obviously lift scenes, shots and material directly from previous movies. It’s no longer a matter of resorting to cliche characters & scenes, modern-day movies repeat the exact same action, shot, incidental music, etc. “Amityville Horror” is an egregious example. But it’s by no means an isolated case. What other flicks include ripped-off material from earlier movies?

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I think you’re being a little too harsh on Amityville.

  1. I didn’t think that the test pattern thing was reminiscent of “Poltergeist.” So-called “EVP” phenomenae are common motiffs in haunted house scenarios generally speaking.

  2. You’re saying it’s a ripoff because they have sex in a similar position to another movie’s sex scene? Exactly how many ways (not counting porn) do you think there are to show a sex scene without being overly revealing? Do you honestly think that the director set out to duplicate the sex scene from “Basic Instinct?”

  3. Jodie just looks like a ghost girl. Saying that she looks like Samara is kind of like saying that any time a film features people in black leather that they must be trying to rip off “The Matrix.” “The Ring” didn’t invent ghost girls, it just made them scarier. And Jodie doesn’t really act all that much like Samara, either. The worst thing that she does is to freak out the babysitter.

  4. OK, now you’re saying that it’s a ripoff to have an arial shot of the house?? Geez, I know it’s a very common shot especially in this type of film, but come on!

  5. I’ll have to revisit this one to see what you mean. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

  6. Again, somehow I find it hard to believe that the director would aspire to rip off a movie like Halloween 4. Hell, if you want to accuse it of ripping off another movie, you might as well say it rips off The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2.

  7. I might concede this one. I’d have to see it again to be sure.

  8. Maybe, hard to say. I’ve seen plenty of other films that are far more blatant in ripping off axe-killing scenes, though.

  9. I’m not familiar with the movie that you’re talking about.

I think that some moviegoers and reviewers alike have sort of trained themselves to go into a movie just looking for things to complain about…

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So, does Kathy actually die in the movie or does this happen in a dream or something? Because the real Kathy Lutz is, as far as I know, still very much alive. Not that I expect the movie to be based in reality (the whole thing was a hoax, after all).

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There’s no demonic pig? That was one of the creepiest parts of the first movie.

I think I’ll wait for this to come out on DVD in June.

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Is this movie a remake of the older one or a movie version of the book? It sounds like it’s deviating a lot from either source, at any rate.

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You are so lucky to have missed the manufactured “buzz” over this stinking pile, which is more annoying than the buzz of Baelzebub’s compound-eyed minions pouring out of the plumbing.

Kathy Lutz died when the movie was in preproduction. MGM’s promotional geniuses have had the fabulous taste to try to make as much box-office hay out of that coincidence as possible. :rolleyes:

George is sueing them, claiming that he still owns the story rights. He’s also complaining that they make him out to be more homicidal than the Lutz’s themselves portrayed him to be. Poor baby.

The book was sick and exploitive, the first movie was sick and exploitive, and this remake is sick, exploitive, and pitifully redundant. Why can’t they find a more recent real-life mass murder to make up a third-rate schlock horror around?

Here’s my pitch: The Columbine Terror. See, a violent videogame becomes popular with of the class of 2006, and the damned souls of Harris and Klebold use it to take possession of the homecoming King and Queen, who start acting antisocial and collecting guns… The school swimming pool fills up with blood, and the cafeteria food turns into trays of wriggling maggots. The principal, played by Ashton Kutcher, starts investigating, and breaks out in a panicky (but sexy, mind) sweat when an eerie voice comes over the P.A., rumbling “PEeEk-A-BoOooO!” Spooked, he stumbles into a disused janitor’s closet – but get this – it’s painted red. This is the closet that Eric and Dylan used to test the bongs they made in shop class. And worship Satan. The floorboards break, and Ashton falls through into a tank of blood, forcing him to take off his shirt and run through the halls as the Homecoming King and Queen chase him with shotguns. He can’t just break for the exit, though – he’s got to get the the girls’ volleyball team out of the locker room where they’ve become trapped, and as naked as a PG-17 rating will allow. Everything seems hopeless, and Harris and Klebold’s demonic shades have the drop on the principal and the entire volleyball team, (prompting Klebold’s tagline, “I got your volley right here, bitches,”) when the cranky science teacher (Bruce Willis) shows up with an improvised gun made from a lab stand, a copper tube, and an acetylene tank, which he uses to launch the Homecoming King and Queen’s discarded Promise Rings straight into their hearts, freeing them from their possession. He and the principal manage to drag their inert forms outside while simultaneously herding the half-dressed volleyball team into the parking lot, where they watch in awe as the entire school collapses in on itself like the House of Usher, only with more spooky special effects. There’s an uplifting epilogue, showing kids returning to a rebuilt school in September, as the principal and the science teacher look on with weary relief and satisfaction. But get this-- there’s this one fat junior, sitting off himself, playing with a Sony PSP. He looks up and gives the principal a gleefully evil look, as an abrupt synthesized major chord is played on the soundtrack. Roll credits.

That’d be so cool.

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Larry, it sound like you already write for the movies! I wouldn’t be surprised to see something very like that someday.