You're Wrong About - Winter Book Club: The Amityville Horror Part 3 with Jamie Loftus

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

In this final installment of the Amityville Horror Winter Book Club, Sarah tells guest host Jamie Loftus about Jodie the Demon Pig's scary hooves, the catharsis of exorcism, and how the book kinda debunks itself. Here's where to find Jamie:The Bechdel Cast [podcast] My Year in Mensa [podcast] and Aack Cast [podcast] Support us:Bonus Episodes on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us:Sarah's other show, You Are Good [YWA co-founder] Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseLinks:https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-the-bechdel-cast-30089535/https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-my-year-in-mensa-55379945/https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-aack-cast-by-jamie-loftus-83922273/http://patreon.com/yourewrongabouthttps://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-abouthttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpodhttps://www.podpage.com/you-are-goodhttp://maintenancephase.comSupport the show (http://patreon.com/yourewrongabout)Support the show

Sound off in the comments gang, are you more afraid of the IRS coming to your door or Jody the Demon Pig? Welcome to Uriah about where Jamie Loftus, I'm gonna ask you to do a tagline, you've been here a couple times now. Ooh, let's see. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the show where sometimes ghosts is just incompetence and light domestic abuse. That's the reveal. Kind of a bummer one. It's the story behind the bestseller. We have nonfiction books of an era trying to ask, is the supernatural real? And as far as we can tell, the answer is no, but believing in it is preferable to realizing how treacherous the people in your family are. Ooh, brutal.

We did a bonus episode about the Amityville horror movies that we put on Patreon, and there's gonna be a little sneak preview of that at the end of this episode. I can never tell if anything is funny because once you say a joke, you can't hear it again, but it was fun to do it. It was so fun. We fell on different sides of the Brolin versus Reynolds, George Lutz depiction dichotomy, so I think that it's a rich text too. It's a good debate. We're gonna dive into the last act of the story and then talk a little bit about what reality surrounds it, but where else can people find your work, Jamie, once they need to get more of it? I do a combination of podcasts and comedy, but you can find my podcast work. I've done a bunch of investigative series. One is called My Year in Mensa. One is about the Cappy Comics called Accast. One is about the cultural history of Lolita called Lolita podcast. I'm currently working on a big project about hot dogs, so if you live in the LA area and you want to see a big, long, goofy show about hot dog murder, you can come see my show Mrs. Joseph Chestnut America USA at the Elysian Theater in LA. I'm really sad that I can't go see this, so if you're able to, then you have to. It will make me happy.

Do it for Sarah. Yeah, and I think something about this book that I continue to find interesting is that it really became modern day folkloric, changed America, it affected the kind of scary stories that we told, and it's not very good writing. And there's, I think, something about the not goodness of the writing that's working for it rather than against it. It starts to feel like a journal. Yeah, it just feels authentic. I think we're drawn to that. Well, and where did we leave off? It's been a minute. Yeah, I think we left off somewhere around where the slime is coming down the walls. Things are really starting to get wild in the haunted house sense, and George tasted the slime. Yeah, and we've ended with George having a fit of rage, basically yelling at the ghost and feeling like he needs to have some kind of throw down with the ghost who are trying to force him out, but he has too much money tied up.

In the house. Yes. Which was the problem from literally moment one. Yeah, but no one could have foreseen. Yeah. This contains one of my favorite haunted house story motifs, man yells at ghosts, and George says, you sons of bitches, get out of my house, get out, get out in the name of God. He sounds kind of like Jerry Seinfeld when I do him. He's running around and we close the last episode we did with Sergeant Jean Fridot cruising around and noticing what seems like a domestic disturbance with George charging around furiously upstairs and

Right. Going around and shutting all these open windows in the house on this freezing cold night. The cop is like, something is keeping me from going in and it's ghosts. A cop who I hope was fictional in the scope of this story, but sounds like cop behavior to me just witnessing a domestic abuse situation and being like, I don't know, probably ghosts and zoom zooming away. I mean, like something mysterious is holding me back from knocking on the door and it's, it's the supernatural. Our culture's willingness to blame things on ghosts just constantly. Yeah. It goes deeper than I could have imagined.

If ghosts aren't real, then we would have needed to invent them because we need someone to blame for these things. But apparently after making the scene, George calms down and he goes back to his favorite activity, working on the fire and staring at the blazing logs. Classic. Kathy left him alone, realizing her husband was trying to resolve their dilemma in his own way. Let him think. George starts to read the Bible. He sees a cold mist coming down the stairway. I get this big drama about all of the windows being open again and the children being freezing cold and they all have to pile into bed together to warm up their freezing cold children.

I don't know. There's so much drama in this book about being cold and it's like, you could move to Florida. It's interesting to me that they keep going out of their way to mention that the children are cold because that just makes me sad. Again, it's like my empathy for the parents only goes so far. But it's like, we gotta get these kids another blanket or something and get them out of the murder beds, you know? We gotta just get them like a nice race car bed. Wouldn't you like a race car bed? I'm one of the adults that has wondered, do they have queen size race car beds?

Do they? They do, but it's almost certainly more trouble than it's worth. So the next day, now we begin our classic horror sequence. But I say that and it's like how much of what I think of as classic horror was influenced by this very book probably a lot. But I think of it as the classic horror sequence of like living in a haunted house and being like, no, let's stay another night for some reason. I feel compelled to stay here with the ghost. I trust him. Oh, and before that happens, George realizes that for some reason this chapter doesn't end with an exclamation point.

I'm absolutely shocked by that. But he determines that because he was reading the Bible, that's why the children were blasted with ice cold air and he's been warned to not read the Bible. Oh, okay. Which is a great way to sell the Bible. I mean, I guess the Bible has been blamed for for worse. It makes the Bible like some kind of 3am challenge. Like 3am read the Bible challenge. So next chapter, Kathy's mother comes over because Kathy has mysterious ghost welts all over her body.

There's this weird thing going on where these are supposed to be ghost injuries, but they're like, we can't go to the doctor. George says, how are you going to explain it to him, Ma? We don't know how it happened. She just woke up that way. I still think we're nuts. And something about like an injured woman who can't go to a doctor because how would she explain it? Just like, I'm just saying that that's, you just have to notice that as a theme. The line that we're supposed to believe that ghosts are real in this world and the line of abuse bells ringing, they're one in the same.

And so at this point, Kathy's mom, who is no fool, starts saying that maybe it's a good time for them to leave the house. And like, maybe George can stay there, but her daughter and grandchildren need to leave. And George is like, oh, it's fine. Yeah, we'll go, we'll go soon. He says, let her sleep a little longer, Ma. We'll see about coming over later. He's like, let Kathy nap. Come on.

George actually is a real library lover and he's bought a book about demons. He's found a list of demons. He's trying to say the demon names. And this is like probably the most funny scene in the book to me. In the movies or the book, anytime that George tries to go on an intellectual quest, it's very funny. I'm excited. He's just not a thinker. George had made notes while going through the book and now he looked at what he had jotted down.

On the pad was a list of demons with names he had never heard of. George tried to pronounce them aloud and they rolled strangely off his tongue. Then he decided to call Father Mancuso, who's covered in flies and dying, but let's see what happens. And answers the phone with his pussy hand. The priest was surprised that the Lutz's were still at 112 Ocean Avenue. I thought you were going to leave the house, he said. I told you what the chancellor said to do. I know, Father, I know, answered George, but now I think I know how to lick this thing.

Oh, George. He picked up the book from the table. I've been reading about how these witches and demons work. Good Lord, Father Mancuso thought, I'm dealing with a child, an innocent. Here the man's house is about to explode under him and his family and he's talking to me about witches. And it says here, if you hold an incantation and repeat those demons' names three times, you can call them up, George went on. There's a ceremony in here that shows you exactly what to do.

Iscaron, Medeste, George began to chant. Those are the names of the demons, Father. I know who they are, Father Mancuso blurted. Then there's Isabo, he's, this one's hard to pronounce. He's delayed. She has something to do with voodoo. And Eslender, George the priest cried, for God's sake, don't invoke those names again. Not now, not ever.

Why, Father, George protested. It's right here in this book. What's wrong with the telephone when Dad and George's hand? There was an unearthly moan, a loud clicking, and then just the sound of a disconnected line. Did Father Mancuso hang up on me? George wondered. No, he got attacked by another swarm of insects. It is stunning that he's still alive at this point.

Whether ghosts and demons are real or not, he just has this pathological inability to read the room. He's wandering around a haunted bathroom, screaming Bloody Mary, and is like, is this bad? What? He's doing the incompetence around ghosts. Like, what, Father, is that a bad idea? Stressing me out. And so now we also get the beginning of whether that is apparently so bad that nobody can think about leaving the house. Like, it's raining really hard.

Cool. George comes home and Kathy says, my mother says it's raining cats and dogs there. She wants us to use our van rather than have Jimmy come for us. From the sound of that, George said none of us is going anywhere at the moment. Like, it's raining too hard to drive to a nearby town. Like, I don't know what driving was like in 1975, but I don't know, George. I mean, the things that George is willing to do versus the things he thinks are impractical, it's hard to track. Yeah, and then I am curious about how this went for readers at the time, because then we have a scene where,

once again, they have to go around closing the windows and Danny gets the fingers of his right hand trapped under the window is how the book puts it. Oh, yes. A scary scene in the movie. It's one of the few times something of consequence happens to one of the kids. In the book, the way it's described is that after the window frame is lifted off of his fingers, they're like all flat. Is if there's no bones, it's just like skin on skin. Yeah, he got a ghost injury. I love that image.

It's like a cartoon. Yeah, I was thinking of like a Buffalo Wild Wings menu. Your bone hands and your boneless hands. Yikes. What happened to Father Mancuso? Is he okay? He's sitting nervously in his own home, just like waiting to be blighted with another illness. He's just like afraid of the next like thing Jorg is going to accidentally unleash upon the world.

Every once in a while, I forget that he's not real. And then when I remember he's not real, I feel relieved because I'm like, his life would suck so bad. Otherwise, you'd be like this poor man with an autoimmune disease that no one could diagnose in the 70s. Right. Probably in the 70s, like ghosts were being blamed for some amount of chronic illness, while maybe mostly demons. Okay, so the following day after the rainstorm, we have a bunch of damage to the windows. It says if the family had any intention of leaving for safer quarters, that idea had to be shelved in order to get the house back in shape and secured. There's something about the like sunk cost fallacy of abusive relationships and families that feels like it's present in the idea of like, we're living in a haunted house.

The ghosts are terrorizing us, so we have to stay longer to fix the windows. Right. Mapping the sunk cost fallacy of an abusive relationship on the sunk cost fallacy of buying a house you can't afford that's falling apart. Worth mentioning. Yeah, there's a much more uncomfortable movie to be made from this source material. And then we arrive at Harry's Time to Shine, which is when George takes Harry through the house to see if Harry can detect any ghosts. Because he has gotten a phone call from Psychical Researcher George Chorus, who told him to try taking the dog through. And Kathy says, are you sure you won't make them mad again? You know what happened when we went around with the crucifix. She's like, now George, are you going to piss off those demons like you always do?

No, no, Kathy, this is different. I just want to see if Harry can smell or hear anything. Let this woman rest. Harry is apparently afraid to go by the red room. We looked at the picture. It is actually genuinely a very terrifying room. And it's an enclosed space. And I realize that it being a literal pathway to hell is the only reason a dog might want to go into it, but you know, whatever. And then George tries to take him upstairs. But Harry hung back on the first step of the staircase. Come on, George urged him. What's the matter with you? The dog put one paw in the next step but wouldn't move beyond that. I can get him upstairs. Danny shouted, he'll follow me.

The boy climbed past the dog and back into him. No, Danny, George said, you stay here. I'll handle Harry. George reached down and jerked the dog's collar. Harry moved reluctantly, then ran up the steps. And then Harry goes upstairs and is just like very stressed, especially in the scary sewing room. George says, God damn it, Harry, there isn't anyone in there. What's bugging you? It's interesting that George of the book gives so much intelligence to this dog. Whereas I know I keep like going back to the movies, but I still can't get over the fact that in the 2000s version of this story, Ryan Reynolds kills the Harry. He kills the dog. He murders him. He does.

Midway through the movie. Harry doesn't even make it to this part. Yeah, he does sound like he's kind of just coming undone. Talking to his dog like his dog's a person. I also love how he's like, let's take Harry around the house and see if he detects any supernatural beings. And then Harry appears to do that and he's like, God damn it, Harry, what are you afraid of? And it's like probably of the demon or the other demon or the ghost. You know, the reason you brought him up here for an unreasonable request and then he fulfilled the unreasonable request and now you're upset. George.

George figures out who Jodi is. Like he puts it together that the Jodi that little Missy has been talking about for 200 pages is the scary pig angel demon ghost. I mean, took him long enough, but that's exciting. Yeah. And again, like George should not grow up watching movies based on the movie about his life. His life. Right. So he doesn't know that if you have a little girl who has an imaginary friend, it's either a ghost or, I don't know, a tiny serial killer. Okay, fair enough. George looked down at Missy.

She was pointing to one of her windows. His eyes followed her finger and he stared, staring at them through one of the panes were two fiery red eyes. No face, just the mean little eyes of a pig. That's Jodi, cried Missy. He wants to come in. He tries to kill Jodi, but is not able to do so because he's a fallen angel, obviously. Yeah. As you very kindly unpacked in the previous episode, the different variations of hauntings happening.

And then we have the Lutses again and again deciding to stay for not really comprehensible reasons. The hierarchy of the church explicitly tells Father Mancuso to let someone else deal with the Lutses and their demons because his health is suffering and he needs to get back off. That is the most mentally healthy thing anyone has done in this entire book. Father Mancuso invented self-care in 1975. Wow. And then he got a hot stone massage, I hope. Oh, George has a session with the IRS, so he's got that to deal with. What? I fear the IRS more than demon pigs.

I feel like at least I could convince a demon pig to be my ally. Yeah. And I mean, a demon pig is not interested in collecting back taxes. They have no legal precedent to contact me. Right. Sound off in the comments, gang. Are you more afraid of the IRS coming to your door or Jodi the demon pig? Like, comment, and subscribe.

So this is a wonderful scene. So George gets home from his IRS session and Kathy says, don't undress George. You're leaving for my mother's right now. What happened? He asked. Jodi told Missy he's an angel. That's what happened. She began to push the boys out the front door.

We're getting out of here. George held up his hands. Wait a minute, will you? What do you mean he's an angel? Kathy looked at her daughter. Missy, tell your father what the pig said. The little girl nodded. He said he's an angel daddy.

He told me. And then they're like, yes, we should go. Harry runs toward the boat house. They have to deal with that. And then George is like, no, let's stay and get the windows fixed. The like window fixer guy, the glazier has shown up. He fixes the windows and doesn't ask to be paid until later. And they're also cheered by this.

They're like, let's stay and have grilled cheeses. Oh, the more domestic boredom, but that's very sweet. I want a grilled cheese. Holy shit. Yeah. So we're stuck in the sunk cost of like the house is haunted, but we have to keep repairing the house before we can leave the house. According to the book, George finally is like, you know what?

The kids are getting targeted by the demons too often. We need to just cut our losses and go because our kids are getting, they're getting chilled into little kids equals. We got to get out of here. What day is this? Are we on the last day? Are we like, this is January 13th. Okay.

So this is the second to last day. Oh, exciting. Okay. So they're going to make up one more weird excuse. Yes. And so first the van stalls. George goes to take a look under the hood and a huge gust of wind blew in. The hood was slammed down.

George had just left aside to avoid the falling metal when a lightning bolt struck behind the garage. No. The clap of thunder was almost instantaneous and the clouds broke in a solid sheet of water that drank George immediately. He ran for the front door and unlocked it. Get in. He shot it to his family in the van.

Everything in the children bolted for the open door, but by the time he managed to close it behind them, all were soaking wet. We're trapped. He thought to himself, not daring to voice the thought to Catherine. Call a cab. Oh my God. He didn't write it down, Sarah. It's 1970 pp, whatever year it is.

They're always so close to doing the right thing. And then they choose death every single time. That's a great way to put it. Yeah, it's just, it's like choosing death again and again. I think of myself as a not very problem-solving person. George is like really just, he's like, take me now, ghosts. He's been chosen by nature to not make it. I guess I'm convinced that this was so big for people.

A, because we love scary stories. We love haunted house stories. I think the whole economic thing felt very real to people in a time when it was getting to be difficult to get into the real estate market in a way that it hadn't been before. For sure. That there's like some essential relationship truth represented here. And one of them is that if you have a husband who makes terrible choices,

there's nothing you can do. You're just like, all right, we're the terrible choice family. We are the family that says yes to ghosts, yes to demons, yes to putting our kids in the murdered family's bedrooms. Yeah, they're treating it like the relief that one feels by cancelling plans. But they're in fact cancelling the remainder of their one human. Yeah, and this does feel like a real problem of like the mid-sanctuary man or just sort of the patriarchal society's dad where you're like,

well, I'm in charge. And that means that I'm the one in this family best equipped to deal with the world. And I'm like really not pulling my weight. So therefore my wife must like really not know what's going on. And it's like she might kind of know what's going on maybe better than you do. Hindsight. Hindsight's 2020 baby. George somehow knew they wouldn't be allowed to leave 112 Ocean Avenue that night.

All right. And then they obviously start having a hellish creepy night. The marching band returned. George hears a bunch of voices. He tries to move, but he feels paralyzed. Did I imagine that the marching band was playing 76 trombones or is that textually true? I'm pretty sure that that's not textually true, but I love the idea of it playing 76 trombones. That's just what I automatically imagine a marching band playing.

That would be lovely. I mean, I guess like I was going to say we need a millennial reboot of the Amityville horror where it's about learning to love your ghosts because this was the best house you could get. But I guess that's just what Beetlejuice essentially is. Oh, that is kind of true. There's so much horror that has been so influential that is essentially about New York area real estate, Beetlejuice and the Amityville horror and Rosemary's baby and the Setford wives are all in there. Wow.

All famous ones too. Sorry, that blew my mind of how quickly you rattled off four very famous movies on that theme. Holy cow. Thank you. I think about this a lot. Yeah. I used to live in an apartment in Boston. It was an apartment that I really wanted to live in that I was like it's suspicious that I can afford to live here

because it was like very, very cheap and I was 22 and it was like in a good area really close to where I worked. But the catch was and this is the horror movie element shocking. I got out alive. They were doing something illegal somewhere in the building and the landlord said, okay, I'm going to let you live in this apartment. But if anyone from the government ever comes to the door, you have to say that you're my daughter. And there were three other young women who lived in this apartment with me. It never came to pass, but we all had to verbally agree. Can't have it in writing, verbally agree that if anyone ever came and said, you know, are you Rick's daughter?

We would all say yes, which would have been a stretch because we all looked very different. But we were willing to do that in order to pay absurdly low rent in Boston. Yeah, it seems like that all worked out. I mean, it also seems like the inciting incident of a horror movie. But fortunately, it wasn't this this particular time. I mean, real estate just is so vulnerable. It's, you know, the site of increasingly all of our hopes and dreams because we need to just funnel all of them into getting something adequate. Maybe what is more called for right now is landlord horror.

Yeah, a potent villain. To me, it's obvious that real estate is a big theme in American horror because it's something that we have such a tenuous grasp on and has section effect on our lives. And the fact it's like comic that these people are like over and over refusing to leave their obviously shock-fellow demons. But like the fact that it makes sense, I feel like maybe is why this this resonated and continues to feel real somehow. Sure. Oh, and then this is has to be one of my favorite scenes. George is still like paralyzed on the bed. All the doors are slamming.

The dresser drawers are opening and closing of their own will. The house is just like flapping, having an absolute conniption. George lay there panting, his heart thumping loudly in his chest. He was waiting, knowing something else was about to happen. Then George let out a horrible, silent scream. Somebody was on the bed with him. He felt himself being stepped on. Strong, heavy feet struck his legs and body.

George shut his eyes. He could feel the pain from the blows. Oh God, he thought. They're hooves. It's Jody. Jody's walking on George. It's Jody. Jody is quote the biggest pig you ever saw.

So you can imagine. Oh, it sounds like there should be a Christmas song about Jody. And then the boys come into the bedroom. They say that a monster tried to grab them. George finally somehow heaves himself off of the bed and out of his perhaps Jody induced paralysis. He opens the door and sees a gigantic figure in white, a hooded figure, the same hooded figure that Kathy saw in the fireplace at one time.

It's pointing at him. And then for whatever reason, this is enough that they gather the children and finally jump in the van. The car starts. They speed away and they go stay with Kathy's mom. And it is seven o'clock in the morning on the 28th day. So honestly, they're there for like 27 and a third days, but like, you know, fine, sure.

Fine, whatever they need to tell themselves. Wow. Okay. So they're out. They're out. And now we have our little epilogue. Father Mancuso decides to go to San Francisco. He's going to get out of town, get his groove back.

I want a whole movie of this already. One sentence. I'm like, Father Mancuso reclaiming his sense of self after this family has terrorized him and sent multiple biblical plagues on him. And of course, George and Father Mancuso talk on the phone again. George says they got out. They're doing fine. Everything is great.

Woohoo. And George says there's just one last thing. Supposing they can't come up with answers. He means the Catholic chancery. Oh. And after last night, Father, I frankly don't think they can. Then what? What happens next?

Father Mancuso let out a gasp. What do you mean after last night? Don't tell me you stayed there again. No. It wouldn't let us go. We couldn't get out until this morning. Father Mancuso felt his palms itch. He looked into his left hand.

It was becoming blocky. Oh no. He thought, please God, not again. No more. Without another word to George, the priest hung up. And that's when the title card hits where it's like Father Mancuso. Weekendo off.

Oh my God. So final moments before we get into classifying what demons were in the house. They have a little impromptu party at Kathy's mom's house. He does her drawing of Jody. They talk about their plans to, you know, get out a dog. And they go to sleep and George wakes up and then he realizes that he's levitating. And then he looks over and Kathy's levitating. She rose about a foot and slowly began to drift away from him.

George reached out a hand to his wife. So they're just kind of floating around, just levitating. Wow, Dua Lipa style. I love that ribbon. Yeah. She drifts down back to the bed and then he drifts down beside her and she says, George, you were floating in the air. They start to flee Kathy's mom's house as then as they start to go down the stairs,

coming up the stairs towards them. Slime. What a way to close out. And now Kathy's mom's house is fucked. For some reason I was very much thinking I was like, oh, they're levitating. They hold each other's hands and then they like, we're going to start making out or something. Like I imagine it to be like a tender ending. Oh, that would have been great.

Wouldn't it be cute if they were like, well, we know how to levitate now. We're free from the demons and we know how to levitate now. It wasn't for nothing, I guess, but they got scared. So they got slimed again. Honestly, I think that would be a stronger ending because the 1979 movie ends with the family just like speeding away in the van on the stormy night. And it's very noisy and theoretically exciting, but I do feel like there's something like, I think it's funny, but I also think it's very creepy.

You rush out of your room where you just, I don't know, I could take or leave the levitating, but then you get to the top of the stairs and you see the slime advancing toward you. But that would like kind of tie up the whole like, the house wasn't the problem. The marriage was the problem. So wherever the marriage goes, the problem follows. Oh, yeah. But I guess that that is what's happening in this book too. It's not the house.

It's not Jodi. Yeah. The calls coming from inside the marriage, as we've been saying. Yeah. And that is the end of the story. And we end with the implication that whatever haunted them in the Amityville house is going to follow them wherever they go. And then in the epilogue, we do learn that they live in California now and they're doing

okay apparently because spirits can't travel over water. Oh, I thought it was like, well, it's not a slime climate. So that would make sense too. It's desert. Hard for slime to thrive out here. This is a quote from the afterward. During the preparation of this book, one of those primarily responsible for it reported feeling weak and nauseous upon sitting down to work on the manuscript whenever he did

so in his office on Long Island. But while doing the same task in Manhattan across the East River, he experienced no ill effects at all. Wow. See, East River spirits can't cross. You got to go into the city. Okay. It's a Staten Island problem, ultimately.

Yeah. I'm sure Staten Island has its own very specific demon culture and they don't like to be confused. I apologize to all of Staten Island. I didn't mean to imply that there are demons or at least the wrong kind of regional demons. I guess to assume that it's like a Billy Joel Bruce Springsteen kind of a thing where like there are demons everywhere, but they're very different from each other. Wow. That's beautiful.

So that's the story. How do you feel having just gone through this log ride? I had such a fun time hearing you tell me about the book. There's so much interesting stuff going on, but none of it is what the book thinks is interesting. Right. I don't know. It feels like this bizarre historical document folk tale that like says so much about the

time it came out in, but the writer and the family, and it seems like the audience at the time understandably just kind of took it all at face value in the way that you would. I enjoyed it. How are you feeling? I feel like very validated by the fact that you also think this is kind of a bewitching book in the same way that I find Michelle remembers captivating, which I've also talked about for many hours and actually reminded of something I interviewed the daughter of the publisher of Michelle remembers just to kind of get a sense of like what was it like

when that book was in production and also what was publishing like at the time because it feels like publishing has changed so much so quickly as an industry. And one of the things she talked about was her theory that which makes sense to me that publishing had been affected tremendously by the invention and accessibility of the VCR because suddenly if you were coming home, you had more than three channels worth of programming worth to choose from. For me, I think it would be way more appealing to just be like, I will read my Sydney Sheldon book if I am coming home and all I can watch is Family Feud or Dallas or the news.

Right. In the present sense, it always makes me very depressed to think about media consumption habits, but it really does like just so influence the kind of stuff that takes off versus the kind of stuff that doesn't. Like, I wonder what it would take in the way that we are consuming media right now for a story like the Amityville Horror to truly take off in this gigantic, culturally influential way. I feel like it could definitely happen, but it would just have to happen in a very different

way. Yeah. I feel like one of the ways it could happen would be through like a TikTok account. A 17-year-old on TikTok chronicling a haunting. Yeah. I love the horror movies about YouTubers, and I feel like we're behind on horror movies about TikTokers, but that could be a way to get into it. Yeah.

I think that the kinds of shows that people watch now, like Succession, where it's like a family or a group of people who kind of have these intense relationships and interpersonal dramas with each other, and it's often like in pursuit of getting and keeping power, those are those big, thick Beach Cottage books that were bestsellers in the 60s and 70s, and now we watch those instead of reading them. Yeah. That's I think one of the things that's funny about the Amityville Horror is that it feels like it's such a product of modern times because it was this giant, successful paperback

that did so well in this seemingly very modern industry of publishing, and yet is also super recognizable as just kind of a meme, basically, just an idea that ripped through society like a wildfire because something about it connected with a lot of people. Real estate horror feels like such a timeless genre. A story that's secretly about bad marriages and a story that's secretly about real estate horror, because of the way the world works, it's hard for that to ever go out of style. Horror movies will feel very dated when we watch them back in 10 years, and sometimes even like two years later, you're like, all right, but being afraid that you're in way

over your head because you're living outside of your means and you can't afford to live. That's just, it's always going to be happening. I don't know. The haunted house makes sense as a scary story that will never really go out of style because home is where we expect to be safe. So the idea of home being invaded by any kind of malevolent force is just very, very upsetting to a human. But then it feels like maybe something not essential to humanity, but essential to society

as we know it is the home becomes a scary place, not just because there might be something scary inside of it, but because you can't hold on to it because it's someone's trying to take it away from you. And if you make one misstep, you'll lose it or you're leveraging too much to get it. Your home feels like yours, but is it really yours? Does it actually belong to you? No, someone could take it from you, whether that's what happens in real life with like many forces and ways that people's homes can be taken from them or kind of more palatable

to be like, well, or a really mean pig and slime all your shit up. And then, and then whose house is it? It's the big slimy pigs. Yeah. And now let's talk just a little bit about reality, or at least try to access what that is. Alan Watts over here. I guess I feel humbled by the Emmityville horror experience because I kind of thought

going into this, that this was something where the real story was just like writ very large and obvious and everybody knew it and like maybe you'll end this episode thinking that that's true. But now I kind of feel just sort of confused and sad for everybody more than anything. But we're going to talk about what we know about what actually happened. Well, so something I find funny about the Emmityville horror is that it's actually a book that kind of debunks itself in its own opening pages. So let's return to the text.

The biblical text. The gospel. Open your hymnals please to page two. So this is a summary of the events after the Let'ses have fled and their first foray into news media. And Jay Anson summarizes the Channel Five report on the Let'ses at the time. The Channel Five announcer went on to say that William Weber, the attorney representing Ronald DeFeo, had commissioned studies hoping to prove that some force influenced the behavior

of anyone living at 112 Ocean Avenue. Weber claimed this force may be of natural origin and felt it might be the evidence he needed to win his client a new trial. On camera, Weber said he was, quote, aware that certain houses could be built or constructed in a certain manner so as to create some sort of electrical currents through some rooms based on the physical structure of the house. Again, the scientists said they are investigating that to rule it out. And after they rule out all reasonable or scientific explanation, then it's going to

be referred over to another group at Duke University who will delve into the psychic aspects of the case. Let's put a lot of specific information that still remains extremely vague of like, well, one group is going to look at it. And this group is science. And then they're going to kick it over to another science group. And that's going to be a little, I'm like, okay, but what, there's so many kinds of science. And another thing that complicates these matters is that William Weber was the Let'ses initial

partner in this endeavor of putting together a book. Ah, okay, okay. And his idea for a book was going to be called Devil on My Back, and it was going to be about the Let'ses, but also about his client, Ronnie DeFeo, being driven by supernatural forces to murder his family. And so the idea he had was that this book would like this study help maybe get his client a new trial or a better sentence. That totally, I mean, I'm going back into like my Warren brain now too, which is like

something that they did a lot of. Yeah. And so, including in the most recent conjuring project where it's like kind of directly referenced the conjuring four, three, the devil may be do it, where they are tasked with proving that the devil made him do it. Is this something that was like taking off in the seventies? That was sort of my feeling of like this sort of defense was taking off around this time. I guess I'm realizing that Amityville was kind of the baseline for a lot of these sorts

of ideas taking off more so than I realized. So I don't know, but what I will say is that we did an episode of this show a few years ago that I really like called You're Wrong About Exorcism. Yes. And it's, yeah. I remember that one. Thank you. Thank you for remembering that one.

I really like it. If you haven't heard it, maybe you should check it out. But one of the things I like about it is that it answers a question that maybe it seems weird to even think to ask at this point, which is, can you get an exorcism in this country? Like, could I go get myself exercised? And the answer is like, oh, sure. And like more easily than you can get a lot of other things right now.

Is it easier to get a gun or an exorcism? Would you say? I don't know if there, there have to be gun supply chain issues that I don't know about. But I will say, because I have experience with this, that I would bet you that I could get an exorcism way before I could get a new laptop from Apple. I was going to say, I was like, but yeah, could you find an affordable therapist or good tech support? And the answer would be easier to get an exorcist.

For sure. So that's surprising. I also found it surprising that we see it a lot in Protestant denominations. And what I find most surprising about it is that it was something that you saw a lot less of before the movie, the exorcist came out. Go figure. And so there's this fascinating cause and effect where this pop culture phenomenon reaches a ton of people and some number of them think, you know what, I'm having those kind of symptoms.

This feels like the kind of thing that I need. So I'm going to get an exorcist and the number of people performing exorcisms or interested in exorcisms increased because there was an increased demand for it. And so we're living in post exorcist world at this point. That's so fascinating to me. And it feels like, yeah, that Amityville is all over that as well. Cause I mean, this is the movie or the property where the idea of the indigenous burial ground came from, which I still, that still blows my mind.

But there was a very famous case that the Warrens covered that involved an young girl fascinated with exorcisms that coincidentally slash definitely not coincidentally took place within the year after the entire family had seen the exorcist. Sometimes it feels like pretty cut and dry exploitative. And then other times it's just like the whole culture is just swept up in this idea and priests want to meet the demand. There's only so many people who can do exorcism. Right.

It's like when suddenly everyone needed a fidget spinner, is that what those were? And like suddenly a lot of people learned how to make and distribute fidget spinners. Oh my God. And like I am actually getting exorcised. I've speculated on this before maybe to the point that I should just go get an exorcism for myself if I want to keep talking about it in public, but like I imagine that it would feel pretty cathartic, like the way that people feel about ayahuasca or being moved by the Holy Spirit and church in some way.

I wonder if they do exorcisms that are like couples massages, like you can go get a massage with your friend or your partner. I wonder if the Warrens would do that or if they would have been like, no, it's too dangerous. We only do one at a time. I imagine they did have a bunch of weird rules, but they also loved money. So it's kind of hard to answer. So yes, we are living in the years of the devil made me do it defense.

And so I couldn't tell you if this took off in the seventies and if I were forced to randomly guess, which no one would ever make me do. But if they did, I would say yes, they probably did increase during this time. Yeah. So this is William Weber's initial idea for how he's going to defend his client and presumably make some amount of money. Sure. Because, you know, he's talking about a book idea and you can see the best seller that

this went on to become. And so initially Weber pairs the let's is with a writer named Paul Hoffman. He does an article and the let's is decide to instead work with Jay Anson. Interesting. You know why? I mean, I guess that Jay Anson was like considered more legit than perhaps a lawyer. Well, I don't know. He got, he got a real journalist for them.

So I think. Okay. And also they were offered a better deal financially by Jay Anson. Fair enough. And so after they start working with Anson, Hoffman publishes another article about them without their involvement based on the material that they were going to make this book out of the let's is sue him and Weber and Weber countersues them. And then a judge eventually throws out the let's is suit based on his assessment that

the book seems to be mostly fiction. So apparently that voids their complaint. And then Weber gets a couple thousand dollars as he's countersuing them because they're suing I think because suddenly their story is in the hands of someone who they are no longer working with. They have a book coming out. They don't want spoilers. Hoffman also has material in his published articles that ends up being different.

Right. What? Anson writes like for example, Anson has green slime and Hoffman has red slime. How can we reconcile these things? I'm trying to think of what which line I prefer. I think I do prefer the green slime still. Green slime is more classic. And then another thing we end up with is that Hoffman has notes from his interviews with

George so we can kind of see some of the fossils. What we had before the Anson treatment. Oh, I'm very excited to know what this is like. This is a brief one, but according to Hoffman, George said that Kathy had slid on the bed quote as if by levitation. He didn't say that she levitated. He said that something levitation like happened somehow. Okay.

George later says, well, actually she levitated about two inches and an Anson's book, Kathy is just levitating a full Ghostbusters like two feet in the air. All right. Like the pilot episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Because in this case, I do feel like it's a victimless crime to elevate and lie about this in their specific case in most ways that you can look at it. It sounds like she maybe just slipped. And sometimes when you slip, you're airborne for a second.

No. So it's like, no wonder that that Anson ended up getting the gig because he was just willing to go the full nine yards. He's like, no, that's a lie. Let's see what happens. He's like two inches. You were selling yourself short, my man. They're all about two feet.

I like to imagine. I have no idea what Jay Anson looked like. And if I'm remembering correctly, he died pretty young, but like he, I'm just imagining him like putting his mitts on the table and being like, do you want a best seller or not? Make it a foot. You know, like just really going in two inches. My unit levitates two inches when I watch my dream of Jeannie. Yeah, like you really got to go above and beyond.

If you want to be, if you want to be a star in this town, Amityville, New York. So this is the traumatic birth of our beautiful baby book, The Amityville Horror, and one of the other quotes that emerges from this Bermuda Triangle of Lawsuits is William Over gives an interview to People Magazine in September of 1979 and said, I know the books of hoax. We created this horror story over many bottles of wine. Yes. Okay.

I love this story. I didn't realize exactly how public record that was. That's the thing, right? When I grew up watching all these cable specials in the 90s, they're like, well, who can say we can only speculate endlessly for about an hour. Then I talked about it with my mom the other day of just how afraid she was of the Amityville story when it first came out. And she was like a kid, young teen.

And so for her, originally, it was very important that she believed it was real and that it was an actual, you know, threat that could affect her life. As an adult, I feel like we've both sort of reached the conclusion that we're happy the story exists. It says so much about the culture it happened in. Yeah. And in this particular case, I'm like, well, I think that the DeFeo angle is still the only way that I can see a net negative in it having happened.

I mean, yeah, like the victims of the DeFeo murders are the victims here. But in terms of like a folktale, it doesn't bother me too much that it almost definitely didn't happen. And it kind of like gives me some weird relief to know that they were pretty open about that. If you did a little bit of research, like it's pretty easy to find out that they were like, well, yeah, obviously green slime isn't coming from the walls. I don't know.

How do you feel about that? I agree with that. And then also what, to me, is stickier about the whole story, gooier, if you will, I believe the William Weber story and they're like, we cooked this up over bottles of wine and that you can start with like Kathy slid and then Kathy's levitating two inches and then it's two feet. And I know that this is how confabulations are made out of, you know, I believe that there was intention there.

I believe that there is just what a good sensationalizing writer will do. Yeah. And yet I also feel like the longer the aftermath of this story went on, the more the family actually seemed to believe it. Interesting. So there is a documentary that I recommend to anyone curious about this called My Amityville Horror, and it features the person who we know is Danny Lutz, who's the oldest child of the Lutz family.

No way. I mean, it's really interesting. It's really gets deep into not just the story, but sort of what was it like for the reporters and the paranormal researchers and the people on the ground at the time trying to make sense of this? But I mean, what I take away most from it is that Daniel, he now goes by Daniel Quarantino, which is his birth father's name. Oh, okay.

Well, here's the question. It's clear that he's been through awful trauma. We can never know how much the notoriety of the story was part of that, but it feels like it would be very unlikely for it not to play some role in that. And totally, the thing I most want to talk about with you is that he talks about, yes, George Lutz was extremely abusive and terrifying. Here are ways that he was abusive and was the monster, the demon in the house. And also there was a real demon and I was possessed and I saw George move

a wrench with his mind alone. Don't challenge me on this. It happened. Wow. I feel like that when you read the book, you get this idea of like George Lutz all around family man. Right. Nice guy that hearing that testimony challenges, but also, you know, it's

like, no, like George was terrible. He's the scary thing. But also that scary thing you heard about was also there the whole time. Also, they're both there. Oh my God. Okay. I'm glad that, you know, he had the opportunity to speak his piece. I wish it was more common knowledge because the Amityville myth is so

prevalent and to have clear confirmation because it's like, you know, like we've been doing it, if you do a close read of it, it's clear that George's behavior is rooted in abuse and being blamed on ghost. Like we've been joking about this whole time, but have that confirmed is both terrible and I'm glad that it happened. And I think it's really interesting that the Danny is like, but, but two things are true here. Mm hmm.

You know, he talks in this documentary about, which is almost entirely driven by his testimony, George only wanting to marry Kathy. If he could adopt the kids, change their last names, give them new social security numbers, make them entirely his own. His dad, Kathy's first husband apparently just wasn't around at this point. He described George as someone who had a carry permit, a family business and boats and Corvettes, a wealthy guy who came along pretty soon after Kathy's divorce. Kathy and her first husband, the kids father had been high school sweethearts

who got married very young. Okay. He says that the wooden spoon beating incident happened as it did in the book and also about 50 other times. It wasn't a singular event. Like the book puts it, let's put it that way. Interesting. He described feeling optimism first reaching the house because he said, I figured

it was big enough to keep George away from me. God, that's so bleak. It is. And he saw it as his job to protect his mother from George. He described it because I don't know, I think about this a lot. How little kids like objectively little kids see themselves as adults and take on adult responsibilities. This isn't a criticism of Kathy's parenting because it's something that I feel

like comes out so often in family dynamics of how normal that can quickly feel and become for a kid to take on an adult's role in a household. And I mean, it's very family to family, but like certainly in my family, there was like just a time where it was like, Oh, this is, this is my role now. And this is what I do. And it's all just like where it's just how it is. That's too much pressure for any kid. And then I also like really feel for, for Kathy in this scenario, like we always

have, even though it's like, I mean, her, her situation is more complicated because there are times if you were to believe the content of the book where it's like, well, it sounds like she's lashing out at her children as well. And then also she's in this nightmare of a situation where she's not living in a culture where it is completely acceptable to be a divorced woman. Like I don't think it's implied that she's able to be financially independent with three kids. So George is the option and George is abusive and George is irresponsible

with money and George is in over his head and like taking out his anger and frustration and fucking impotence. I hate George so much in the eyes of a kid, especially a young boy who's being socially conditioned in the seventies to believe that like you're going to have to step up and you're going to have to, you know, like play this role. Oh, God. I mean, this is something that actually really struck me. So there's the scene that we talked about on Christmas Eve.

We talked about this in part one. George is out in the yard. He looks up into the window. He sees the glowing red eyes of Jody and he runs into Missy's bedroom and he sees a little rocking chair rocking by itself. And according to Danny, he was there and saw both those things. I mean, I have no reason to disbelieve him, especially like, I don't know. I mean, it's so hard because it's it's both a very valuable thing that Danny

got the opportunity to like tell his experience, reflecting on it as an adult. And you also have to imagine there's monetary gain to be had on for all parties for continuing the myth of this story. I don't know. That is not quite like how that strikes me, because it's like at this point, if someone comes out and is like the Amityville horror is fake, that's like not even a story like, yeah, no shit. Right. Like this isn't breaking news.

OK, here's the needle that I'm attempting to thread. Let's look at this needle, because on the one hand, we're living in a time where the consequences of people not receiving factual information are all around us and controlling our behaviors and mean that we can't go to target when we want to go to target. Please God, just let us go to target. So that's true. Like that's a major issue shaping our lives that like people get so upset

when you try to challenge their truth that they might kill you or try to take over the government or something. So that's bad. I don't think that that's good behavior or that we should really encourage that. I agree. And then B, I mean, this reminds me, as you can imagine, a lot of many of the things I've researched around the satanic panic. Yeah. And specifically the way that memory is unreliable. It can be extremely acute.

It can be incredibly accurate. And yet it's also very fragile and it can change every time we access it. It can become stitched together from things that didn't happen around us. I'm not even talking about like a distance of years or decades. Like this happens to me like in a matter of minutes. Sure. I'll be talking to someone and they'll say something that like activates some kind of emotional trauma response in me. And then I will remember it is like when my friend attacked me by like very

softly mentioning something that then triggered an emotional domino effect in me. Sure. I totally see what you're saying. And the conversation around memory, especially when it's like Danny was firmly a kid and we're talking about being very much adults and struggling with the same thing that, you know, and you're even more vulnerable when you're a kid to stuff like that and to authority figures. I mean, I can't imagine being a kid and having every authority figure in your life being like, there were ghosts.

I would most likely believe whether I did originally or not that there were ghosts. And then there's also I I'm always like wanting to leave a little space for like. But what if it happened, you know, right? It's also complicated because we're living in a time where it's like, we should actually maybe punish sexual assault sometimes. And then one of the ways to try and stop that from happening is questioning memories of survivors. Right. So it's just like Jesus Christ, you know.

That's unfortunately a perfect example for it. I have no trouble at all believing that that George was abusive. That is whether he likes it or not, literally contained in the books and in the pages of a mythic book, like the behavior is so egregious and obvious. And this is a book of lies, but I can never fully say that certain events and weird supernatural spiritual stuff was not going on in this house. But there is a lot of stuff going on in this house. And I feel like what the book attempts to connect is all one problem

was clearly a mixture of a lot of things ranging from domestic abuse to like not having enough logs to heat the house with. Like there's just like so much going on. Yeah. I mean, you know what I come back to is the idea of like, you know what? I wasn't there. I wasn't in that house. I wasn't there for these 28 days we've been talking about for nearly 50 years at this point. So like, who am I to say? Clearly what you experienced was terrible beyond my ability to conceive of.

Who am I to say I wasn't there? But I also can see the Amityville myth as a way of processing the experience of living in this really tumultuous, difficult house. You know, what is fucking spooky is to move in to a house where there was a mass murder a year after the mass murder. For people to understand the history could replay itself. Like this guy is really scary and really angry. Like what if he just what if he kills us all?

And he looks like the last guy that killed everyone. And you already know this person to be abusive. And that's who kills them all. That's who does that. Durst style. Yeah, the dannies of the world are the first people you should be checking in with. And in so many warren cases, children are the ones who are the most harmed. And then you get to the real fear that you can argue the Lutz's felt because they did profit off of this.

They made a nice chunk. I think it's fair to say that we have evidence that they exaggerated their story. But then again, James Brolin made a lot more money. And when they left the house, for example, I think this detail is just really evocative. They there was a gingerbread house still on the table when they fled with their things. They left the gingerbread house. I mean, if nothing else, a good flourish.

You know, we consume these stories maybe partly because we like being able to put on the hat of suspecting everyone of ulterior motives all the time. But I guess I believe that like they profited off of their situation. I hate George. And yet, according to Danny, who I do believe objectively about this, George was interested in the supernatural, had a lot of books about it. We know that Kathy was Catholic going into this.

And that he was encouraging her to look at supernatural stuff, too. And again, it's like, I don't want to like completely dismiss any like look at the metaphysical or the supernatural. But I think the way that George was doing it was obviously deeply misguided and like very of the era, the masculine approach. That I believe that everyone believed it. I believe that the Lutz has believed this and that they made their story better and made it more assailable.

And then other people made it more assailable on top of that. And so it became this layer cake of mythology. And yet everyone's still trapped inside of it. Right. Right. And I will close by telling you that this documentary, My Amityville Horror, features a lot of our friend, Lorraine Warren. And we get to learn that she has two roosters in her kitchen, in cages, in her nice big cages.

I know it's not a one to one, but that's giving me strong Tonya Harding's mom energy. If we must believe in demons, let's do it in a way that doesn't take away from George's role in all this. Let's believe in demons in a way that validates how awful George is. In a way that I never expected, this has been an interesting challenge in like having multiple things be potentially true at the same time. Yeah, maybe the takeaway is that it really was a horror. And so it concludes our beautiful dark ride through the Amityville Horror.

I'm worried that we have all learned nothing from this, but I guess my takeaway is that you don't have to choose between the supernatural and men being terrifying and the patriarchy, meaning that women can't support their children except by marrying someone abusive sometimes. I don't know. I feel like this was a cool crash course in folktales and like how they reflect the anxieties of the time

where it's like at different points in this story, we were like reflecting on like the issues leveraged against women during second wave feminism where, yeah, sure, you can get a divorce, but actually can you and still be safe and still be self sufficient and still be treated with respect? No. And like real estate anxiety and like just all of these masculinity, I feel like I learned a lot on this on this journey. And I still believe in ghosts.

It's the kind of house they don't build anymore. It is almost too good to be true. What do you think? I love it. From the bestselling book that made millions believe in the unbelievable, the Amityville Heart. If you didn't leave yet, we do have a little treat for you. This is the opening few minutes of the bonus episode that Jamie and I have over

on Patreon talking about our experience watching the two main Amityville horror adaptations and also talking about the Amityville cinematic universe. And if you want to hear more, you can go to patreon.com slash you're wrong about. So thank you so much again for coming on this exploration with us. And here's just a little bit more. There used to be a thing called acting. And in the 70s, people would just put honey all over their bald heads and let flies crawl on them.

Welcome to a bonus episode where I can say whatever kind of sentence I want. Hi, Jamie Loftus. Hi, Sarah Marshall. What's up? I'm so good. I mean, life is complicated, but I just spent three and a half hours watching two Amityville horror movies. And now we're going to talk about them together. I'm very thrilled about that.

I echo everything you just said. Life is complicated. And yet there is profound simplicity to be found. I will say that I thought that the run times of these two movies would be reversed. I assumed that the second version would be much longer, but it wasn't. It was much shorter and much less happened. I think that's normally true. Yeah. And I feel so conflicted about the new version

because it's one of those glossy, soulless, platinum dunes. Like, why would you name your production company, Platinum Dunes, unless you wanted it? You wanted everything to be smooth and sexy that came out of it. That was also my first note was platinum. Yeah. I mean, really, Ryan Reynolds in his flop era. That was an era. Yeah. I mean, maybe he'll get back there,

but it's interesting that he kind of started in his flop era and then graduated to something better. I guess that that's how you would want it to go versus the opposite. Yeah. I just feel like he's changed paths so many times because he started off as a sitcom guy and then he did just a ton of movies. And he was a contested superhero and then a superhero people liked, I believe, and also Blake Lively's husband. And that's kind of what he does now and he's found it's comfortable.

It seems good. Yeah. Now he has like a vanity liquor brand and he does viral marketing. Did you know that? That's his main thing now. No, but that makes total sense. Yeah. He's a he's a man of many pivots. I feel comfortable saying that this span of years is his flop era. They're trying to make a version of him happen that was never going to happen. Is that version of him anything like James Brolin or like, who is that?

I feel I don't know. I mean, how would you describe his interpretation of George? I also feel like both of the actors playing the parents in the 2005 when they feel too young. Yeah, they're both like in their late 20s. I don't know. I just I think he was trying to be like a very like hyper masculine movie star in a way that just doesn't feel like the version of him that people like. I don't know what he's actually like.

Who knows? I swear to God that something must have happened in, I guess, the 80s and the 90s in terms of skin care or like how to make people attractive by throwing money at the situation. I love 70s movies because I think everyone looks haggard. Yes. And overly tan or like prematurely wrinkled or just like sweaty the whole time. Like he just people just feel very real.

And there's something about especially 2000s movies. I think that movies then were like so glossy that we've actually really bounced back from that. Yeah, big bucket movies have a lot of texture now, I think, because we did have this era of no texture, which this falls right into. So smooth. Yeah, I mean, to the point where I was laughing, I mean, James Brolin as George is very hot, I think, the very sexy guy.

Ryan Reynolds is like bringing the same body, but it's like so smooth. It's so smoothed out and it's so like aesthetically. It just feels, yeah, like you're saying, like just faker in a way that's like, that's not a comment on the actor at all. It's just, but I do think with Ryan Reynolds, once he got focus grouped as wife guy, there was no looking back for him. And now he's in a permanent state of wife guy, which seems like it works for a permanent state of wife guy is great.

That's what you would hope for, right? Yeah, ultimately, that's the dream. And there are moments in this performance that remind me of the times in two guys, a girl and a pizza place where Ryan Reynolds's character would do a Captain Kirk impression, which is not what you want in your horror movie. That's not what you want. That's well, that's the other thing is Ryan Reynolds is simply not scary. Yeah.

Maybe that's the real thing. It's like it's a combination of the two thousands aesthetic and like storytelling style compounded with the fact that he's just not a scary person. Yeah, he's so boyish. Can I mention the biggest change between these two? Yeah, no, let's this is OK. Blanket statement, spoilers everywhere.

As far as the eye can see falling ripley off the spoiler trees. OK, let's go. The fact that they had Ryan Reynolds kill the dog. I know. Going into this, I had seen the 70s version before and I had really enjoyed it. I didn't realize at the time that Amityville horror was like the pop culture origin of the Indian burial ground trope that flourished in a lot of negative ways from there.

I didn't realize that. But I just assumed that it had been around before the 70s, but it seems like Stephen King just kind of like ran with it from there and it showed up in the shining and it showed up in that cemetery. And there's like so much to talk about there. But I'd seen the 70s one and the point is as it pertains to the dog, the last thing, the most dangerous moment in the whole movie is when James Brolin goes back to save the dog.

But in 2005, they're like, we're going to have Ryan Reynolds murder the dog in the second act of the movie. Yeah. Not even at the end. That's not even like supposed to be. I think that's the scariest thing he does. Oh, yeah. And then there's multiple set pieces with baby Chloe Grace Moretz almost walking off a roof. Why does that happen so many times?

This kid loves to be at the top of tall buildings. And I was thinking about how that seems like so much more a 2005 parents nightmare, because I feel like in the 70s, parents were like, oh, yeah, the kids get on the roof. It's good for them. That very well may happen in the background of many shots. Yeah. The 70s version. But yeah, Chloe Grace Moretz walking off the top of a roof is such a repeated motif in a way that I just don't know what they were going for

at some point, because they just kept throwing her back on the roof. They're like, when in doubt, throw her near a body of water. Well, there are a lot of big differences between this and the 1979 version. And there were some ways that I thought I thought that it really departed from the source material in a really good way, generally, honestly, because first of all, there were more things in this movie that were actually scary. So like you'd think that would work. We're talking about the 2005.

Yeah. We're like immediately actually scary things start happening as opposed to like their flies and like this crap in the toilet. See, I thought that the flies are so much more effective in the 70s than they were in the in the 2000s. I do think that's true, because they're so exaggerated in the 2000s. They're like, see, she I magic flies. They really go for it. Yeah, they work for platinum dunes.

I did. I did laugh out loud when the when the platinum dunes flies blew the whatever it is, the thing that the vent into the priest's face and knocked him over onto the ground with a bunch of CGI flies. I did get a kick out of it. I love that the priest is played by Philip Baker Hall from all the Paul Thomas Anderson movies. That's very funny to me. I just wish he'd been in it more.

Yeah. They bring him in so late. Meanwhile, there's so many characters in the first one. There's an embarrassment of characters, many of which disappear. But my favorite character. So I didn't I had not heard Rick. You had not yet told me the story of the book when I saw the movie for the first time last year.

And so I didn't realize that my favorite character is in the 70s movie, the bartender bartender. It felt less jarring when you I think that he played it out about the same, but it just felt less jarring when you saw it, where he was like, hey, you look exactly like a murderer who lived here until very recently. And then George gets, I think, understandably, he's not happy to hear it. And then the bartender is like, oh, no offense. My bad. Next round's on me.

Like then he just gives him a free beer, I think. Yeah, that's total skunky behavior. I love it. He's just like a good sport in this story. Yeah. And I feel like the 2005 movie like really streamlines the whole thing. They keep the family and the babysitter, who was in addition for the first movie. And then I can't even think of what other.

And then there's the priest who shows up in the last 20 minutes. And then like the babysitter character is there, but she's significantly altered in a way that I also found to be very 2005. Yeah, where it was like in the 70s, like you're saying, in the way that it's like people looking like people versus people looking like sexy ideas. Yeah.