Behind the Scenes and Steven Kaplan

The internet can be strange, absurd, terrifying, even surprisingly human. Each week on Close All Taps from KQED, we cover how the digital world is reshaping how we live and who we are. People just assume that the American internet is this like free and vast frontier. And then when I started asking that question, it was impossible to unring that bell. People were asking chatbots to tell them if God exists. Listen toose Cl all tops, wherever you get your podc ast . This episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Did you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Prize and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states. Hey, this is Alex and uh I started a new podc ast. Um 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 nineteen seventy four there, was a series of murders that took place in Amity ville, 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 twenty ten, Asylum Pictures, which is the movie studio that made like Sharknado , realized 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 ninety-two Amityville movies. Some are standard horror, and some have titles like Amityville Outhouse, Amityville in Space, Amityville Job Interview, Amityville Death Toilet, and Coming Full Circle, the 902nd Amityville movie, which premiered on streaming last week, Amityville NAT. 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 Amityville . This episode is our watch through of Amityville 3, which features a very young Meg Ryan and also Lori Laughlin, the lady from Full House who went to prison. And you can watch along with us by searching Amityville wherever you find podcasts. If you want to watch this particular movie, it's on Tubi . And we'll be back at you with another hyper-fixed episode next week. In the meantime, enjoy this episode of Amityvilleville . Welcome to Amity villeville. I am Alex Goldman. I am Caroline Thompson. And we are back at it again. Ready to see what that kooky Amityville house has in store for us today. You don't sound convinced that you're Caroline Thompson. 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. Okay, this week's episode is about Amityville 3D, which we were not able to watch in three D. We had to watch it in the normal version. No, and honestly, that I 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. They 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 an like you would think with a name like Amityville 3D that it would be just like left and right gore splattering all over you, and it is very much not that. Like right around this time, there's a big 3D craze. There's Jaws 3D and Friday the thirteenth 3D came out the year before. Have you ever seen Friday the thirteenth 3D? No, I have not. A huge part of the 3D aspect of that is he like chucks a pitchfork at someone and I think he shoots someone with like a one of those spears they use when you're trying to spear fish in but a lot of it is just like oh God the annoying guy's gonna 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 three D in the movie. It's really I was imagining modern three D, which is usually just like blood guts and gore. Like I I didn't I didn't think that like you know, the there's a point in this movie where a boom mic is shown in 3D and I'm just like all right let's crack it in here like that's I but that's not like interesting enough for me to see 3D it I mm-hmm. But we''llll get get into into it. We it. I did like there is a moment where a frisbee gets thrown at the screen and it's really intense. I I can imagine what it would have been like in three D and I'm really sad that I missed it. Everyone probably was screaming. Alright, so Amityville 3D, let's do it. Uh 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. L itike 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, a la the incest attic windows, but it it looks nicer. It looks like a house that I could see myself wanting to move into if I wasn't aware that like 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 Uh 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 close 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 m by far my favorite of the movies 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, um , not scary in any way, but uh definitely top of the line in terms of like just me buying any of the characters f 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. We may. So get your 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 uh looking at the house from various angles, a car pulls up to the house with a couple with a man and a woman inside. And you know, hijinks ensue after this. Um 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 set 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. The I like that that beginning scene really was bringing me back to that faithful Halloween when a demon told me that I'd be the first to die. Uh uh first in the room. You need to describe this to everyone else. 'Cause I'm very familiar with the story of how Carolina's going to die at age sixty nine. But can you please can you please explain what what happened here? How old were you? How did this happen? I was 16 years old. It was Halloween day, Halloween night, in fact. Um, my good friend's parents owned a duplex, and their tenant had just moved out on the 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. And there's truly nothing more frightening than an abandoned duplex. So we went downstairs to the empty apartment. We had a Ouija board. Um, 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. Um, and you know, we asked it a bunch of questions and we we were getting some weird answers, you know, we were getting 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 CT69 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 I when I initially looked back on it, I 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 memories say that it was just girls. And I don't think any of them would have made a 69 joke. Uh, you know, we we just we have higher falutin humor than that, you know, as 16-year-old girls. Um and so I've just been kind of living on the uh assumption that I'm gonna die when I'm 69 andor in 20169, which would make me 79. But I, you know, I'm just kind of live fast, die young, I guess, baby. What are you gonna do? Yeah, R.I.P. So this movie really took me back because I this was not the only time that I that I uh 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 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, um, 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. John Baxter and Melanie, no last name. Don't know what her last name is, but they are they are a partner. They work for what what's the name of the magazine? 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 uh has been renting the house uh I guess since the DeFeos moved out or not the DeFeos, the uh whatever the the second family was, can't remember their names. Um The Montelles . The Letz's. No, the Montelles were the DeFeos. Right. I'm sorry. Excuse me. So the the they're there after the Lutzes. However, because there was an ongoing lawsuit, th they were still not allowed to use the name Lutz. So before I knew that this was a hoax, um I was really excited about like a new haunting mechanic that was gonna drop. A green orb floats uh 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 uh like haunting mechanism for this house. I've never seen, you know, a disembodied spirit orb before uh in I 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 loofah sponge. And then of course it do es 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 loofah sponge on it, or saran wrap or somet hing. And then um they exposed 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 or any bow, in fact. In fact, it gets wrapped up in flames. But 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 the district attorney walks in and is like, Yeah, you'll see see here, like you'll ready to be arrested for the huckstering and they they flee. Um and the next day 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 know still like pretty crazy for you know a pair of uh 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 base Like they were like the control room's 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 uh seems like he's like whatever. And then they come back the next day and meet with uh Clifford Sanders. Who is the owner of the house who had been renting the house he'd been renting the house to the couple. He claims that he had no idea that they were doing this. They 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 I that would be so I would I thought like that would be so embarrassing. Imagine falling through a basement floor. Like, how what does that say about you? I would be extremely, extremely self-conscio us 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' likes 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 I don't need any of this smoke. Uh you know, I this is ridiculous. He's also like, I gotta 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 house on a lake. Uh giant haunted house on a lake. And my question here to you, Alex, as someone who I consider to be a very ethical journalist. you Would 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 I feel like there are some things here that uh are a little bit unsavory from an ethical perspective, but I would 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 ho 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 gonna write a thing six months later that's like revealed? I lived in the Amity ville house? Like what is his what's his end game? Never really explained. His ex-wife does kind of like drag him for being like, What you're gonna sit in the attic and write the great American novel, which he does kind of do. I don't know if I don't call it the great American novel, but like this guy also, John, the the male journalist, I will say, is just like the most insufferable Reddit atheist that you could possibly imagine. Like he's 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 let's grow up a little bit here. I don't we don't you 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 He is a little annoying, but he means well. I genuinely think he's like he like means well and just wants to show people the truth. Yeah. Whatever that may be. And this is another thing I noticed about this movie is this is the least rel igious 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. Um, they're like while in the other movies, the priests uh were kind of the 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 pers pective, but maybe maybe at this point was the satanic panic getting a little too much and everyone was like, all right, we gotta we gotta cut this out. No, the satanic panic was just ramping up at this point. Like this is early days. So I mean missed opportunity then. 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. 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 and so they're all chit-chatting. In the basement ? No, not in the basement. So they agree to buy the house, but then they're back at like the offices, right? And they've developed the p pictures? No. Then um so after he agrees to buy the house, he goes to pick up shit from his bitch ex wife. Um and it turns out she's not a bitch actually. She also she also is uh 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 uh a bad deal of it all. But she he goes to pick up stuff from his old house. Um, 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. Um, Lori Laughlin plays his daughter Sus an and fucking Meg Ryan is Lori Laughlin's like masked lesbian best friend. I mean, she is I've got a 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 but with Lori Laughlin. All I know is she went to jail. And second of all, um , I need to get your like I need a more detailed read of Meg Ryan's character 'cause I did not read her like that at all. So please. you know, wearing a little it like uh she just she's wearing a very androgynous um 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 be honest. Absolutely like ten out of ten hair. I would I would pay my entire savings account to have hair like that naturally grow out of my head. Um how um s so but but in in this initial scene, you're right. It does seem that um Meg Ryan's character is actually kind of flirting with John, which I was a little stressed about. Um , yes. They're both teenagers, I think. And she goes, Oh, I hear you bought yourself a haunted house. Um, seems a little sweet on him. And I wrote in my notes, I swear to God, if there is an unsettling hookup scene 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 uh like brand director at Massimo or whatever, they basically paid to get their daughter, Olivia Jade, if influence or Olivia Jade, currently dating Jacob Alordy, uh, for those who know, um they paid to get her into USC. They they were a part of that whole like um 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 to 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 if like and so yeah, Lori Laughlin did did end up going to jail, as I 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 for catching me up. So th those two characters are introduced. He goes to pick up stuff from his ex-wife. And then uh we cut to um Melanie. Sanders. No well Melanie , don't we? First, Melanie is developing photos uh back at the office and she look she's looking at the photos that she took of Sanders, the owner of the the owner and the real estate agent um of the Amberdeville House and she sees that all of uh 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. He's got ring face. So in 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. So 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 uh prosthetic makeup that the uh possessed boy had in the the previous film. Right. Um so at the same time that she is developing these photos and seeing this very unsettling image of uh Sanders' face, Sanders walks back into the house and takes a look around. He hears a pitter-patter coming from upstairs, and he assumes that it's John. So he walks up the stairs while the mirror in fr in the front room like freezes. At the at this time I wasn't really sure what was going on here. I think it is freezing given what happens later. Um 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 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 uh 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 had 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 wanna see some real like some real practical fly stuff. But I do I'm sorry, did you think they were CG? I well okay, obviously a rudimentary form of CG. Or ri I don't know. Like what what what is computer gra original computer graphics? I'm sure they were made in some with some kind of those weren't made computer. Those that has to have that has to have been like old school animation because unless you're Tron, this predates computers. This is 198 3 dog. Old school anim ation. Um yes. And there is that very funny shot where the large purple fly kind of like stares him down and then he is he is drowned by flies throwing down flying down his throat. Um 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. I pool cue. Neither here nor there. But um he hears the realtor choking on the fly, so he heads up to the attic where he finds him dying on the floor. Um not a fly in sight, by the way. Yeah, no flies. Where the hell do they go? I'm thinking, you know, this is just the supernatural power of uh 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. Um, John tells Melanie that Sanders had a heart attack. Um I've I'm say I said I'm once again asking where all the flies were, but I I think we've figured that out. I think you're right. I think it's a supernatural thing. The 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 finished the sting, she's like, ooh, this house is creepy. Can we get out of here With no evidence really at all. Like they're the only the creepiest thing that's happened to her so far on 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. Um John , meanwhile, is he drags poor dead Sanders uh 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 s ick. It was so mean. I couldn't believe that line because he was like just a normal guy. He's like I'm like, I don't I don't know, I didn't you didn't see him 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 wanna buy my house? And then he's dead. And that's it. There's nothing indicating that he's like sick or You could tell that old man was sick as hell. He was ugly . Ready for He was fat enough to fall through a basement floor, you know. I don't know, he's uh 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. Um he, this paranormal investigator, Dtoroc, dude, he tells her he thinks it's probably nothing, but he's gonna look into it. So we 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? Um, 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 book. 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 gotta toss a nod to incest at least in the just just one. I mean, I was I was I was perched for it because of how incest forward the other one was. I was ready, I was ready for it at any given moment. Thankfully, that is not something that I had to deal with in this movie, so I enjoyed it so much more. Amityville will be back right after these messages Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison. Then your yoga teacher says that sex trafficked children are being sacrificed by satanic liberals, but it's all okay. The great awakening is coming. What is happening ? Every week on Conspirituality Podcast, we explore the fever dreams that suck friends, family, and wellness gurus down the right wing cult spiral in a search for salvation. There's 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 up 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 keeper or what. I think Dolores is a housekeeper. Okay, but she goes and instead of being let in by anybody, the door is just unlocked and she walks in. Yes. Um she walks in and then she immediately gets locked in. Like she cannot leave the house at all. Every door and window is locked. Um 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 minus the like fly death scene. Like this movie's kind of boring from a horror perspective for me at this point. Like the acting is good , but uh 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. Yes. Yes. Who are you? I'm Melanie . I'm waiting for Mr. Baxter. He's not here now . I know . Did you did you just say that pig ? Is he not a pig? Like, doesn't Bugs Bunny have a have a 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 in the Warner Brothers mythos. I it's crazy to me that you I mean, I I know that I'm like an old like a 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 enemies. Elmer Fudd looks a lot like Porky Pig, right? Porky? Porky Pig. And Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd look absolutely nothing alike. I swear to God, they look i dentical. 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 I'm not gonna Google it right now. I'm just gonna 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 not on your side on this one. Alright. Alright. Well, I trust you. Um Okay. But there's there's 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' 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 that she's like, oh thank God. Um John, meanwhile, is stuck at work uh 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 loony-tunes kind of situation. Very loony-tuned situation. And I don't understand how he didn't die because he like allegedly goes down, you know, fifteen floors so fast that he is pinned by physics to the top of the elevator. And he just, you know, it kind's of limping a little bit when he gets out. His boss is like, Oh man, sorry about that. Like, we just that that's a new elevator, and he's like, Yeah, don't worry about it. So we're once again entering a uh 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 I've started calling it the horror. That's the thing. In the same way that like Wendy Williams refers to the killer. The killer . Um I like that because it is the Amityville horror. We we're not sure is it demonic? Is it a Native American burial ground spirit? Is it something The Ghosts of the Defeos? Is it the Ghost of the Defails? We are not given answers in in this film and I I doubt we will be given solid answers in the rest of the eighty nine 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. Um, and the housekeeper leaves uh while Melanie is still waiting for him. And sh Melanie is like really not happy to be at this house by herself. She's like, Are you sure you're you have to leave? And the housekeeper's like, Yeah, I'm out of here, girl. Like, uh, 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 I don't know. Like it 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 lar ge gust of freezing air. And at first I thought she was like literally being murdered by like being frozen to death um in this sc ene. But it it she's not dead because John comes in right after this happens and she flips out, being like, Don't catch me! Leave 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 flash 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. Um, and I just I don't I don't know what to do. Like, and he's basically like, yeah, you know, like maybe we can do some investigating there, like uh but it it doesn't really there's not really a an answer. She just you can you can see that she's concerned about the idea of her daughter spending time at this murder ho use. And meanwhile, her daughter is spending time at the murder house. So this is the scene in which I was getting some masked lesbian vibes from Meg Ryan herself because I'm being so like Meg Ryan and Lori Laughlin come into the house while John isn't home because uh 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. Um she's dressed again in a very kind of like soft mask, but 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 you know queer listeners will understand. Like I',m not gonna explain it to you because that's actually not uh my job to educate you. Yeah, you don't need to 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, whoo, 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 in 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. 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. Maybe he's got some sex-starved ghost up there with booms up to you. Well, somehow that doesn't sound like my father. I've read all of his articles, you know. I know the whole story . I know exactly where all the murders happened. And they're 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 uh conversation that the brother and sister have in the attic about uh boobs with the 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, uh and and I'm just I'm gonna call it where I see it. So again, Lori's hair is fucking incredible. Um and they go downstairs to the well, and Meg Ryan says, you know, this is there was an Indian burial ground here. Um this was I don't remember exactly what she says about the well, but there there's something happening. It this is I don't remember what I do remember is that Meg Ryan's sole uh role in this movie, aside from being kind of uh like a horny miscreantine , is exposition. She gives like a 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 friend's parents bought a a known haunted house that was like that had several books and 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, etc. 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 we'll give her that. Um, she's into this family, whatever, whatever, whatever it is. Um so John comes home, then he's writing his little great American novel, and then we get a very interesting scene with Melanie. Um, 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 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. It's got like a hand uh washcloth, and he's trying to tighten the gasket on the sink so that steam stops 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 swept 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. be scarier and then all of a sudden the steam stops the scene is over. The scene is over and yeah, I did I didn't notice that, but we cut to after that strange steam scene. We cut to um Melanie driving, okay. Melanie is uh 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 pipe 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. Um so thank you. I guess the flies are the the horrors mechanism for you know, creating chaos in 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 pa on the photograph I was like, oh, I kind of thought she was gonna get impaled by it, and I was like, okay, here we go,. like Like it's picking up, we're gonna get some horror. Nope. Doesn't get impaled by it. Instead, just burns to death inside of her car in a very upsetting way. Like that to me was also really scary. They like the the thing catches on fire, the photos catch on fire, and then she catches on fire. And she's just scre it's just a probably fifteen 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 the horror is very good at locking doors in this 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 the car. It's very important to note at this moment that when he finds the car, the car is like complet ely 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 fra 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 I guess it it this version of the uh the horror has an interesting agenda on who it kills and who it possesses. And not only that, like not only is does she get a raw deal in that she just wanted to warn people and then she gets got , 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 gotta 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 to it and she wasn't driving from it. Like, this is a coincidence. Like, I'm I'm I'm sick of this. Like, keep in mind, like, they seem to have have very good work ing 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 gotta talk about this. Like, what happened? And uh but he doesn't seem to care that much that uh Melanie has met her demise. Um ly at 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. Um so then we get to the part where um the teenagers, all Meg Ryan, Lori Laughlin 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 experien ce it is so very funny. Um so they're they do it like it it gets to be kind of creepy. Like 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 . Um, they go outside and they decide to get into the boat that is But first they do the seance and it they 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 gonna who which of us is gonna 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 uh Meg Ryan is like, no, seriously, who's in danger? And the cup goes toward the letter S for Susan before the glass flies uh 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 gonna be the first to die. Like I I just like I could have written this movie from memory . Um and it I mean, and if this movie is any indication, I think we should set our clocks for the day that I turn 16 9, 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 Laughlin, whose character's name is Susan. Yeah, I'm sorry. Susan. Her name is Susan. Lori Laughlin slash Susan goes outside, is upset, sitting on the lawn. There's that uh very funny frisbee throw um that you mentioned earlier where her one of her guy friends throws a frisbee at her and it's it's a three D effect. Um 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. Cause 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 I she can kind of she's kind of a self-starter at this point. I don't think you can really tell her where where to go or what houses to not enter. So she heads into the house to find Susan and and monish her for being at the house and she walks into the house as the kids are out in the boat and she sees and uh Susan walks in the door and she's completely wet. She's covered 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. Um it seems that Susan probably we don't see what happened, but I mean I would assume given the mechanism but 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. Um, 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, I apparently the, ghost of her daughter, wal ked 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 that can't be her. That doesn't make any sense. I just 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 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 she's in the house. Like, we have to go see. And she runs back into the house and tries to show him. And you know, there's 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 this shitty house seems very scary to me. And that 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 R. I. P. to a baddie, RIP to the best hat of hair that we have ever seen. You know, she didn't deserve that. This feels personal . She didn't deserve that. Um so they you know, grief ensues. I think it's uh Nancy locks herself in the attic and is kind of like rocking back and forth in horror. Um John gets drunk and 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. I uh 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 did wasn't sure that this was a dream, I thought that 'cause it 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 or sorry, is Susan. And so I thought that this was real and that they were kind of like uh pet cemeter ying their daughter's body here and like the 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 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 a th like did the general population like not know? I mean as 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 Speak that into being. What is wrong with you? Anyway . Emmy Villeville will return after these messages. So Nancy's losing her mind. She is n refusing to leave uh 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 uh John goes to his friend Elliot, who is there at the opening 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 fifty to a hundred 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. There and especially yeah, there 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 gonna drive the ghosts away. But in this case, it certainly does not deter them in any way. Um any way, um Nancy's up in the attic and they're like film, they they put cameras everywhere. They're filming, they're watching the film they're watching what's going on downstairs and they're 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 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 spectre, this sort of floating blob of purple down into the basement. Yes. Huge miscalculation on the paranormal researchers uh end here. It does not end well for him. So they do this and all hell breaks loose, quite literally. Uh she goes down to the basement and instead of uh Lori Laughlin's lifeless body in the well.'s There like a fire breathing alien. Fire breathing alien water monster, um, who immediately grabs the paranormal researcher and pulls him under the water, uh, lights him on fire. Burns his face. Yes. Sets him on like 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 Save yourself! Susan ! Susan 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 like 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. Um, Nancy and John like cling to each other, and they a king as they're trying to desperately leave this incredible 3D scene uh of a kingfisher that's on the wall, um, comes loose of the wall and 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 the kingfisher, went sliding on in order to go toward the screen. It was pretty grid. Um and then yeah, they're basically the movie ends with Nancy and John huddling, holding each other outside, watching as the 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 like die to get my parents back together. 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 twenties and thirties. 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 Sonya, 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 Steven Kaplan . Now prime 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 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 R esearch Center. Oh in Long Island. Vampire Research Center. I know . And in the seventies , he after the DeFeo family was murdered and, after the Lutz's moved in and moved out, he contacted the Lutzes 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 Luxis 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 L utzes, 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 the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, I would say. But at the time that this movie was being made, Steven Kaplan had embarked on the a many decades long, like two decade long investigation into the Amdeville 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 nineteen seventy-four and then this movie came out in nineteen eighty-three. Aaron Powell But he was still doing his investigation during the stuff. Scott, 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 five hundred something dollars right now, a used copy. But anybody want to uh send us a little uh thank you gift for this incredible podcast, please feel free to purchase the box. But according to like Goodreads, the people who've read it are like, he really tears the Lutz 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 Steven 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 vampirologist book, it's called Vampires R, like Vampires A-R-E. Like Vampires R. 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. So does he believe in vampires then? Like it 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 Lugosi can turn into a bat style vampires. But for some reason, he was like, the Lutzes are frauds. Like he seems primed to believe the story the Lutzes 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 this 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 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 re ad. And both of them are like sad omasochists and like l 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 gotta drink a little bit of your blood? Yeah. I mean he really should have. He could have turned he could have become the thing he was so excited about. Like he could have become a vampire through that. You know, like that 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 love that. Like I I 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 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 nineteen ninety-five, 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 sh 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 filming from different angles. I was kind of appre- 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 amity volume. 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 app, but the owners were like, fuck this. We don't want people coming to our house anymore. We're gonna change the windows . And the only other thing to note is that all the exteriors were filmed at the Amityville house in Tom's River, all the interiors were filmed in Mexico Really? Why? Because this was a co-production between a Mexican production company and the the an American production company. So they just to make it cheap, they did everything in i inside in Mexico. Huh. Very interesting. Yeah. But I'm obsessed with uh Steven Kaplan. I want to know so much more about this guy. I am gonna go down a very deep rabbit hole about Stephen Kaplan. Was he like hot? Like why were these vampires trying to fuck him? Uh no. No, he wasn't. But he it was him and his wife actually who hold on I'll show I'll show you. Maybe maybe his wife was a babe. I'm gonna send you a picture of both of them and you can decide for yourself. Hold on just a moment. Uh I'm gonna do it in the in the riverside chat. Oh . Okay . Um for the listeners at home, I am looking at a siblings are dating uh style couple. Like not they look very eerily alike um large they're both kind of like rosy cheeked big glasses they look very 70s i wonder if roxanne's still alive, ca sheuse helped him write the book. Yeah, Roxanne's wearing like a very say something headband, which I I like. Um but yeah, not a couple that I, if I were a vampire, would try to get to fuck me, but you know, it who 's who's to say I'm not gonna yuck any vampires yumps 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 uh lore differences between this one and the last one. 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 uh in pr I I mean I would say, you know flies have been a recurring theme overall but like the flies really are pulling 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. Um it can the a new thing in this movie is this uh blasting people with cold air kind of thing. Like fire and water and ice are big themes in this. Like there's 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 that's new. We haven't seen that before. Um curious as to, you know, the origins of that guy. I 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 a 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. Blows up the whole house and kills probably like twenty people at least. Like it there's a lot of death it in that final in that those final five minutes. And it's interesting again that 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 uh 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 the by the horror or were so pure and pious and religious that like they couldn't even be inside the house without barfing all over the place like the the aunt aunt or the aunt aunt the uh my god the nun aunt that threw up immediately after she left the house. Um so that it's just it's interesting to me. Like I'm I'm curious about, you know, the motives here. It seems they seemed he seems to the horror seems to have moved past its grudge aga inst the Catholic Church and has really widened uh its net in terms of the types of people that it wants to punish. Cause I I 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 Melanie, who was kind of like, hey man, I think you should move. Um , 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 what happens next. The house blew up. Yeah. How are you gonna make another Evenyville 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. But uh on that note, how would you rate this on a scale of one to ten um in terms of your fear, the the fear that you felt while watching it? I would say that the fear here is more ambient than actual scares. Like there's not the fear is m 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 seventeen point five out of ten on that. I wish I was dead. I'm also very scared of dying Those two things really you know, like I 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 sixty nine. The Ouija board told me when I was sixteen. Talk about it all the fucking time. 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 when it's gonna go. Or at least the 12 month period in which uh it will be coming. But yeah, I would give it a two on the scary rating. And then on just like the overall rating, um, I would give this one a six point five. I thought it was Oh my god, I was going to say six point five. Wow, look at that. Get out of here. Just you know, great minds. We think alike and we podcast about Amityville . You we are three episodes in and you sound exha usted. I think I sounded exhausted, to be fair, from the very first episode. There's a lot happening in the world in my life. In you know, I'm just generally I'm not exhausted with you. I'm not exhausted with the Amityville movies. I I''mm just exhausted from the I guess the existential dread of living in the United States of America at this very moment. But you know, what what are you gonna do about that? Yeah, totally. Um well I would like to end this uh this podcast by saying two things . One, next week's uh movie is Amityville four The Evil Escapes made for television. Okay. What 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 we we get a fun little made for television. Um I'm excited. This is gonna be great. I'm sure it's not gonna be as good as this one. Because so far, if I was 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 and number three , a number three would still be the original movie. It's just I I 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, so 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 , and especially since the house blew up. Yeah. I'm excited to see what happens. Well, you know, it's been four years. It's a it's a great piece of lakefront property. Like I 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 it blew up, remember, and now it's now it's a totally new house. So it and now they don't even now they could probably film it at the same place, even though the front is different, because they would have a real reason for the 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. Stephen Kaplan's wife. Oh, sorry, sorry. Who co-wrote the Amityville horror conspiracy with him? Hell yeah. Um I'm sorry, Roxanne, if you listen to this. Um and uh you you guys are actually a really hot couple and if I were a vampire, I would absolutely ask you to uh join me in my lovemaking