Tonight I watched a documentary called "My Amityville Horror" (2012), which I discovered while Googling about the Lutz family after watching the feature film last week. It's the story of Danny Lutz, who was ten years old at the time of the family's experience. By now (2012), he's in his late forties and has been dealing with the psychological fallout from Amityville for all of his life. When we first see him, he's shredding on guitar in his home studio, and he's damn good. But then the interviews begin, and we can tell right away that he's a troubled man. Who wouldn't be, given his situation? Danny relates some details from the day of the move in, and already our blood begins to chill because we can see in his eyes that he's telling the truth. The movie makes clear that he's never been a publicity seeker, and indeed, who's ever heard of Danny since the book came out in 1977?
But it's obvious he's got some issues. The question the movie poses is this : do they derive from his experience in the house, from some other source, or a combination of both? Danny openly admits that his relationship with his stepfather George Lutz was so hostile that he sought out every way possible to antagonize him. But then he explains that George Lutz was not the man he was made out to be in the bestselling book. George was portrayed then as a former Marine who had inherited a family surveying business and built it up to the point where he was well off, and therefore a good catch for Danny's Mom Kathleen, a recent divorcee. But as the adult Danny tells it, George was a nightmare stepdad, a short-tempered bastard with no parenting skills, and worse than that - he had a fascination with the occult.
George Lutz was into ritual black magic, big time, and may have also had strong telekinetic skills. I should report as an aside that Stephen King deals with the subject of telekinesis in his latest novel "The Institute", and it is no joke. There are real telekinetics in the world. Danny Lutz says - looking straight into the camera - that before the family even moved to Amityville, he walked in on George in their garage one day, and George was in a self-induced trance. Danny says George moved a metal wrench across the width of the garage, from a toolbox to a workbench, with his mind.
He isn't kidding. You can see this plainly on his face.
The only question is do you believe him? And if not, why not? Simply using logic or psychology to explain Danny's stories may not work here. You may have to dig deeper. From his testimony, and that of others who knew George Lutz, we learn that George was not only a bad father but a pretty dark-minded guy who had a bookcase full of volumes on witchcraft, satanism and other sinister practices. A consensus is reached by psychic investigators, including Lorraine Warren of "The Conjuring" fame, that the elevated negative energy of George Lutz likely attracted whatever forces lurked within the house and brought them to life again. Just as Ronald deFeo's murderous intentions were reinforced by the demons inside the house, so were George Lutz's desires for dark psychic power. He moved his family into the house not in spite of the deFeo murders, but because of them. He wanted to attach to the power.
This can be seen in the same way with a jerk like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who bought the Sharon Tate murder house on Cielo Drive so he could record his album in the living room and "connect with the vibe".
Black Magic is no joke, nor are dark forces, and yet many folks still think this kind of stuff is exciting and cool. Unfortunately, the documentary also trots out nitwits like "Professor" Elizabeth Loftus, who wrote a facetious book called "The Myth Of Repressed Memory" that gained a lot of traction in the 1990s. I'd love to debate her on national television, but I'll leave that alone for now except to say that the director does his film a disservice by trying to include all viewpoints, and though it is true that a documentary should do just that, in this case to include a ridiculous person like Loftus, whose only "credibilty" is a university degree, really detracts from getting to the bottom of a very serious situation.
With a case like Amityville, it's not enough to have dipshit academics who've never even examined the subject put their uninformed two cents in.
One could look at the physics of some of Danny's claims if one were inclined to quickly dismiss his story. He says, for instance, that on move-in day, he went upstairs and saw the room full of notorious flies. He then went downstairs to tell someone, but the adults were busy moving boxes. He says he then went back upstairs to look again, but all the flies were gone and the window had been closed the entire time. This reminds me of the researcher David Icke's claim that certain people in positions of world leadership are part of a Reptilian race. He claims, for instance, that the Queen of England is a Reptilian, and that a few people have actually seen her in that form. My problem is not so much with the story - after all, I have my own story that, while hard to believe, is 100% true - but with the physics. I would ask Icke, "how do the molecules in Queen Elizabeth's body change from human to lizard and back again? How does the change happen biologically"? If he could answer that question satisfactorily, I might say "okay". But I doubt he could. It is similar in Danny's case with the roomful of disappearing flies. If he had said he saw the flies and left it at that, it would be easier to believe. It's their sudden and complete disappearance that makes the issue difficult from a physical standpoint.
However, there is much, much more to his story than a roomful of flies, and a lot of it cannot be easily dismissed. Indeed, at one point a news team is interviewed. The anchor and his crew were the same people on the scene in 1975, when the Amityville story first broke. The anchor politely pooh-poohs the supernatural aspect, saying that he and his team had, in early 1976, spent a night in the house as an experiment. He says not one of them experienced anything out of the ordinary. However, and to me this is huge, they had a photographer on hand who snapped photos of the interior throughout the evening. Most show nothing but walls and furniture. But there is one photograph that has to be seen to be believed, and when you see it, you will believe it because it leaves no doubt.
It's a terrifying photo, and even the news team admit they cannot explain it. It's a bit of a shame that, near the end of the film, when all the pros and cons are being tallied, that the director does not return to that photograph when giving face time to idiots like Elizabeth Loftus.
Danny presents a problem for his own believability at the very end. I won't tell you what it is, but I don't think it negates his claims. There is zero doubt in my mind that something beyond comprehension happened to him in that house. Some of his examples sound physically impossible as noted, but overall I believe him. Apparently, so did the priests at the local parish. I won't tell you about their reaction to Danny, but you may have heard of it before.
If you read my recent blogs on the 1979 "Amityville" feature film, and you've been following the story so far, then you're definitely gonna want to see this documentary. "My Amityville Horror" is a genuinely frightening account of what happened in the house, from the kid (now a man) who experienced it. His story is riveting. Two Big Thumbs Up. /////
I'm gonna head out for a short walk and then to the produce market. Stay on the Good Side.
Tons of peace and love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment