Hyperfixed - Amityvilleville

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Alex has a new podcast called Amityvilleville, on which he and his friend Caroline Thompson watch all 92 movies in the Amityville Franchise, interview people involved in the making of these movies, and hopefully some people involved in the true life amityville case! On this episode, we watch Amityville 3-D, the third entry in the series, starring a young Meg Ryan and Lori Laughlin.Amityville 3-D: Here's how my mom and dad fell back in love after my dad bought a haunted house that killed me and then exploded.As of this writing, Amityville 3-D is available (lamentably, in 2-D) on the following streaming services:TUBIPluto TVIf you are just discovering this podcast, please consider listening to Alex's other podcast, Hyperfixed Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hey, this is Alex, and I started a new podcast. This podcast is not going to affect hyperfixed in any way, but I just wanted to let everybody know that it was here and give you the opportunity to check it out. So very, very quickly. In 1974, there was a series of murders that took place in Amityville, New York, and the following year, a family moved into the house where the murders took place and claimed it was haunted. That spawned a couple of very successful movies, followed by many more less successful movies, and then around 2010, Asylum Pictures, which is the movie studio that made like Shark Nato,

realize the name Amityville isn't copyrightable and made their own Amityville movie. That kind of opened some very strange floodgates because as of this writing, there are now 92 Amityville movies. Some are standard horror, and some have titles like Amityville Outhouse, Amityville in Space, Amityville Job Interview, Amityville Death Toil, and Coming Full Circle, the 92nd Amityville movie, which premiered on streaming last week, Amityville Nato.

Anyhow, my friend Caroline Thompson and I, both horror fans and apparently gluttons for punishment, decided to watch every single Amityville movie and chronicle it for a podcast we're calling Amityvillevilleville. This episode is our watch-through of Amityville 3, which features a very young Meg Ryan, and also Lori Loughlin, the lady from Full House, who went to prison. And you can watch along with us

by searching Amityvilleville, wherever you find podcasts. If you want to watch this particular movie, it's on Tooby. And we'll be back at you with another hyper-fixed episode next week. In the meantime, enjoy this episode of Amityvillevilleville.

Welcome to Amityvilleville. I am Alex Goldman. I am Caroline Thompson, and we are back at it again. Ready to see what that cookie Amityville House has in store for us today. You don't sound convinced that you're Caroline Thompson. You sounded a little doubtful of it.

I mean, I'm honestly not. I wake up every morning. and look in the mirror and wonder, who is she? I wake up every morning and look in the mirror and wonder who you are to. Okay, this week's episode is about Amityville 3D, which we were not able to watch in 3D. We had to watch it in the normal version, unfortunately.

No, and honestly, that I think disrupted the experience a little bit. However, we'll get into it, but there honestly wasn't a lot for them to show in 3D. Oh, I strongly disagree. There are a lot. of 3D moments in that movie. Like a lot of moments where they deliberately shot it so that like someone is going toward the camera. And then at the end, there's an amazing part where a swordfish flies off the wall.

I would say the last like five minutes, there's a lot of exciting 3D action. I just think for, like you would think with a name like Amityville 3D that it would be just like left and right gore swattering all over you. And it is very much not that. Like right around this time, there's a big 3D craze. There was Jaws 3D, and Friday the 13th 3D came out the year before. Have you ever seen Friday the 13th 3D? No, I have not. A huge part of the 3D aspect of that is he, like, chucked a pitchfork at someone,

and I think he shoots someone with, like, one of those spears they use when you're trying to spear fish. Right. But a lot of it is just like, oh, God, the annoying guy's going to juggle. And then they shoot it from the top so that the perspective is of the balls flying at the camera. Like, that's a lot of the 3D in the movie. It's really... I was imagining modern 3D, which is usually just like blood guts and gore. Like, I didn't think that, like, you know, there's a point in this movie where a boom mic is shown in 3D, and I'm just like, all right, let's pack it in here.

Like, that's not, like, interesting enough for me to see 3D. But we'll get into it. We'll get into it. I did like, there is a moment where a frisbee gets thrown at the screen, and it's really intense. I can imagine what it would have been like in 3D, and I'm really sad that I missed it. Everyone probably was screaming. All right. So, Amityville 3D, let's do it.

The movie opens, much like the first two movies, where the entire credits are just a shot of the house. I will say the house is looking a lot nicer in this one, though. It seems to have been fixed up. Like, it looks lived in. It looks like, it doesn't look as, I mean, it looks menacing because, you know, it's got those, like, scary house eyes, all of the incest attic windows. but it looks nicer. It looks like a house

that I could see myself wanting to move into if I wasn't aware that multiple people had been murdered there and then, you know, driven out by the ghosts of God knows what. Is that really what we're going with? The incest attic?

Is that what we're calling it? God. I mean, you know, if the shoe fits. The thing I did notice about the opening was to accentuate the 3D, there's a lot of parallax. So there's like very up-closed trees. And then every 30 seconds or so, some poor PA has to whack the camera with a couple of twigs.

There's like some tree branches from the right side of the screen that every 10 or 15 seconds, someone just waves in front of the camera. It's really good. It's an incredibly menacing effect. I'm criticizing the opening. I did like this one. Oh, yeah. This is by far my favorite of the movie so far.

This is well-written, I mean, you know, comparatively, like compared to what we've watched so far, well-written, well-acted. Interesting story. Not scary in any way, but definitely top of the line in terms of like just me buying any of the characters for doing what they're doing. Like the acting was phenomenal. I do think the acting was the best in the series. I don't know if I think it was my favorite, and I don't think that it wasn't scary.

I think there were some scary parts. I think you and I might have a difference of opinion. Maybe. So get your mind right and agree with me instead of arguing with me all the time. Okay. Okay. So the movie opens on the windiest night in history. I've never seen wind like that in my life. There are hurricanes that are less windy than that opening scene.

Incredibly windy. And just like the last two movies, it opens after the like five minute long shot of looking at the house from various angles. A car pulls up to the house with a couple with a couple with a minute. man and a woman inside. And, you know, hijinks ensue after this. It's different, though. Unlike the other ones where it's people moving into the home, this one begins with some people arriving at the Amityville House to do a seance. Indeed. And I will say this, like, this entire movie really brings me back to my high school days in so many ways. Like, I feel very seen by this movie. That, that beginning scene really was bringing me.

back that faithful Halloween when a demon told me that I'd be the first to die, first in the room. You need to describe this to everyone else, because I'm very familiar with the story of how Carolina is going to die at age 69. But can you please, can you please explain what happened here? How old were you? How did this happen? I was 16 years old. It was Halloween day, Halloween night, in fact. My good friend's parents owned a duplex, and their tenant had just moved out in the downstairs part of the duplex. So, you know, being little enterprising 16-year-olds, we were like, let's go get drunk in the empty duplex. There's truly nothing more frightening than an abandoned duplex. So we went downstairs to the empty apartment. We had a

Ouija board. We had a lot of alcohol and we got kind of drunk. We lit some candles and we decided to do a little seance, Ouija board situation. And, you know, we asked it a bunch of questions and we were getting some weird answers. You know, we were getting some weird answers. You know, we were like the plan chat was moving around. We were, it seemed as though there was a spirit in the room. And so somebody asked this question, who in this room will die first? And the plan chat spelled out CT 69. So could that have just been, you know, one of my friends playing a joke, perhaps?

However, I have like, I've recapped this with my friends that were there. And I thought that like, when I initially looked back on it, I remember it being like a mixed group of boys and girls. If it had been, I think it probably would have been a joke. However, other people's memory say that it was just girls. And I don't think any of them would have made a 69 joke. You know, we just, we have higherfalutin humor than that, you know, as 16-year-old girls. And so I've just been kind of living on the assumption that I'm going to die when I'm 69 and or in 20169, which would make me 79.

But, you know, I'm just kind of live fast down young, I guess, baby. What are you going to do? Yeah, RIP. So this movie really took me back because this was not the only time that I had a seance in an empty potentially haunted house while drinking. And it's not the only time that a seance takes place in an empty potentially haunted house in this movie. No. In fact, there are, yeah, we'll get into it. So the man and the woman, get out of the car, come inside the house. They are greeted by an elderly man and woman who sit them down at a table and start doing a pretty classic. seance. You know, they're all holding hands. They're apparently attempting to contact the child of the couple, the young couple that has come in the door, who allegedly died in a fire. But we find out

very quickly that this couple are not who they pretend to be and are in fact, journalists. Journalists. Journalists. John Baxter and Melanie, no last name. Yep. Don't know what her last name is, but they are they are a partner. They work for, what's the name of the magazine? I I can't remember. The name of the magazine is Reveal. Reveal magazine. So they're doing an expose on the Amityville Horror House for Reveal magazine because this old couple that has been renting the house, I guess, since the Defeos moved out, or not the Defeos, the whatever the second family was. Can't remember their names.

The Lutz's. The Lutz's. No, the Montellis were the Defeos. Right. I'm sorry. Excuse me. So they're there after the Lutzes. However, because there was an ongoing lawsuit, they were still not allowed to use the name Lutz.

So before I knew that this was a hoax, I was really excited about like a new haunting mechanic that was going to drop. A green orb floats across the room carrying the disembodied voice of what appears to be a dead child going, Mommy, I'm here. And I was like, this is a new like haunting mechanism for this house. I've never seen, you know, a disembodied spirit orb before in the Amityville House. Ricky. Where? But turns out it is not, in fact, a disembodied spirit voice, but instead, like, a large, like, hunk of saran wrap, maybe.

When I saw it, I wrote in my notes, Seance. Their sun looks like a glowing lufa sponge. And then, of course, it does fly at the screen. for the 3D effect. And then they start taking photographs and we see that it's actually basically a guy holding a fishing pole with a lufa sponge on it or saran wrap or something. And then they expose these people and then the woman doing the seance spits on Melanie. Like what indignities this woman has to endure in this movie.

Can I just say? I know, truly. She really is like the ultimate victim here. Like justice for Melanie in so many ways. Like, her story arc does not get wrapped up in a neat little bow or any bow, in fact. In fact, it gets wrapped up in flames. She doesn't get a last name. She gets spit on.

But she takes a bunch of photographs because she is the photographer for reveal. And then, like, the next day they meet the real estate agent for the house. Yeah. The next day they come back to the after they've done this, you know, the Huckster couple is banished from the house. The district attorney walks in and is like, yeah, you'll see. see here, like, you're ready to be arrested for a huck steering, and they flee. And the next day. It's so weird that they managed to have enough sway to get the district attorney to show up at the haunted house.

I think they actually say it's someone from the district attorney's office. So I don't think it was the district attorney himself. But, you know, still like pretty crazy for, you know, a pair of undercover journalists to have that kind of power. But, you know, these were different times, different times. So the next day they come back because the power goes out when they are about to go into the basement and investigate what was going on. They were like the control rooms probably in the basement. And they're about to go in the basement.

And then the power goes out. And they're like, can we come back the next day? And Melanie seems particularly scared. Skeptic John seems like when he's like, whatever. And then they come back the next day and meet with Clifford Sanders. Who is the owner of the house who had been renting the house. Owner of the house. Yes.

He'd been renting the house to the couple. He claims that he had no idea that they were doing this. They quickly kind of go back on him and say, well, some people say that you have. And then they start taking pictures of him. Like, gotcha. Ha ha, bitch. He falls through the floor in the basement, which is hard to do. You know, like, that would be so, I thought like that would be so embarrassing.

Imagine falling through a basement floor. Like how, what does that say about, about you? I would be extremely, extremely self-conscious about my body. It's like if I sat on a chair and it broke, you know what I mean? Right. I mean, but so much. more than that because it's a basement. You wouldn't think that it would even be physically possible to fall through a basement floor. But apparently there's like an old well down there and he falls into the

old well and has to get pulled out and then kind of storms out being like, I'm a real estate agent around here. I don't need any of the smoke. You know, this is ridiculous. He's also like, I got to sell this house. I can't even sell the houses next to it. And then strangely, for plot expediency, John, who is in the middle of a divorce from his wife, Nancy, is like, eh, I'll get it. I'll take it. I need to move out of my tiny little apartment. I think me, a bachelor, needs a giant haunted house on a lake. Giant haunted house on a lake. And my question here to you, Alex, is someone who I consider to be a very ethical journalist. Would you call it bad journalistic practice to purchase a home from someone you are planning to write an expose about? And do you think that he, like, that the real estate agent slash owner maybe knocked off a few coins to, like, get him out of the story?

We know that the story is published, but, like, we never actually see, you know, who is called out in it. I feel like there are some things here that are a little bit unsavory from an ethical perspective. But I would love your take. I'm sure it's fine. Yes, it is unethical and not great. Also, just incredibly weird for the skeptic to buy the haunted house. Like, what are you trying to prove? Are you just getting it because it's cheap?

Are you getting it because you want to prove how brave you are? Are you getting it because you want to do more skeptical journalism in it? Like, what is the deal here? Is he going to write a thing six months later that's, like, revealed, I lived in the Amityville house. Like, what is his end game? Never really explained. Well, his ex-wife does kind of, like, drag him for being like, what, you're going to sit in the attic and write the Great American novel, which he does

kind of do. I don't know if, I don't know if he would call it the Great American novel. But like this guy also, John, the male journalist, I will say, is just like the most insufferable Reddit atheist that you could possibly imagine. Like he's constantly talking in like soliloquy. Like it's just like, all right, brother. Like we get it. Like you're educated. You probably have an English degree. So do I. Let's move on. Let's grow up a little bit here. I don't, we don't, you don't, I don't need, like, a lecture on Greek mythology every time someone's like, geez, I'm scared of the fact that there were a bunch of people fucking murdered in this home. Like, he's annoying. He is a little annoying.

But he means well. I genuinely think he, like, he, like, means well and just wants to show people the truth. Yeah. Whatever that may be. And this is another thing I notice about this movie is this is the least religious that we have gotten in a Amityville movie so far. Like, there is not a good point. There's not a cross to be seen. Not a hint of Catholicism, not a priest.

There isn't a church. While in the other movies, the priests were kind of the heroes of the story. And this one, the kind of paranormal researchers are the heroes. So we're kind of getting an interesting look at, you know, I don't know what the early 80s were like from a culture perspective, but maybe at this point was the satanic panic getting a little too much. And everyone was like, all right, we got to cut this out. No, the satanic panic was just ramping up at this point. Like, this is early days. So, I mean, missed opportunity that.

I mean, they really should have thrown in a couple, you know, devils and priests or whatever. But, yeah, we don't, we don't see. I feel like the satanic panic kind of hit its downward slide in like the late 80s, like 89. But like around this time, right about the time Judas Priest was accused of being responsible for the deaths of people. So they're all chit-chatting. In the basement? No, not in the basement. So they agreed to buy the house.

but then they're back at like their offices, right? And they've developed the pictures? No. Then, so after he agrees to buy the house, he goes to pick up shit from his bitch ex-wife. And it turns out she's not a bitch, actually. She also is a little bit, I would say put a pot in this. Like she's kind of the only voice of reason in the entire movie and she really gets a bad deal of it all. But he goes to pick up stuff from his old house.

His wife is there. She makes the crack about the Great American novel. And then we get the most exciting cast reveal because apparently I was texting during the opening credits. Lori Loughlin plays his daughter, Susan. And fucking Meg Ryan is Lori Loflin's like mask lesbian best friend. I mean, she is...

I've got so many questions here based on what you've just said. The first of which is I don't really know the story with Lori Loflin. All I know is she went to jail. And second of all, I need to get your, like, I need a more detailed read of Meg Ryan's character because I did not read her like that at all. So please. There's a scene later in the movie that I'll explain why I see this.

But I just, I like her. She's got a little androgynous haircut. She's, you know, wearing a little, like, she's just, she's wearing a very androgynous, you know, early 80s outfit, especially in comparison to Lori Laughlin, who is looking very preppy, very, like, Her hair is incredible throughout this entire movie. Distracting to me honest. Oh, yeah. Her hair is amazing.

Absolutely, like 10 out of 10 hair. I would pay my entire savings account to have hair like that naturally grow out of my head. But in this initial scene, you're right. It does seem that Meg Ryan's character is actually kind of flirting with John, which I was a little stressed about. Yeah, she's incredibly young in this movie. Yes. They're both teenagers, I think. And she goes, oh, I hear you bought yourself a haunted house.

Seems a little sweet on him. And I wrote my notes, I swear to God, if there is an unsettling hookup seed between the two of them, I am done with this podcast. And thankfully, there wasn't. But can you tell me really quickly the story with Lori Laughlin? Why did she go to jail? All I know about her is that she was the John Stamos's girlfriend in full house, right? Yeah. She was John Stamos's girlfriend in full house.

And she went to jail because she and her husband, who is the. like brand director at Masimo or whatever, they basically paid to get their daughter, Olivia Jade, influencer Olivia Jade, currently dating Jacob Allorty for those who know. They paid to get her into USC. They were a part of that whole, like, you know, scandal where rich people were paying to get their, like,

underachieving children into USC. And it was especially kind of embarrassing for Lori Laughlin because Olivia Jade, the daughter that they paid get into USC, like, was vlogging the entire time she was going to USC being like, God, I hate school. My mom forced me to go to school. I, like, really didn't want to. I just want to be an influencer. Would never go to class. Like, clearly was not engaged in. Like, it was, it was just, like, and so, yeah, Lori Laughlin did, did end up going to jail, as I believe, did her husband as well. And they may be divorced now. And I think that she has of late since her

jail sentence been in a couple lifetime movies. But I would have to fact check that because I'm not a big lifetime movie connoisseur. Got it. Okay. Thank you for catching me up. So those two characters are introduced. He goes to pick up stuff from his ex-wife. And then we cut to

Melanie. Sanders. No. Well, Melanie is... First, Melanie is developing photos back at the office. And she's looking at the photos that she took of Sanders, the owner of the, the owner and the real estate agent of the Amityville House. and she sees that all of the pictures of him, his face is distorted, like in the same way that in the ring,

you know, all those pictures of the people that are like, yeah, he's got ring face. He's got ring face. So in a similar sense of like in the ring, when you see photos of people who have received the ring phone call and their faces are distorted, he's got one of those. I thought that those pictures were genuinely unsettling because rather than just being kind of like, like twisted like they are in the ring, he looks kind of. half skeleton. Like it's like half skull. It's like I found them genuinely upsetting. It's a little reminiscent of the prosthetic makeup that the possessed boy had in the previous film. Right. So at the

same time that she is developing these photos and seeing this very unsettling image of Sanders' face, Sanders walks back into the house and takes a look around. He hears a pitter pattern coming from upstairs and he assumes that it's John. So he walks up the stairs while the mirror in the front room like freezes. At this time I wasn't really sure what was going on here. I think it is freezing given what happens later. But it's very, very cold in the house. He walks upstairs and unfortunately for him, he does in fact get trapped in the fly infested insect. Incest. Incest. Attic. Incest attic. Incest attic room. Yeah. And there is a great 3D moment. It's just a bunch of flies. And then there's like a blue screen giant fly that kind of floats toward the camera at one point. It looks really bad.

But he gets basically choked to death by flies. Yeah. And at this point, I had kind of, I had actually forgotten already, even this is like 10 minutes in the movie. I'd forgotten it was supposed to be 3D. And I was just like, man, these, these fly swarms are like really crude, rudimentary CGI. Like, they, like, they need to get back those like bona fide fly actors that they had in the first movie. Like, I want to see some real, like, some real practical fly stuff. But I do. I'm sorry, did you think they were CG? Well, okay, obviously, a rudimentary form of CG. I don't know.

Like, what is computer, original computer graphics? I'm sure they were made in some, with some kind of computer. Those weren't made with a computer. Those, that has to have been like old school animation because, unless you're Tron, this predates computers. This is 1983, dog. Old school animation, yes. And there is that very funny.

where the large purple fly kind of like stares him down, and then he is drowned by flies flying down his throat. As this is happening, John pulls up, carrying a very rectangular bag that I cannot figure out what could be inside of it for the life of me, and I don't think is ever explained. Pool cue. Neither here nor there.

But he hears the realtor choking on the fly, so he heads up to the attic where he finds him dying on the floor. Not a fly in sight, by the way. Yeah, no flies. Where the hell did they go? I'm thinking, you know, This is just the supernatural power of the horror, you know. Okay.

So it's like it choked him with supernatural flies and then it all went away when the skeptic was there to see. Right. And then what happens? Melanie then pulls up carrying the creepy photos just as the body is being removed out of the house. John tells Melanie that Sanders had a heart attack. I said I'm once again asking where all the flies were, but I think we figured that out. I think you're right. I think it's a supernatural thing.

that I noticed right away is that Melanie is part of the sting to like to like expose the fakers at the beginning, but pretty much immediately, like from the moment they finish the sting, she's like, ooh, this house is creepy. Can we get out of here? With no evidence really at all. Like the only the creepiest thing that's happened to her so far in that house is that the power went out. And I mean, it's an old house. Like that's not that weird. So she immediately just is on board with this being a haunted house. She pulls up, she tries to convince him. There's something weird going on in this house. I don't think you should have bought it.

Here's, look at all these pictures. He's got a distorted face. John, meanwhile, he drags poor Dead Sanders just out of his grave, essentially, being like, I mean, come on. Like, any, but just take one look at that guy. You could tell he was sick. It was showing all mean. I couldn't believe that line because he was like just a normal guy. I'm like, I don't know.

I didn't seem particularly ill at all. I mean. All they needed. was like one shot of him taking out like a handkerchief and coughing. And then you could have justified that line. But instead he's just like, hey, you want to buy my house? And then he's dead. And that's it.

There's nothing indicating that he's like sick or fucked up. You could tell that old man was sick as hell. He was ugly. Ready for it. He was fat enough to fall through a basement floor. You know, I don't know. He's on his way out. So Melanie, you know, deterred, like undeterred by John's skepticism, decides to bring

the photos to the paranormal. investigators who helped them at the beginning bust the old couple. He, this paranormal investigator, Dr. Dude, he tells her he thinks it's probably nothing, but he's going to look into it. So we've got a, you know, potential ally to Melanie on the case right now. Meanwhile, John decides to bring his beautiful young daughter into the incest death house. What could possibly go wrong? Gives his daughter a tour of the house and wow, okay, guess what room she chooses to be hers?

the fucking incest room. Yeah. He says, sold to Miss Susan Baxter for one enormous hug. And I personally do not like the callback to the brother sister attic hugging from the last movie. I don't think the writers were like, I don't think the writers were like, you know, I don't want to do any incest in this one. But we got to toss a nod to incest at least in the movie. Just one. I mean, I was I was perched for it because of how incest forward the other one was.

I was ready for it in any given moment. Thankfully, that is not something that I. had to deal with in this movie. So I enjoyed it so much more. Amityvilleville will be back right after these messages. There's a scene here where I was a little confused as to Melanie comes over to the house. And I don't really understand why she needs to be at the house or why she needs to be waiting at the house for him for a long time. But she comes over and basically straight out. She says, do you want to do something tonight? And he's like, yeah, come over. If I'm not there,

Dolores will let you in. And I don't know if Dolores is a housekeeper or what? I think Dolores is a housekeeper. Okay. But she goes in, instead of being led in by anybody, the door is just unlocked and she walks in. Yes. She walks in and then she immediately gets locked in. Like she cannot leave the house at all.

Every door and window is locked. She can't find it. Like there's footsteps everywhere, you know, same kind of shit. And so far, I will say this movie is kind of. the fly death scene. This movie is kind of boring from a horror perspective for me at this point.

Like the acting is good. But again, from the immediate child abuse, incest and possession that was happening from the jump in the last movie, I was really perched for this to be a little more exciting

from the jump. And there's this very funny scene that like the music that they're playing while she's like frantically trying to get out of the house is like something that would play when Bugs Bunny was trying to sneak up on that pig that he hates so much.

Did you just say that pig? Is he not a pig? Like doesn't Bugs Bunny have a whole thing about not liking that fucking pig? First of all, Porky Pig is not Bugs Bunny's enemy. Porky Pig's a good guy in the Warner Brothers mythos. It's crazy to me that you, I mean, I know that I'm like an old, like a withered old man and this is just like the water I swam in as a child was like Looney Tunes. But Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd are his enemy.

Elmer Fudd looks a lot like porkey pig, right? Porky. Porky pig and porky pig and Elmer Fudd look absolutely nothing alike. I swear to God they look identical. Elmer Fudd is a hunter. He wears a hunter's outfit. Porky Pig wears a blue shirt and a bow tie with no pants. They are completely different in every way, especially since one of them is a man and another one is a pig. I feel, I'm not going to Google it right now. I'm just going to like, I'd like to trust my own memory on this one.

But in my own memory, like, they have very similar facial structures despite being... I understand that that's what your memory is telling you. But reality is just not on your side on this one. All right. All right. Well, I trust you. Okay. But there's Looney Tunes music playing.

Yes, right. Looney Tunes music playing in the background. And then she comes face to face with the housekeeper. Dolores, in the funniest moment in the movie, because Dolores's one line is, He's not here now. She just screams. He's not here now in Melanie's face. And that is the jump scare for the scene.

And then Melanie starts to laugh and she's like, oh, thank God. John, meanwhile, is stuck at work because he is being stalked by a menacing singular fly in the elevator at the office. And suddenly, he is thrust upwards so fast in this elevator that he's pinned to the bottom of the floor of the elevator. And then he is thrust downwards so hard that he's pinned to the top of the elevator. Again, a very looney-tunes kind of situation. Very looney-tune situation. And I don't understand how he didn't die because he, like, allegedly goes down, you know, 15 floors so fast that he is pinned by physics to the top of the elevator. And he just, you know, is kind of limping a little bit when he gets out.

His boss is like, oh, man, sorry about that. Like, we just, that's a new elevator. And he's like, yeah, don't worry about it. So we're once again entering a kind of first movie-esque haunting style in which, the house does most of its haunting outside of the walls of the house, actually. So this is kind of the first instance. My notes for this moment are the horror is back up to, oh, by the way, I've started calling the actual entity that is doing the haunting.

I've started calling it the horror in the same way that like Wendy Williams refers to the killer. The killer. I like that because it is the Emmanyville horror. We're not sure, is it demonic? Is it a Native American? American burial ground spirit. Is it something?

The Ghost of the Defeos? Is it like, what is it? We are not given answers in this film. And I doubt we will be given solid answers in the rest of the 89 movies that we have yet to watch. But what I wrote is the horror is back up to its old tricks, fucking with elevators and whatnot, which seems like, it seems, you know, it is, it's back up to Amityville One style behavior. Yep. And so he, you know, is dealing with kind of the aftermath of this. What is probably an OSHA violation, honestly, but that's, you know, neither here nor there.

And the housekeeper leaves while Melanie is still waiting for him. And Melanie is like really not happy to be at this house by herself. She's like, are you sure you have to leave? And the housekeeper's like, yeah, I'm out of here, girl. Like, by the way, the fuse box has been fucking up all day. Like the power might go out. You know where the fuse box is, though? It's in the basement.

And she's like, yeah, it's fine. And of course, like, the moment that the housekeeper leaves, the house gets so cold that Melanie is, like, physically trembling and shaking as though she's, like, having a seizure. Like, she is so cold. And I'm like, girl, at this point, like, go wait in the car. I don't know. Like, it seems like it's really, you don't like being in there. Like, you could just be sitting in the car with the heat on waiting for him to get home if you're really that uncomfortable being in this house. But she tries to go down to the basement to mess with the fuse box, get spooked.

and then and then gets completely blasted by a large gust of freezing air and at first I thought she was like literally being murdered

by like being frozen to death in this scene but she's not dead because John comes in right after this happens and she flips out being like

don't catch me let me alone she runs out of the house with no explanation whatsoever to John John from his perspective is like okay bitch

like what the hell he sees nothing wrong. The lights are all on. Like, everything is fine. So this happened. She runs out of the house. Now, um, we flashed to a scene where John's ex-wife is for some reason at the paranormal investigator's office. And she's basically telling him that I don't want my daughter, like, I don't know why the hell my psychotic ex-husband decided to buy this house. Psychotic, again, not the right word. I would say pretentious ex-husband decided to buy this house. I really am uncomfortable with my daughter spending any time there. And I just, I don't, I don't know what to do. Like, and he's basically like,

you know, like, maybe we can do some investigating there. Like, but it doesn't really, there's not really an answer. She just, you can, you can see that she's concerned about the idea of her daughter is spending time at this murder house. And meanwhile, her daughter is spending time at the murder house. So this is the scene in which I was getting some, some mask lesbian vibes from Meg Ryan herself because I'm being so like Meg Ryan and Lori Loughlin come into the house while John isn't home because Meg Ryan's character is like kind of a ghosty horror enthusiast and she really wants to see like all the places where like these gory murders took place. She's dressed again in a very kind of like soft mask.

I don't mean like full mask. Like I mean like soft mask. Like there's a there's a difference here that like your queer listeners will understand. Like I'm not going to explain it to you because that's, It's actually not my job to educate you. Yeah, you don't need that emotional labor. I understand. She's getting soft mats.

And she's also kind of like heavy flirting, in my opinion. She's kind of like, Lori, babe, like, come on. Like, ooh, getting in her face. Like, and I'm being, like, it kind of seems like she's like, come on, babe. Like, let's go get fucked up in here and just like make out in this haunted house. Like, and I'm being so serious that like this is exactly the kind of shit that I was up to in high school. Like breaking and entering, having seances, getting drunk and haunted houses.

And then using that as an excuse to make out with my hot girlfriends. Like that was certainly everything I was up to, like in a nutshell. Do you know you could have sex with a ghost? Really? Yeah, really. I've been reading up on it. It seems that it's happened to a lot of women and they all say that it's fantastic. What do you think?

I think you're weird. Maybe that's why your father bought this house. He's got some sex-starved ghost up there when boom-suffed it. Well, somehow that doesn't sound like my father. I read all of his articles, you know. I know the whole story. I know exactly where all the murders happen. And Lori's like, oh my God, Meg, like, come on.

But I'm just like, I feel, you know, I think that there's something here. She also says maybe that's why your dad bought this house. Like, maybe there's a sex starved ghost up there with boobs up to here and, like, does a little, like, boob motion. Kind of, again, a callback to the conversation that the brother and sister have in the attic about boobs with the arm movements that are being. I think you're giving this series way too much credit to imagine that they're actually callbacks. Sure. But that's, you know, I'm watching it through a critical lens. I'm watching it through, you know, and I'm just, I'm going to call it where I see it. So again, Lori's hair is fucking incredible. Um, and,

And they go downstairs to the well. And Meg Ryan says, you know, this is, there was an Indian burial ground here. This was, I don't remember exactly what she says about the well, but there's something happening. This is, I don't remember. What I do remember is that Meg Ryan's sole role in this movie aside from being kind of like a horny, miscreant teen is exposition. She gives like a monologue about the history of the Defeo family, about the potential for haunting. She knows so much about this house. Yeah.

I can see why she, like, clearly she's a fan of, you know, the Amityville horror. Like, clearly she's really into this lore. And I can see why she would be excited. Like, me as a teenager, if one of my friends' parents bought a known haunted house that was like that had several books in a movie made out of it. yeah, I would absolutely be the Meg Ryan character in this, just like walking around, showing where all the murders took place, et cetera. So John comes home. He finds him in the basement.

They're like, you know, Meg hits on him a little bit again. So, you know, maybe she's, maybe she's bisexual. We'll give her that. She's into this family, whatever, whatever it is. So John comes home. Then he's writing his little great American novel. And then we get a very interesting scene with Melanie. We get the final scene, in fact, with Melanie, which is that...

Wait, before that happens, doesn't the steam happen in the bathroom? Isn't there that, like, weird scene where suddenly he hears a bunch of hissing and he goes into the bathroom and there's like steam pouring out of the bathroom sink? And he like... Yes. I don't know if you notice this, but it seems like that was going to be a larger scene. Because he goes in there, he's like sweating his face off. He's got like a washcloth and he's trying to tighten the gasket on the sink so that steam stop. pouring out of it. And while he's doing that, it cuts to a shot of him, and you can see the wall

behind him moving toward him as though the room is getting smaller. Did you notice that? I did not notice that. Maybe that was a like 3D kind of thing where we're supposed to feel very claustrophobic, like trapped in this like bathroom with him. It felt like it was supposed to be scarier. And then all of a sudden the steam stops, the scene is over. The scene is over. And yeah, I didn't notice that. But we cut to after that strange, steam scene. We cut to Melanie driving. Okay. Melanie is not driving to or from the house. So I don't really understand like, you know, the mechanics of this, but we now have the horror with the, back with the ability to cause car accidents again. So the spirit in the house basically almost

final destinations her with a pole. Like she gets into a car crash with a truck that's carrying a bunch of poles and one goes straight through the windshield and almost like goes through her head. And I was like, holy shit. That is like the most 3D action you get in the whole fucking movie. It is such a good, it's like such a good deep focus shot of this like crazy pipes smashing through a window. Also, she, the reason she crashes into this thing is because she's again distracted by a fly. Of course.

Right. I actually missed that and wasn't aware. So thank you. I guess the flies are the, the horrors mechanism for, you know, creating chaos and mayhem outside of the house and inside of the house, I guess. But then once she crashes, you would think that the crash would be like bad enough. But once she crashes, a fire starts out of nowhere on the photographs that she is carried, that are in her passenger seat.

And you're like, oh. Yeah. She survives the crash in a way that I was kind of disappointed by. I was like, oh, I kind of thought she was going to get impaled by it. And I was like, okay, here we go. Like it's picking up. We're going to get some horrid. Nope, doesn't get impaled by it.

instead just burns to death inside of her car in a very upsetting way. That to me was also really scary. They like, the thing catches on fire, the photos catch on fire, and then she catches on fire. And she's just, it's just a probably 15 seconds of her screaming and hitting her arms and banging on the window. And then the last shot we get before she dies is her hand pressed against the window and just, covered in flames. Yeah. And she's locked inside.

The horror is very good at locking doors in this movie. That's like one of its main attributes. It's very, very adept at making sure that people cannot get out of the confined spaces that the horror traps them in. And this, her burning car is come upon by a random man on the highway who like goes over and looks inside and sees her. Oh, wait. It's very important to note at this moment that when he finds the car, the car is like, completely hazy inside with smoke, but there's no burn damage on the outside. And then he opens it up and finds a completely burned and pretty gruesome corpse that very 3D-ishly leans toward the camera

and like its hands go toward the front toward the camera. And then the whole thing goes up in flames again. I found that whole scene really unsettling. Like I did not like it. It upset me. Yeah. I was not happy about that either because. like justice for Melanie, like she really got a raw deal in this whole thing. Like, she was the only one from the jump that was like, I don't feel great about this. And then, you know, she was right. And there's no vindication whatsoever. She just get burnt up. And also, I don't really understand why because she wasn't, I guess she was kind of trying to stop him from living in the house. But like I, she didn't, she wasn't going over there with like holy water. She wasn't like actively fighting against the presence in the house. I don't really get the, I guess this version of the. This version of the. the horror has an interesting agenda on who it kills and who it possesses. And not only that, like, not only does she get a raw deal in that she just wanted to warn people and then she gets God, it immediately cuts to a scene of John arguing with Nancy, his ex, and he doesn't seem that upset that Melanie is dead.

No, not at all. And Nancy's basically like, dude, you've got to sell this fucking house. like now two people who are connected to it. Like the dude died in the house the day you moved in. There was a bunch of murders before. And now like your partner is dead. And he's like, well, she didn't die anywhere near the house. She wasn't driving to it and she wasn't driving from it.

Like this is a coincidence. Like I'm sick of this. Like keep in mind, like they seem to have very good working relationship. He was concerned, you know, when she ran out of the house to the point where he like came up to her the next day at work and was like, hey man, like we're partners. We've got to talk about this. Like what happened? And but he doesn't seem to care that.

that Melanie has met her demise, simulate the hands of a random car accident. Also, I found his relationship with his ex-wife, or soon-to-be-ex-wife, very confusing. They seemed to be still very much in kind of a romantic relationship. Yes. Well, we'll get there, but I have some things to say about that in the end. So then we get to the part where the teenagers, Meg Ryan, Lori Lothlin and two nondescript white boys decide to kind of sneak into the house and literally play Ouija. Like this could truly be a documentary about my high school experience. It is so very

funny. So they do it. Like it gets to be kind of creepy. I don't actually really remember what, like nothing that big happens when they're playing Ouija itself. Like there's a couple like spooky things that go on. But there's not like a ton of stuff that like no one dies while they're playing Ouija. They go outside and they decide to get into the boat that is like tied up on the dock outside of the Amityville House because if you will remember, this is a lake house. But first they do the seance and they put a bunch of pieces of paper on the ground with letters until and they ask it, who's in danger? Well, first they ask who's going to who which of us is going to die. And Susan, John's daughter is like, come on, guys, don't do that. And they're like,

Oh, she's scared. And then Meg Ryan is like, no, seriously, who's in danger? And the cup goes toward the letter S for Susan before the glass flies toward the wall and smashes with the most broken glass ass ADR sound effect I have ever heard. It sounds like it's from another planet, not just another movie. It is very funny that, like, once again, like they are playing Ouija in a haunted house, asking who's going to be the first to die. Like, I just, like, I could have written this movie from memory.

And I mean, if this movie is any indication, I think we should set our clocks for the day that I turn 69, because it does seem that Lori was in fact in danger because, yes, they go outside. Lori is very shaken up after this whole incident. She's kind of sitting out there. And then they're playing. By the way, for anyone who's confused, when she says Lori, she means Lori Loughlin, whose character's name is Susan. Yeah, I'm sorry, Susan. Her name is Susan. Lori Loughlin slash Susan goes outside, is upset sitting on the lawn.

There's that very funny frisbee throw that you mentioned earlier where one of her guy friends throws a frisbee at her and it's a 3D effect. Really comes right at you. It must have been a really terrifying experience to have in the theaters. Just horrifying. Imagine a frisbee coming at you. I can't even. It sounds terrifying. So they're hanging out, they're hanging out, and then they decide to get on a boat and go for a ride on the lake.

And at the same moment, why is Nancy in the house? Nancy can't find Susan. Nancy goes home, she can't find Susan. And she's like, I bet I know where the fuck she is. She's probably back at that fucking house because she's told her she's expressly forbidden her to go back into the house. But again, like, I don't think that that really works like, you know, with their legal custody arrangement probably. and also like Susan is like 17 years old. Like she can kind of, she's kind of a self-starter at this point.

I don't think you can really tell her where to go or what house is to not enter. So she heads into the house to find Susan and admonish her for being at the house. And she walks into the house as the kids are out in the boat. And she sees and Susan walks in the door and she's completely wet. She's like head to toe dripping wet. And Nancy's like, what the hell? What's going on? Susan, and Susan, like, doesn't say anything and just walks up to her room and shuts the door.

And at the same time that this happens, we see John pull up with a bunch of groceries, and he looks down to the lake, and Susan's three friends are getting out of the boat carrying her body. It seems that Susan probably, we don't see what happened, but, I mean, I would assume, given the mechanism, there's probably a fly-related boat accident. All we get is one of the boys says, she fell off the boat. that's like all we learn about what happened to her. So yes, it's safe to assume a fly was involved. Yes.

But he goes running down there and then Nancy comes out and says, hey, what the heck's going on, everybody? And John has to explain to her. Because remember, she has just seen her daughter, apparently the ghost of her daughter, walk upstairs into her room and shut the door. And she was like pounding on the door trying to yell at her because she was mad that she was at the house at all. and also mad that she was wet and wasn't explaining herself. So she, her reaction in this moment seems crazy to everybody else. And I actually really like the way they kind of play this throughout the rest of the movie where like she, like, if you're looking at it from an outside perspective or from John's perspective, like she seems fucking absolutely nuts. Because her reaction is like, that's not Susan.

I literally, I just saw Susan. She's inside. Like that's not, that can't be her. That doesn't make any sense. She's inside her room. She just came in. She was all wet. But like to somebody that's like looking that.

that didn't just see the ghost of his daughter inside the house. He just thinks that this is like a hysterical reaction to grief and that Nancy is just freaking out. And Nancy obviously does freak out when she kind of realizes like, oh, that is Susan's body, but she still won't believe it. She's like, that's not her. That's not her. She's here.

She's in the house. Like, we have to go see it. She runs back into the house and tries to show him. And, you know, there's no one there. I found this scene to be profoundly disturbing too for two reasons. One, the idea of like being told that my child was dead right after I saw them is really unpleasant. And the idea of having died and like realizing that you're stuck in the shitty house seems very scary to me. And I feel like that's what Susan was dealing with in that moment when she's sort of wandering dazed away from the accident that killed her.

She's going into this house being like, oh, I'm stuck here now. Yeah. Like RIP to a baddie. RIP to the best had of hair that we have ever seen. You know, she didn't deserve that. This feels personal. She didn't deserve that. So they, you know, grief ensues.

I think it's Nancy locks herself in the attic and it's kind of like rocking back and forth in horror. John gets drunk and then passes out on the couch and then has a dream where he goes into the basement and the well is shimmering like a hot tub. They've replaced the muck. Yes. The like slime, the black slime that was in the first two movies with a very attractive looking hot tub. That's also a well. Yeah.

It's very a nice little mystical hot tub. And at first I thought when I wasn't sure that this was a dream, I thought that because in the dream, he goes down to the basement and Nancy's sitting there looking at the hot tub well. And inside the hot tub well underneath the water is Lori. Susan. Sorry. Is Susan.

And so I thought that this. was real and that they were kind of like a pet cemeterying their daughter's body here and like in the magic well. But then he wakes up. Not before Susan leaps out of the water and is like horribly disfigured like Jason in the first Friday of the 13th. Yes. In a way that she was not when she was pulled out of the water because I guess she drowned pretty quickly. Also, we'll say, none of them were doing any rescue breathing or CPR prior to the ambulance getting there. Like was that not The general population, like, not no. I mean, maybe this just pissed me off as a former lifeguard,

but I'm like, you would just, you should immediately do rescue breathing. I don't think that, like, she probably would have died. Like, I think you probably could have cleared the airway, you know, gotten the water out of her lungs, and she probably would have been okay. Oh, God, the safety club showed up. All right. Well, you know, you better hope that I'm around if your daughter ever goes on a boat ride with her friends after breaking into it.

Don't even speak that into being. What is wrong with you? anyway Amityvilleville will return after these messages so Nancy's losing her mind she is refusing to leave Susan's room

she's just hanging out in there all the time and then the movie I would say from the moment he falls asleep and has the dream about his daughter this movie becomes poltergeist in the same way that the second one for the last hour becomes the exorcist so

John goes to his friend Elliot who is there in the opening scene and says, I simply don't know what to do anymore. And Elliot says, well, let me and my team come in. And they come in and immediately set up a poltergeist like operation with a bunch of cameras and television sets. And I mean, it's so many people in this house. Like there are probably like 50 to 100 paranormal investigators set up around this house. It's like seven. Come on. No, no, no, no. Go back and watch it. There are. so many people in this fucking house. And especially, yeah, there's way more people that need in this house that,

than I would suggest bringing to a paranormal investigation. I feel like that's going to drive the ghost away. But in this case, it certainly does not deter them in any way. Anyway, Nancy's up in the attic and they're like filmed. They put cameras everywhere. They're filming. They're watching the film. They're watching what's going on downstairs.

And they're watching Nancy in the attic. And the orb shit from the beginning, the fake orb shit from the beginning, comes back. Except this time, it's real, baby. This time, that orb ain't fucking around. That orb is calling to Nancy. And the paranormal investigator is like, dude, it got your daughter. And now it's bringing Nancy down to the basement. It wants her to go in the well.

And he's like, John's like, absolutely not like, we can't let that happen. And so instead of stopping. But then he says, he says, wait a minute, we can, I think we can release her, meaning we can release your daughter from the hold this cursed house has on her. Right, right, right. But we just have to let Nancy follow the specter, this sort of floating blob of purple down into the basement. Yes. Huge miscalculation on the paranormal researchers end here. It does not end well for him. So they do this and all hell breaks loose, quite literally. She goes down to the basement and instead of Lori Loughlin's lifeless body in the well,

there's like a fire-breathing alien. Fire-breathing alien water monster who immediately grabs the paranormal researcher and pulls him under the water, lights him on fire. Well, first, burns his face. Yes. Sets him on, like breathes fire on his face. He screams. and then as he's being pulled into the well,

he's like, you can still save yourself. And he gets pulled into the well, and then all of a sudden, the well freezes in like a pillar, kind of a thing that is reminiscent of like a pillar of salt. Like it freezes in like a big like geyser upwards. And the whole house freezes. And then the house just kind of explodes and is frozen at the same time. And everybody in the house,

like all 400 fucking paranormal investigators, are being killed left and right, thrown out windows. Everything's breaking. Nancy and John, like, cling to each other. And they, a king, as they're trying to desperately leave this incredible 3D scene of a kingfisher that's on the wall, comes loose of the wall, it almost impales John in the head. But it, you know, doesn't. I could very, very, very obviously see the line that the swordfish, the kingfisher went sliding on

in order to go toward the screen. It was pretty good. And then, yeah, they're basically, the movie ends with Nancy and John huddling, holding each other outside, watching as a house explodes. And this is where I will say, like, this is the first movie again, no religion, also no domestic violence. And I actually think it's kind of a cute parent trap love story, like how my parents fell back in love after my divorced dad. Do you think that Susan died? so that her parent, she's like, I got a great plan. No, precisely.

I'm going to die to get my parents back together. You're probably wondering how I ended up here. Here's how my parents fell back in love after my divorced dad moved into a haunted house that killed me and then exploded. And that's the end of the movie. We've got the episode description. We've got the episode description. That is the end of the movie. And now I get to tell you about my favorite part of this movie, which is the great behind-the-scenes stuff.

I'm so excited. So, first of all, the movie was directed by Richard Fleischer, who I've never heard of, but his dad was Max Fleischer, who did all of the Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons in like the 20s and 30s. Maybe that explains the Bugs Bunny music. Maybe. But Richard Fleischer had been directing movies since like the 40s when this came out. Like, he'd been directing movies for ages. This was one of his last movies. He did this, Conan the Destroyer, Red Sonia, and like one more movie, and then he was done.

Damn. But like super weird old Hollywood dude. He'd been making movies forever. The interesting part of this is, okay, so they're like trying to come up with a movie. What do we come up with a movie about? And it turns out that they decided to base this on a guy named Stephen Kaplan. Now, primary information about this dude is super, super hard to come by on the internet. But what I can tell you about him is that he was a guy.

guy who lived in Long Island and then moved to Queens later in his life. He worked for the New York City Department of Education, but founded both the Parapsychology Institute of America and the Vampire Research Center in Long Island. Vampire Research Center. I know. And in the 70s, he, after the Defeo family was murdered and after the Lutzes moved in and moved out, he contacted the Lutz's and was like, hey, I would like to investigate the house. I'd like to go into the house and look around and see if we can find anything supernatural. According to Stephen Kaplan, the Lutz has said to him, I don't know, does it cost anything? And he said, no, it doesn't cost anything.

But if you're a fraud, I will expose you. And they never got back to him. According to the Lutz's, he got in touch with them and they were like, this guy's a vampirologist. We don't want anything to do with this weirdo. You know, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, I would say. But at the time that this movie was being made, Stephen Kaplan had embarked on a many decades long, like two-decade long, investigation into the Amityville House in an effort to prove that it was a hoax. Okay, it wouldn't be two decades long because it would be like a full decade long because the Amityville murders happened in 1974. And then this movie came out in 1983.

But he was still doing his investigation during this time. He actually released a book called the Amityville Horror Conspiracy in the early 90s and died like two years later. But I looked everywhere for like a PDF of this book. I looked at libraries to see if I could get it. I looked all over the place. I could not find it anywhere. Damn. It's on Amazon for $500 something dollars right now, a used copy.

But anybody wants to send us a little thank you gift for this? this incredible podcast, please feel free to purchase stuff for Alex. But according to like good reads, the people who've read it are like, he really tears the luts as a new one. Like it is a full takedown, which is weird to me because part of the reason that I only finished watching this movie about 15 minutes before we started recording is because last night I was reading about Stephen Kaplan and I found a PDF of a book he wrote about vampires. Okay. So first of all, the guy is a cut up. In his in his vamprologist book, it's called Vampires R, like Vampires A-R-E, like Vampires R. Yeah, figure it.

And the introduction is full of vampire puns. It's him being like, listen, I was bitten by an interest in strange phenomena at a very early age. No. I tried to put it away, but my interest in them kept rising from the grave. And I started coming up with theories. And there were plenty of theories I wanted to sink my teeth into. Like, it's so funny. And I got like 75 pages or 100 pages into the book.

So does he believe in vampires then? Like that's the thing that was so crazy to me is that in the book, he is like, I fully believe, though I have never met, I fully believe that there are like Bella Lagosi can turn into a bat style vampires. But for some reason, he was like, the lutses are frauds. Like he seems primed to believe the story the Lutz is told. You know what that tells me that vampires are. real. Like, he's probably just right about everything. So one of the very funny things about the book is that, like, many, many, many dozens of pages are just transcripts. And I think they are remembered transcripts, not recorded transcripts, of phone calls he got at the vampire research

center, which according to the book is like, is the way the book presents is it's like Ghostbusters headquarters and there's constantly vampire stuff popping off there. But I assume that it's just like his house, right? And then... Great. Yeah. The other thing that is important to note about as much as I read of the book is that he meets two vampires in person in the hundreds or so pages I read. And both of them are like sadomasochists and like generally only drink blood while they're having sex. And also, in addition to that, both desperately want to fuck him.

Every time he's like, they're like, are you sure you don't want to stick around and see what happens? You drink a little bit of your blood? Yeah. I mean, he really should have. He could have become the thing he was so excited about. Like, he could have become a vampire through that, you know? Like, that seems like a missed opportunity. He writes with this, like, Arch, like, I was interested.

But who am I kidding? I don't want to be eaten alive. It was, it's so good. We'll put a link to the PDF in the show notes. It is almost impossible to read because it is the worst quality scans of a hard copy of a book. But it's so worth it. It's so weird. And like many pages that I read were just him taking hoax calls from people on his vampire hotline.

I loved it. Like it kind of seems to me that you wouldn't need to have two disparate organizations. Like you would think that the vampire one would fall underneath like just the general paranormal one. But like he really was like focused on the scourge of vampires, vampires in America. That's incredible. I will absolutely be checking that out. If anybody who listens to this knows anything about Stephen Kaplan,

I would love to know more about him. He wrote three books. He wrote, in pursuit of premature gods and contemporary vampires. He wrote Vampires Are, and then he wrote the Amityville Horror Conspiracy, which came out in 1995, the year he died.

I would love to know more about this guy. I mean, allegedly died. Do we know for sure, has anyone seen his corpse lately? I know. He's probably out there just still punning it up. with his vampire buddies.

The only other thing to note about this movie, which was very surprising to me when I read it, is that, first of all, the house had to be filmed from the back rather than the front because the Amityville House at this point had become such a popular destination for people to go by

that they changed the front windows to no longer be the sort of half-moon, quarter-moon shape that they are in the front. So they had to film it from the back. You know, I actually noticed that they were filmed, from different angles.

I was kind of a pre- I was like, oh, I like that we're getting like a new angle of this house. Like, I think I've seen

the front enough at this point. And I actually was not aware that this house that they're filming at is the actual Amityville house? It's the same house, though, that they filmed

at the first and second at. This is the same house they filmed the first and second at, but the owners were like, fuck this. We don't want people coming to our house anymore. We're going to change the windows.

And the only other thing to note is that all the exteriors were filmed at the Amityville House and Tom's River, all the interiors were filmed in Mexico. Really? Why? Because this was a co-production between a Mexican production company and an American production company. So they just, to make it cheap, they did everything inside in Mexico.

Huh. Very interesting. Yeah. But I'm obsessed with Stephen Kaplan. I want to know so much more about this guy. I am going to go down a very deep rabbit hole about Stephen Kaplan. Was he like hot? Like why were these vampires trying to fuck him?

No. No, he wasn't. But it was him and his wife actually who, hold on. I'll show you a picture. Maybe his wife was a babe. I'm going to send you a picture of both of them and you can decide for yourself. Hold on just a moment. I'm going to do it in the Riverside chat.

Oh. Okay. For the listeners at home, I'm looking at. that a siblings are dating style couple. Like not, they look very eerily alike. They're both kind of like rosy-cheeked, big glasses. They look very 70s. I wonder if Roxanne's still alive because she helped him write the book.

Yeah, Roxanne's wearing like a very say-something headband, which I like. But yeah, not a couple that I, if I were a vampire, would try to get to. fuck me, but, you know, who's to say, I'm not going to yuck any vampire's yums out there. You know, maybe there's someone out there for everyone. There's a vampire out there. No matter what you look like, let this be a lesson to you, that there is a vampire out there that is willing to fuck you and drink your blood in the process. So I just, I hope that's encouraging.

Okay, so we want to talk about the lore differences between this one and the last one. Yes. And the first one also. So the horror is much more outdoors these days. It's doing stuff all over the place. It's a very fly-based overall. More fly-based than in-prey. I mean, I would say, you know, flies have been a recurring theme overall, but like the

flies really are pulling. The flies are actually killing people in this one. Yeah. They're pulling their weight there for the horror. So the flies are good henchmen here. Like I said, the horror can lock doors and windows very well. And that, that I guess, has been a running theme throughout all the movies. A new thing in this movie is this blasting people with cold air kind of thing.

Like fire and water and ice are big themes in this. Like there's a lot of mixing of those things. You know, like there, it also has a well and fire breathing alien water monster who can take people and rip apart the entire house and then freeze the whole house. So that's new. We haven't seen that before. Curious as to, you know, the origins of that guy. I'm sad that we didn't get more into his backstory.

But maybe maybe the fourth movie. will be a full prequel on how how that guy got in there. Here's hoping. It can also, you know, change the face of its next victim in a photograph, which is interesting. That's a new one that we haven't seen yet before. Yeah, this one seemed way more powerful than the others. It's causing a lot more deaths in like much more insane ways. And then at the end, it blows up the entire fucking house.

It blows up the whole house and kills probably like 20 people at least. Like, there's a lot of death in that final, in those final five minutes. And it's interesting, again, this is not a religious movie at all. So this is, there's no, there's no sense that it's demonic. There's no sense that, you know, the people that are being, unlike the first movie, where in the people that were able to be impacted outside of the house were either possessed by the spirit in, by the horror, or were so pure and pious and religious that, like, Like, they couldn't even be inside the house without barfing all over the place, like the aunt aunt.

The aunt, my God, the nun aunt that threw up immediately after she left the house. So it's interesting to me. Like, I'm curious about, you know, the motives here. He seems to, the horror seems to have moved past its grudge against the Catholic Church and has really widened its net in terms of the types of people. that it wants to punish. Because I don't really, again, no one was really trying to stop it at all. Like there was at no point anyone being like, you leave this house, nothing.

Like even, even Melanie, who was kind of like, hey man, I think you should move. She wasn't actively doing anything, I guess, other than like, I guess working with the paranormal investigator to look at the pictures. But like, what would proving that those pictures are paranormal do, like John wouldn't believe her? So I don't, yeah, I'm curious about what the, the motives are here moving forward. Yeah, I don't know. And I'm curious of like where, what happens next?

The house blew up. Yeah. How are you going to make another Hemadneville movie? Well, I'm sure they'll rebuild it, you know. I will say that this is the last movie that got a theatrical release until the remake in 2005. So we're getting into some rough stuff going forward. I'm terrified. But on that note, how would you rate this?

on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of your fear, the fear that you felt while watching it. I would say that the fear here is more ambient than actual scares. The fear is more like, I'm scared of dying and I'm scared of my loved ones dying. I would say like a two. Yeah. I was also at a two and it was just for like the existential dread of existence. That's literally the note that I wrote. Like it's just...

I'm always at a two on that. You're always at like a 17.5 out of 10. on that. I wish I was dead. I'm also very scared of dying. Those two things really, you know, which is funny because,

like, I think we work as friends because I don't wish I was dead and I'm not scared of dying. So like, I know, you really aren't. You're just like,

well, I'm dying at 69. The Ouija board told me when I was 16. You talk about it all the fucking time. Well, you know, I'm like, I'm at the half point of my life

at this point. Like, I've got a lot to squeeze in. You know, I've got a lot, you got to live life while you still have it. So that,

at this point, I'm, I've accepted it. I'm ready for it whenever it, whenever it may come. And I think I know. I think I know exactly what it's going to go or at least a 12 month period in which it will be coming. But yeah, I would give it a two on the scary rating. And then on just like the overall rating, I would give this one a 6.5. I thought it was. Oh my God. I was going to say 6.5. Wow. Look at that. Get out of here. Just, you know, great minds. We think alike and we podcast about Amityvilleville. We are three episodes in and you sound exhausted. I think I sounded exhausted, to be fair, from the very first episode.

There's a lot happening in the world in my life. You know, I'm just generally, I'm not exhausted with you. I'm not exhausted with the Amityville movies. I'm just, I'm exhausted from the, I guess, the existential dread of living in the United States of America at this very moment. But, you know, what are you going to do about that? Yeah, totally. Well, I would like to end this podcast by saying two things.

One, next week's movie is Amityville 4, The Evil Escapees, Made for Television. Okay. What network do we know? NBC. And what year did that come out? 1989. So there was a six-year break. Okay.

So it's been a couple years. So we get a fun little made-for-television. I'm excited. this is going to be great. I'm sure it's not going to be as good as this one. Because so far, if I were to rank these movies on how much I enjoyed them, I would say number one would be 3D. Number two would surprisingly be the possession, even though I absolutely hated watching every second of it. But a number three, a number three would still be the original movie.

It's just, I don't know. The possession had more fun, like stuff going on in it than the original movie, I felt. But this one, this one's top in my list so far. excited to add more to the bottom, probably. I'm excited to see how the continuity works with a series that already has no continuity between the first three, especially since the house blew up. I'm excited to see what comes next. Well, you know, it's been four years.

It's a great piece of lakefront property. Like, I could see some enterprising developer getting out there and rebuilding the house and then kind of selling it as being like, it's not haunted anymore because we completely tore it down. It blew up, remember? And now it's a totally new house. So now they don't even, now they can probably film it at the same place,

even though the front is different because they would have a real reason for the architectural changes. The other thing that I wanted to say is that I found Roxanne Kaplan on Facebook and I am sending her a message as we speak. Who's Roxanne Kaplan? Stephen Kaplan's wife.

Oh, sorry, sorry. Who co-wrote the Amityville horror conspiracy with him. Hell yeah. I'm sorry. Roxanne. if you listen to this, and you guys are actually a really hot couple. And if I were a vampire, I would absolutely ask you to join me in my lovemaking. I take it back.

Jesus Christ. Now she's definitely not going to talk to us, you fucking freak. She talked to the vampires. She wrote a whole book about him. So I don't know. He wrote a whole book about that. She probably, I wonder if he came home and was like, yeah, I decided not to have sex with him. And she's like, we're married, dude.

What do you mean you decided not to? Anyway, that's the end of this episode. I'm excited to watch the next one. I wonder where we even find it. All right, I'll figure that out. Yeah, we're going to have to do some digging. Yeah. But, yeah, thank you for listening.

You're welcome because this is quite the undertaking that we're doing for you. So I hope you appreciate the weekly torment that you're putting me through. All right. We'll see you next week. Goodbye. Amityvilleville is hosted by Caroline Thompson and me, Alex Goldman. It's produced by Tori Dominguez Peak and engineered by Noah Smith. If you like the show and you think I'm cool and funny,

check out my other show Hyperfixed for more documentary reporting type stuff. Amityvillevilleville is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at Radiotopia.fm. Thanks for listening. See you next week.