Line #69 Franchise/Amityville


1	[[quoteright:275:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/BLIT0008.JPG]]
2	[[caption-width-right:275:The actual house back in The70s. ]]
3
4	->''"Houses don't have memories..."''
5	-->-- '''George Lutz''', in [[Film/TheAmityvilleHorror1979 the 1979 film]]
6
7	->''"There are no bad houses..."''
8	-->-- '''George Lutz''', in [[Film/TheAmityvilleHorror2005 the 2005 film]]
9
10	The ''Amityville'' franchise is a series of films and books that are about a certain HauntedHouse (and later other objects associated with it) that resides in 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville. It began with the 1977 novel ''Literature/TheAmityvilleHorror'' by Jay Anson that was made into a [[Film/TheAmityvilleHorror1979 film in 1979]].
11
12	[[index]]
13	[[AC:Official Films]]
14	* ''Film/{{The Amityville Horror\|1979}}'' (1979)
15	* ''Film/AmityvilleIIThePossession'' (1982)
16	* ''Film/Amityville3D'' (1983)
17	* ''Film/AmityvilleTheEvilEscapes'' (1989)
18	* ''Film/TheAmityvilleCurse'' (1990)
19	* ''Film/AmityvilleItsAboutTime'' (1992)
20	* ''Film/AmityvilleANewGeneration'' (1993)
21	* ''Film/AmityvilleDollhouse'' (1996)
22	* ''Film/{{The Amityville Horror\|2005}}'' (2005; remake)
23	* ''Film/TheConjuring2'' (2016)
24	* ''Film/AmityvilleTheAwakening'' (2017)
25	* ''The Amityville Murders'' (2018)
26	* ''The Amityville Curse'' (2023)
27
28	[[AC:Unofficial Films]]
29	* ''The Amityville Haunting'' (2011)
30	* ''The Amityville Asylum'' (2013)
31	* ''Amityville Death House'' (2015)
32	* ''Amityville: The Final Chapter'' (2015; also known as ''Sickle'')
33	* ''Amityville Playhouse'' (2015; also known as ''The Amityville Theater'')
34	* ''Amityville: Vanishing Point'' (2016)
35	* ''The Amityville Legacy'' (2016; later re-titled ''Amityville Toybox'')
36	* ''The Amityville Terror'' (2016)
37	* ''Amityville: No Escape'' (2016)
38	* ''Amityville Exorcism'' (2017)
39	* ''Amityville: Evil Never Dies'' (2017; later re-titled ''Amityville Clownhouse''; sequel to ''The Amityville Legacy'')
40	* ''Amityville Prison'' (2017; also known as ''Against the Night'')
41	* ''Amityville: Mt. Misery Road'' (2018)
42	* ''The Dawn'' (2019)
43	* ''Amityville Island'' (2020; sequel to ''Amityville Exorcism'')
44	* ''Amityville Vibrator'' (2020)
45	* ''Witches of Amityville Academy'' (2020; also known as ''Amityville Witches'')
46	* ''The Amityville Harvest'' (2020)
47	* ''Amityville Poltergeist'' (2021)
48	* ''Amityville Vampire'' (2021)
49	* ''Amityville Cult'' (2021)
50	* ''Amityville Scarecrow'' (2021)
51	* ''The Amityville Moon'' (2021; sequel to ''The Amityville Harvest'')
52	* ''Amityville Cop'' (2021)
53	* ''Amityville in the Hood'' (2021; sequel to ''Amityville: Evil Never Dies'')
54	* ''Amityville Uprising'' (2022; sequel to ''The Amityville Moon'')
55	* ''Amityville Karen'' (2022)
56	* ''Amityville in Space'' (2022; sequel to ''Amityville Island'')
57	* ''Amityville Hex'' (2022)
58	* ''Amityville Christmas Vacation'' (2022)
59	* ''Amityville Thanksgiving'' (2022)
60	* ''Amityville Scarecrow 2'' (2022; sequel to ''Amityville Scarecrow'')
61	* ''Ghosts of Amityville'' (2022)
62	* ''Amityville Ride-Share'' (2023)
63	* ''Amityville Emanuelle'' (2023)
64	* ''Amityville Death Toilet'' (2023)
65	* ''Amityville Frankenstein'' (2023)
66	* ''Film/TheLastAmityvilleMovie'' (2023)
67	* ''Amityville Ripper'' (2023)
68	* ''Amityville Bigfoot'' (2024)
69
70	[[AC:Literature]]
71	* ''Literature/TheAmityvilleHorror'' (1977)
72	* ''The Amityville Curse'' (1981)
73	* ''The Amityville Horror Part II'' (1982)
74	* ''Amityville: The Final Chapter'' (1985)
75	* ''Amityville: The Evil Escapes'' (1988)
76	* ''Amityville: The Horror Returns'' (1989)
77	* ''Amityville: The Nightmare Continues'' (1991)
78	[[/index]]
79
80	!! Franchise-Wide Tropes:
81
82	* ArcNumber: 3:15, which is the approximate time that Ronald [=DeFeo=] Jr. killed all of the other [=DeFeos=].
83	* ArtifactOfDoom: Objects taken from the house are infected with its evil, resulting in a lot of cases of AttackOfTheKillerWhatever.
84	** The lamp from ''The Evil Escapes'' had a preference for attacking people with other pieces of technology, like appliances and power tools.
85	** The clock from ''It's About Time'' could manipulate time, freezing it, fast-forwarding or rewinding it, sending people forward or backward in it, aging people up or down, etc.
86	** The mirror from ''A New Generation'' preyed on the fears and insecurities of the people who looked into it, and could control people via their reflections.
87	** Whatever happened inside of the dollhouse from ''Dollhouse'' also affected the real world; its fireplace flaring up made a real fireplace engulf a girl in flames, a mouse crawling into it made a giant mouse manifest in the real house, etc.
88	** The toy monkey from ''Legacy'' and ''Evil Never Dies'' could cast illusions and alter people's perception of reality.
89	** The lumber from ''Exorcism'' is the most generic of the lot, in that it displayed no special powers beyond merely driving people to kill other people.
90	** The clown in the clown painting from ''Evil Never Dies'' could exit the portrait at will in order to personally attack and kill people.
91	* ArtisticLicenseGeography: Nearly every depiction of the house makes it look isolated, when in reality its neighbors on either side are located only a few feet away.
92	* AndIMustScream: The potential fate of anyone who dies in or around the house, being BarredFromTheAfterlife and turned into a puppet of the Evil.
93	* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: If a film contains a pet, its chances of making it out of things unscathed are slim (the original film was a notable outlier in this regard, though).
94	* BasedOnAGreatBigLie:...''maybe.'' But the [=DeFeo=] murders really did happen, and some of the spookier circumstances surrounding them (like the neighbors not hearing any of the gunshots) are true.
95	* BigBad: The Evil, though it sometimes gets sidelined or outright replaced by other villains, like:
96	** Frank and/or the Thin Boy in ''Curse.''
97	** Reverend Jeremiah Ketcham in TheRemake.
98	** Doctor Elliot Mixter in ''Asylum.''
99	** Abigail Wilmont in ''Death House.''
100	** Delilah [=McCallister=] in ''Terror.''
101	* BigFancyHouse: 112 Ocean Avenue, provided you are able to look past the whole "repository of evil" thing.
102	* BloodyHorror: This series may have popularized the whole "blood spewing from the walls, faucets, and other random things" trope that is now so prevalent in stories involving {{Haunted House}}s.
103	* BrotherSisterIncest:
104	** The possessed Sonny Montelli has sex with his sister Patricia in ''The Possession.''
105	** The corrupted Lisa Sterling tries to seduce her brother Rusty in ''It's About Time.''
106	** The possessed Shea Jacobson has sex with her brother Todd in ''Terror.''
107	** Ronald [=DeFeo=] Jr., while having sex with a date in his car, has a vision of the girl turning into his sister Dawn in ''Murders.''
108	* BugsHeraldEvil: Flies are the Evil's favorite pet, but it has also deployed [[SpidersAreScary spiders]], [[MessyMaggots maggots]], [[WickedWasps wasps]], and [[ScaryStingingSwarm bees]].
109	* CatapultNightmare: These occur about OncePerEpisode.
110	* CensoredChildDeath: The original film is, to date, the only one in which the deaths of children are directly shown, during the prologue where Ronald [=DeFeo=] Jr. shoots all of the other [=DeFeos=]. In every other case, a child's death is either cut away from, or we only see the aftermath (in the form of a body or a ghost).
111	* TheCorrupter: The Evil, when not outright possessing people, enjoys poisoning their minds and making them AxeCrazy. Successful and attempted victims of the corruption include Ronald [=DeFeo=] Jr. and George Lutz, Jessica Evans in ''The Evil Escapes'', Jacob and Lisa Sterling in ''It's About Time'', Franklin I. Bronner and Keyes Terry in ''A New Generation'', Jimmy Martin in ''Dollhouse'', Melanie Benson in ''Haunting'', Mark Janson in ''Legacy'', and Senator Ty Pangborn and Ben in ''Evil Never Dies.''
112	* CreepyBasement: Its layout is far from consistent, but it always feels dingy and unpleasant, thanks in part to containing a HellGate.
113	* CreepyChild: The films are rife with them, usually little girls, though male ones do pop up in ''Haunting'' and ''Terror.''
114	* CreepyDoll: The frequency with which these appear in the films actually gets lampshaded in the audio commentary for ''Terror.'' While they are usually just inanimate set dressing, actively malevolent ones are featured in ''Dollhouse, Exorcism'', and ''Island.''
115	* DeadPersonImpersonation: The Evil has a habit of taking on the form of people's dead relatives, usually fathers and husbands, like Frank Evans in ''The Evil Escapes'', Franklin I. Bronner in ''A New Generation'', Jimmy's father in ''Dollhouse'', and Mr. Janson in ''Legacy.''
116	* DevilButNoGod: The original film contains a priest whose holiness is utterly defeated by the house's evil, which sets a theme for the rest of the franchise: the Amityville house is ''so'' evil that no force of goodness can defeat it. We see a lot of demonic evil, but very little Heavenly goodness, with about the only instance of the latter being Sonny Montelli (who had just undergone an exorcism) being levitated back to his feet by an angelic light at the end of ''The Possession.'' ''The Awakening'' even has a character outright state that God's apparent apathy or nonexistence is what prompted them to seek out the Evil.
117	* DownerEnding: The only film to have an unambiguously happy ending is ''It's About Time.''
118	* TheDragon: Anyone corrupted by the Evil, technically, but more straightforward examples are Mayor Elliot Saunders from ''Playhouse'' and Delilah [=McCallister=] from ''Terror'', both of whom ran cults that sacrificed people to the Evil to keep it from terrorizing the rest of Amityville. Interestingly, the two were the exact opposite of each other, with Saunders being wracked with guilt (to the point of being DrivenToSuicide) over what he was doing while Delilah was completely fine with it, at one point sneering, "As long as tenants pay, I don't care who they are."
119	* DysfunctionalFamily: Almost all of the families that appear in the films do not come off as particularly stable, even before they start being victimized by the Evil, with standout examples being the [=DeFeos=], the Montellis from ''The Possession'', the Bensons from ''Haunting'', and the Jansons from ''Legacy.''
120	* EvilDetectingDog: All manner of creatures (dogs, cats, birds, etc.) become anxious (if not outright hostile) in the presence of the house, or anything related to it.
121	* EvilPhone: Amityville's telephones are prone to spewing only static, garbled nonsense, or voices from beyond, when they are not melting or bursting into flames.
122	* EyeMotifs: The house's upper windows look like eyes, and if a film takes place in a different house, then chances are it will have eye-like upper windows as well.
123	* FliesEqualsEvil: They often act as harbingers of doom, though they somehow manage to directly kill a man in ''3-D.'' They are replaced by wasps in ''Dollhouse'', and by bees in ''Death House.''
124	* ForTheEvulz: The Evil's raison d'être, as it so succinctly reveals in ''The Possession'' (one of the few films to give it any semblance of character):
125	--> '''Father Frank Adamsky:''' You want to destroy this boy's life?\
126	'''The Evil:''' I do what I want.
127	* FoundFootageFilms: ''Haunting'', ''No Escape'', and ''Prison.''
128	* GenericDoomsdayVillain: The Evil is more of a force than an actual character, with its personality (in the few films that even bother to give it one) being no deeper than "I am evil and do it all ForTheEvulz."
129	* GeographicFlexibility: The layout of the house, as well as the land that it is situated upon, is far from consistent, with the worst offenders in this regard probably being ''Haunting'' and ''No Escape.''
130	* GlowingEyesOfDoom: The eye-like upper windows of the house are often portrayed this way, with a lot of promotional material depicting it as an EvilOverlooker.
131	* GreaterScopeVillain:
132	** John Ketcham, the alleged witch who desecrated Shinnecock land by building a house on it, in the 1979 film.
133	** The unnamed woman who replaces the aforementioned John Ketcham in the land's backstory in ''The Possession.''
134	** UsefulNotes/GillesDeRais (the original owner of the clock) in ''It's About Time.''
135	** The Dark Master that the Satchem cult worships in ''Asylum.''
136	** The unnamed warlock who resurrected Abigail Wilmont in ''Death House.''
137	* HauntedHeadquarters: The house is dirt cheap, and so attracts a lot of naïve and/or desperate people who rarely last long in it, to the point that a "For Sale" sign is an almost permanent fixture of the house's front yard.
138	* HauntedHouse: One of the most (in)famous examples in modern American history, though a few of the pseudo-sequels relocate things to other structures, like a theatre and a BedlamHouse. ''Curse'', ''Vanishing Point'', and ''Terror'' are all set in different haunted houses that just so happen to also be in Amityville.
139	* HauntedTechnology: Lights, telephones, radios, televisions, appliances, vehicles, Walkmen, etc.
140	* HellGate: The infamous Red Room (and its substitutions, like the crawlspace in ''The Possession'' and the abandoned well in ''3-D'') that is located in the CreepyBasement of 112 Ocean Avenue.
141	* HolyBurnsEvil: Sometimes. Other times, the Evil is able to NoSell or FightOffTheKryptonite.
142	* HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday:
143	** BirthdayEpisode: ''The Possession, Dollhouse, Legacy'', and ''Evil Never Dies.''
144	** ChristmasEpisode: ''Christmas Vacation'' and the 2014 novel ''Amityville Horror Christmas.''
145	** NewYearHasCome: ''Cop.''
146	** ThanksgivingEpisode: ''A New Generation'' and ''Thanksgiving.''
147	* IAmLegion: The Evil refers to itself in the plural in ''The Possession'' and ''Exorcism'', and it was portrayed as being an apparent hive mind that was made up of six individual demons in ''Playhouse.''
148	* IndianBurialGround: The novel is widely believed to have been the modern TropeCodifier. Depending on what, or which film/book you believe, the house was built on land that was used as a burial ground by Natives. Or land where Natives exiled their invalids. Or land where a bunch of Natives were massacred. Or land where Natives sacrificed people to a GodOfEvil. Or land where Natives sacrificed people to abate demons. All anyone can really agree upon is that it was land where a bunch of Natives died.
149	* InNameOnly: All of the unofficial films pay at least some lip service to the ''Amityville'' mythos, with the exception of ''The Final Chapter'' and ''Prison'', both of which were original stories (titled ''Sickle'' and ''Against the Night'', respectively) that were rebranded as ''Amityville'' installments for their home video releases.
150	* IntercontinuityCrossover: With ''Literature/TheOtherworld'' in the 2012 novel ''Amityville Horrible.''
151	* TheMockbuster: Amityville is the name of a town, so no one owns the rights to the word, which means that anyone can slap together a horror film (which may or may not involve Amityville) and call it ''"The Amityville _____."''
152	* MonsterMash: The series has featured demons, ghosts, witches and warlocks, zombies, vampires, aliens, werewolves, revenants, mad scientists, giant animals, a {{Scary Scarecrow\|s}}...
153	* MovieTheaterEpisode: ''Playhouse'', though it is an abandoned one, and the emphasis is more on it being a stage theatre than a film one.
154	* NegativeContinuity: Due to legal issues[[note]]The real-life Lutz family technically owned the sequel rights to the 1979 film, as a condition of letting it be made[[/note]], none of the films are technically allowed to be "real" sequels to the 1979 film. The filmmakers seem to have run with this and decided to not let any of the sequels have anything to do with each other, either.
155	** ''The Amityville Horror:'' The land was used as a dumping ground for invalids by the Shinnecock. It was desecrated when a house was built on it by John Ketchum, an alleged witch who was run out of Salem.
156	** ''The Possession:'' While billed as a prequel, the film comes off as more of a StealthSequel due to the anachronistic technology, the familicide and its aftermath being completely different from what was shown and mentioned in the 1979 film, and a bulletin board in the police station giving the date as 1982 instead of 1974. The murdered family is named Montelli instead of [=DeFeo=], though this admittedly does not contradict anything in the first film, which never actually used the name [=DeFeo=]. The land is changed from a dumping ground to a more standard IndianBurialGround, the Red Room is replaced by a crawlspace, and John Ketchum is replaced by an unnamed woman with an identical backstory (an alleged witch who desecrated the land by building a house on it after being run out of Salem).
157	** ''3-D:'' The murdered family is named [=DeFeo=], and not Montelli. The land is still an Indian burial ground, but the Red Room has been replaced again, this time by an abandoned well. The film ends with the house destroying itself.
158	** ''The Evil Escapes:'' The house is still standing, and is cleansed when an exorcism that is performed on it forces the Evil to take refuge in a lamp, which is then shipped off to California. The lamp is destroyed when it is thrown off of a cliff, but the Evil survives by possessing the pet cat, Pepper.
159	** ''Curse:'' The film takes place in Amityville and makes an oblique reference to the [=DeFeo=] murders, but is set in a different haunted house that has no connection to 112 Ocean Avenue.
160	** ''It's About Time:'' The house was demolished, and the source of its evil is changed from a Satanist-desecrated Indian burial ground to a clock that was owned by UsefulNotes/GillesDeRais. The clock is destroyed, and is there no indication that the Evil survived its host's destruction like it did in ''The Evil Escapes.''
161	** ''A New Generation:'' The house is in upstate New York instead of Long Island, and was the site of a hitherto unmentioned familicide that was committed by Franklin I. Bronner in 1966. The house's status during the events of the film is not mentioned, but the Evil has taken up residence in a mirror, which Bronner gives to his estranged son, Keyes. Keyes destroys the mirror, and like in ''It's About Time'', there is no indication that the Evil survived this like in ''The Evil Escapes.''
162	** ''Dollhouse:'' The dollhouse looks like 112 Ocean Avenue. That is it, there is otherwise no reference to Amityville, the Lutzes, the [=DeFeos=], etc. The Martin family's new home is stated to have been built on top of the foundation of another house that burnt down, but the film is set in California, so there is no possible way that the old house was 112 Ocean Avenue.
163	** ''Haunting:'' The house is in a middle-class neighborhood that is nowhere near a body of water, the Lutzes are said to have lasted two years in it instead of just twenty-eight days, and one of the entities that is haunting it is Ronald [=DeFeo=] Jr.'s youngest brother, John Matthew. The main ghost is credited as being [=DeFeo=] himself on IMDB, but nowhere in the film itself (which does not have credits) is this made apparent.
164	** ''Asylum:'' The house was demolished and replaced by the High Hopes Psychiatric Hospital, which is haunted by the ghost of Allison [=DeFeo=]. The Satchem were a Native American tribe who immigrated to Amityville after being run out of Salem. They believed that they would be granted immortality if they made regular sacrifices of six people to a deity called the Dark Master, and were wiped out by a witch hunter named John Underhill at the site of what would later become 112 Ocean Avenue.
165	** ''Death House:'' A white witch named Abigail Wilmont moved to Amityville after being run out of Salem, and was lynched after being falsely accused of killing a child in the 1600s, with it being vaguely implied that her death may have jinxed or cursed Amityville. Raymond Florence's house has the iconic eye-shaped upper windows of the Amityville house, despite clearly not being 112 Ocean Avenue.
166	** ''The Final Chapter:'' An entirely unrelated film, the original title of which is ''Sickle.''
167	** ''Playhouse:'' While passing through Amityville, the Shinnecock unearthed a cave that turned out to be a HellGate. They managed to seal the cave back up, but it was at some point disinterred again, and ever since the town of Amityville has made yearly sacrifices of six people (including, it is implied, the [=DeFeos=]) to the Evil.
168	** ''Vanishing Point:'' The film is set in Amityville, but its plot revolves ([[RandomEventsPlot loosely]]) around a haunted boarding house and the mysterious death of one of its residents, Margaret East.
169	** ''Legacy'' and ''Evil Never Dies:'' The house was at some point destroyed, but the Evil (which is indicated to be Beelzebub, and a personal agent of Satan) lives on in the form of a clown painting and a CymbalBangingMonkey. ''Evil Never Dies'' makes reference to the events of ''The Evil Escapes, It's About Time, A New Generation, Dollhouse'', and ''Playhouse.''
170	** ''Terror:'' The Oberests were a family of occultists who lived in Amityville, and they sacrificed people in an attempt to attain eternal life, though all they apparently succeeded in doing was opening a Hell Gate, which made Jimmy Oberest kill all of the other Oberests besides his baby sister, Delilah. Delilah now owns the house (which is clearly not 112 Ocean Avenue) where everything went down, and has the town's citizens help her "feed" people to it to abate the Evil, with it being mentioned that this has been going on since the 1970s.
171	** ''No Escape:'' The house is dilapidated and full of abandoned junk, and has been moved from the lake-adjacent suburbs to the edge of an EnchantedForest. Half of the film is set in 1997, while the other half is set in 2016, and it has a GainaxEnding in which a dead 2016 character somehow goes back in time and kills a character in 1997.
172	** ''Exorcism:'' The house was cleansed when it was at some point exorcised by Father Jonas. Unfortunately, the Evil (which includes ''the'' [[IAmLegion Legion]]) lives on in the form of wood that a contractor took from the house prior to the exorcism and added to other properties, unwittingly creating a bunch of other {{Haunted House}}s.
173	** ''The Awakening:'' The [=DeFeo=] murders and the Lutz haunting happened, but everything else is fiction, something that is made overt by a scene where a character shows off various ''Amityville'' films (including the original, ''The Possession'', and TheRemake). The house has lain dormant since 1975, but it "wakes up" when the Walker family moves into it in 2015, Joan Walker having purposely sought out the Evil in the belief that she could harness its power to restore her braindead son, James. The Evil is revealed to be trapped within the confines of the property by a magic circle, and it is driven out of a possessed James (and possibly destroyed) when he is dragged past the boundary by his sister, Belle.
174	** ''Prison:'' An entirely unrelated film, the original title of which is ''Against the Night''.
175	** ''The Last Amityville Movie'' - Set in Los Angeles, the main character is mailed the door knob from the original house, and discovers all of the events in previous Amityville movies were sparked by the contents of the original house sold at auction.
176	* NewHouseNewProblems: As noted in the description. Interestingly, the ''next'' owners after the Lutzes reported absolutely no such problems with the house, nor have any subsequent owners.[[note]]As of 2019 the house is still occupied, having been owned by five different families since the Lutzes left.[[/note]] The only "supernatural" issues reported have been curiosity seekers taking pictures, knocking on the door, sitting out front waiting for something spooky to happen, or otherwise bothering the house's owners and their neighbors. Indeed, one of the recent owners repainted the house's exterior, removed the famous quarter-moon windows and changed the address (from 112 to 108 Ocean Avenue) to discourage tourists.
177	* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands: The Evil's abilities are limited only to the imaginations of the writers.
178	--> When producer and co-screenwriter Christopher [=DeFaria=] read the short story collection ''Amityville: The Evil Escapes'' by John G. Jones in preparation for writing the script [of ''Film/AmityvilleItsAboutTime''], he became confused by what he felt were inconsistencies in the nature and abilities of the demonic entities between stories. He called Jones to ask for clarification. Jones simply told him, "Yep, Chris, that's the way evil is - it's just unpredictable!"
179	* NoNameGiven: The Evil, except in ''Evil Never Dies'', where it is explicitly stated to be {{Beelzebub}} (hence all of the flies).
180	* OminousObsidianOoze: Black sludge appears throughout the films, starting with the original, where it overflows from the toilets and fills up a pit in the Red Room. A man is drowned in it in ''The Evil Escapes'', and it manifests as an outright BlobMonster in ''It's About Time.''
181	* ParentalIncest:
182	** Clair Martin begins having erotic fantasies about her stepson Todd in ''Dollhouse.''
183	** Mark Janson has an erotic fantasy about one of his daughters in ''Legacy.''
184	** Belle Walker has a sexually explicit vision of her mother and brother together in ''The Awakening.''
185	* PaterFamilicide: The Evil seems to take perverse joy out of making people kill their own families, having used its corrupting influence to orchestrate the massacres of the [=DeFeos=], the Montellis, the Bronners, the Jansons, the Jacobsons, the Humes, the Pangborns, and the Walkers.
186	* PoliceAreUseless: ''The Possession'' and ''A New Generation'' are the only films in which they are even remotely helpful, and even then it is just individual officers, and not the police as a whole.
187	* {{Premiseville}}
188	* {{Prequel}}: ''Murders'' and ''The Dawn.'' ''The Possession'' was billed as this, but it comes off as more of a StealthSequel.
189	* PrisonEpisode: ''Prison'' (though it is set in an abandoned one that the protagonists are exploring, rather than an active one that they have been sent to) and a good chunk of ''Island.''
190	* SalemIsWitchCountry: All manner of witches and occultists are said to have immigrated from Salem to Amityville.
191	* SapientHouse: The house itself is sometimes treated as a living thing, most prominently in ''3-D'', where there are innumerable scenes that are shot in a way that suggests that the house is "watching" everything that occurs in and around it.
192	* ShotgunsAreJustBetter: Ronald [=DeFeo=] Jr. killed his family with a rifle, but most recreations of the massacre replace the weapon with a shotgun; shotguns are also used in the [=DeFeo=]-inspired mass shootings that occur in films like ''A New Generation, Asylum'', ''Legacy'', and ''The Awakening.''
193	* StoppedNumberingSequels: The films stopped being numbered after ''3-D'', though a few home video releases do list ''The Evil Escapes'' as ''Amityville 4.''
194	* SupernaturalProofFather: If a film's focus is on a family, then chances are the father will be the least likely to acknowledge that something supernatural is going on, even if they are the one most affected by it, like George Lutz.
195	* TownWithADarkSecret: The citizens of Amityville "feed" people to the Evil to keep it contained in both ''Playhouse'' and ''Terror.''
196	* UndeadChild: Jodie [=DeFeo=] in the remake, John Matthew [=DeFeo=] in ''Haunting'', and Allison [=DeFeo=] in ''Asylum.''
197	* {{Unperson}}: The Lutzes. Besides the original and the remake, the only films to directly reference them are ''Haunting'' and ''Murders.'' All of the others do their best to only pay them lip service, if that, with the most egregious instance of this probably being ''The Awakening'', where they are only mentioned once (and not even by name) even though the film features scenes taken from the original that contain George and Kathy.
198	* VampireEpisode: ''Harvest'' (which has a vampire who dates back to at least the Civil War) and ''Vampire'' (which has Myth/{{Lilith}}).
199	* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: [=DeFeo=]'s lawyer claimed it was a hoax, and few if any outside sources corroborate the Lutzes' version of events. Certainly a lot of the backstory attributed to the house (namely, that it was an IndianBurialGround and claims of deaths among previous owners) is either exaggerated or without any apparent basis in fact. In any case, the films and books are ''very'' different from what the Lutz family claimed happened as well, and Jay Anson admitted that he embellished elements of their story for his book.
200	* VillainOfAnotherStory: Ronald [=DeFeo=] Jr., despite being an integral part of the franchise's backstory, is this in every film besides ''Murders.''
201	* WeirdnessMagnet: Amityville is plagued by all manner of supernatural phenomena, only some of which involves 112 Ocean Avenue.
202
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Context Franchise / Amityville