Home Movies

Exclusive Interview With Director Eric Walter On My Amityville Horror

To watch The Amityville Horror and be terrified is one thing, but what about hearing the actual ghost story that inspired Jay Anson's original book? Yes, the movie is all based on stories recalled by the Lutz family while living in one of the most fabled houses in Long Island history, although there's much controversy over the actual details - and that's where documentary filmmaker Eric Walter comes in with his brand new film My Amityville Horror.

Recommended Videos

We Got This Covered: Were there ever any moments the interview with Danny become too intense and you had to stop shooting on My Amityville Horror?

Eric Walter:  Yes, and the one that comes to mind is the way the film ended where I ask him to take a polygraph test and getting his intense, angry reaction – that’s how the interview ended, and also how our day ended. That was the first day of shooting, and it wasn’t really a great feeling at the time. I thought I’d pushed too far, but what I think I did do was ask him that question without priming him because I eventually allowed him to pour his heart out for eight hours in that interview setting. There were camera operators and production specialists around the whole time, so he was slightly uncomfortable with that, however, we were in his garage where he had his guitars, so we tried to make it as comfortable for him as possible.

Of course he and I also had a friendship prior to this interview already anyway, which is what you have to do when you do a film like this – you have to be friends with the person.

Anyway, George and Kathy Lutz in 1979 took polygraph tests where they were asked questions like “Did you levitate,” “Did you see yourself as an old hag,” “Did you hear a disembodied marching band downstairs,” you know, all these crazy things claimed by George and Kathy. As a result, the two answered all these questions “Yes” and passed the lie detector test with flying colors, so I thought it was reasonable to ask Danny if he would be willing to do that, but he took that as an assault on his credibility from my perception. I don’t think his anger in that was because he was unwilling, I think he really felt I was trying to insinuate he was lying. He’s lived a life where all his friends have been telling him he’s a liar, his parents are liars, the whole thing is a hoax, and so I think anyone who pushes those buttons will see that anger.

I knew I really pushed some buttons on-set because everyone was looking around thinking “What did he do?”

We Got This Covered: Was there ever an eeriness about hearing different witnesses give the same evidence or hearing the same stories repeated perfectly by different people?

Eric Walter: Oh there were absolutely eerie undertones because for the first time you were taking a lot of people that had primarily been featured in, for example, a History Channel documentary as a headshot where they’re all edited together in post production, whereas my method was I wanted to bring all these people together in the same room and hash it out. Bring the skeptics along with the believers and let them debate among themselves. Unfortunately a lot of the first-hand witness have passed, leaving the stories to younger generations, as even Danny has been rather unknown besides being a character in the original story and book. For him to come out of the woodwork now is an extraordinary proposition, and there was definitely something eerie about that and everyone’s reaction.

If you remember in the film Lorraine Warren’s reaction to some of the things Danny was saying about George, I purposely let the camera hold on the wide angle of the table so you could see Lorraine’s eyes dart up at Laura and you can see the emotion. I wanted that raw feeling, and I let the film breathe in that way. It’s a character study, so you really need to have the ability to not let post production and all the facts get in the way of what the film’s ultimate purpose is – analyzing the psychological impact the events had on Danny.

We Got This Covered: Was there every any doubt about the details while filming My Amityville Horror?

Eric Walter: Oh yeah, especially from the early onset. There’s stories of Danny being hurled up the stairs, or Danny’s bed floating in the air and hitting the ceiling – I had an extraordinarily hard time swallowing that stuff. The absolute hardest part for me to believe was Danny’s accusation that George had successfully uses telekinesis to float a wrench, taking everything out of the realm of the paranormal to where George could actually do this. I’m not going to go and say Danny is lying about that, however I do believe that his anger towards his stepfather colors a lot of his statements, and I feel there’s a motivation there to blame everything on George.

In a way I feel that’s unfair, certainly I wish George were alive so we could get his perception, and there were a lot of concerns I had personally about presenting his perception on it strictly because not only did the other kids not want to talk in the film, but many witnesses are no longer around. The way I chose to structure the documentary was about Danny and Danny only, just his perception of what went down there, and it was a window into what may or may not have actually been happening in the house. The family strife and the family dynamic at the time may have had much more to do with what was going on than any ghost actually did. The overwhelming factor for me was George’s role in the story and Danny’s version of the story that he plays. George seemed to haunt Danny.

Here’s another example I can give of the impact media had on the story – in the 1979 movie there was a scene where Rod Steiger, who plays the priest, goes in a room and hordes of flies attack him. Now when Danny describes that scene on move-in day, Father Ray comes into the house to do a blessing, then he claims he saw Father Ray run out of the house, and when he saw the room where the Father had attempted to do his blessing, there were about 400 to 500 flies buzzing about. I found that interesting because it sounded like a movie version of what that was, because George and Kathy had described them inviting the priest through the house and that he calmly claimed he felt something in the upstairs bedroom and they simply shouldn’t use it as one.

For me, the fact that Danny says he saw the priest running from the house sounds like a movie version of what had been told. I don’t think he’s fabricating that, but it’s more like attributing a childhood memory to things he’s heard about, read, or seen, thinking what’s depicted in the film is exactly how Mom and Dad said it happened. That’s what I tried to show in the film without saying out and out it’s a lie, because we have no proof. I was very into letting the film be objective so audiences could make up their own minds.

We Got This Covered: So I’m curious, are there any other mysteries you’d like to solve with your next project? What’s coming next for you?

Eric Walter: [Laughs] So many people have been asking me that.

I’m currently working on a new feature documentary along the same lines…well…actually it’s not along the same lines really. It’s not Amityville related. It’s not haunting related. I can’t really go into the details right now because I’m currently in development on it and working on gaining access to various peoples involved in the story, but I’m very excited about it. It’s an “unsolved mysteries” type of scenario.

I’ve always been very interested in that material though, it’s my niche, it’s what I want to do. I think documentaries are so much more relative and so much more frightening than anything you can make up, and to shed light on some of the world’s most interesting cases is what I feel I’m here to do. Obviously it’s working out well!

Thanks so much to Eric Walter and you can catch My Amityville Horror in select theaters or streaming through any VOD format!