Post by auntym on Nov 11, 2012 15:05:55 GMT -6
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323894704578107430353963710.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet
Updated November 8, 2012
Still Haunted by Amityville [/color]
By STEVE DOLLAR
One of pop culture's most enduring nightmares began 37 years ago this December in the bucolic bayside town of Amityville, on Long Island.
That winter, George and Kathy Lutz and her three children from a previous marriage moved into a Dutch colonial house at 112 Ocean Ave, about 30 miles east of the city. Over the next 28 days, they contended, the family endured an onslaught of bizarre events that ranged from inexplicable hordes of flies to demonic visions. The Lutzes fled, leaving all their possessions behind. Their story, however, never went away. The 1977 book "The Amityville Horror: A True Story," and the 1979 horror movie that was based on it, sparked a media phenomenon that has yet to fade from public memory.
Now a new documentary, "My Amityville Horror," makes it personal, introducing a man who is still living through that nightmare. The film, which will have its New York premiere Saturday at IFC Center as part of the third annual DOC NYC festival, features the first-person testimony of Daniel Lutz, the eldest of the Lutz siblings, who was 9 when the events occurred. A recluse who had a troubled, combative relationship with his stepfather and claims to have been homeless for a period after leaving his family in his early teens, Mr. Lutz has kept his secrets to himself until now.
"He's been carrying around this weight for nearly 40 years," said Eric Walter, the young filmmaker who devoted three years to making the documentary, amid a decade of obsessive amateur research into the case. "It's not easy to talk about."
CONTINUE READING: online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323894704578107430353963710.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet
Updated November 8, 2012
Still Haunted by Amityville [/color]
By STEVE DOLLAR
One of pop culture's most enduring nightmares began 37 years ago this December in the bucolic bayside town of Amityville, on Long Island.
That winter, George and Kathy Lutz and her three children from a previous marriage moved into a Dutch colonial house at 112 Ocean Ave, about 30 miles east of the city. Over the next 28 days, they contended, the family endured an onslaught of bizarre events that ranged from inexplicable hordes of flies to demonic visions. The Lutzes fled, leaving all their possessions behind. Their story, however, never went away. The 1977 book "The Amityville Horror: A True Story," and the 1979 horror movie that was based on it, sparked a media phenomenon that has yet to fade from public memory.
Now a new documentary, "My Amityville Horror," makes it personal, introducing a man who is still living through that nightmare. The film, which will have its New York premiere Saturday at IFC Center as part of the third annual DOC NYC festival, features the first-person testimony of Daniel Lutz, the eldest of the Lutz siblings, who was 9 when the events occurred. A recluse who had a troubled, combative relationship with his stepfather and claims to have been homeless for a period after leaving his family in his early teens, Mr. Lutz has kept his secrets to himself until now.
"He's been carrying around this weight for nearly 40 years," said Eric Walter, the young filmmaker who devoted three years to making the documentary, amid a decade of obsessive amateur research into the case. "It's not easy to talk about."
CONTINUE READING: online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323894704578107430353963710.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet