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A LITTLE EXTRA ON AMITYVILLE 
Once again The Amityville Horror is in the news. The book itself was a runaway bestseller when it first appeared in 1977 selling 10 million copies. A few years later, in 1979, the film version inevitably arrived and it too was a box office success ($86 million). In fact it proved to be the most profitable indie [i.e. non-studio] film to have ever been produced. Since that time a veritable cottage industry has grown up around the Amityville case. Hollywood soon discovered that the word “Amityville” meant money, and spared no pains in producing a series of bogus spinoffs that bore no relation to the actual facts in the case. While the original movie was primarily accurate, the subsequent productions, the spinoffs, were really nothing more than cartoons that deserve to be ignored. Now MGM has released an entirely new version of the film, which is even more intense and frightening than the first. This latest rendition will introduce a whole new generation of people to one of the most incredible cases of spirit phenomena to ever occur in the United States. And with it will come, regrettably, the same old bogus controversy as to whether the event ever happened at all. The Business Of Controversy There's money in being contrary and when it comes to Amityville a small but vocal cult has turned denial of this case into a fine art. The so-called 'controversy', which has already erupted, is entirely artificial and being acted out by a bunch of shady characters - primarily grumps and atheists - who have a very big ax to grind. Their principal objective is to cash in on the publicity that the movie generates. As a result you have a rather vicious group of naysayers - all unfamiliar with the theological evidence behind the case - vigorously insisting that the event never happened. They write articles and nit-pick details, but accomplish nothing, other than to get their names in the paper. Which is their objective of course. Pay attention to their comments at your own peril. Virtually every one of them was excluded from the original investigation by both the police and the church and base their denials on "facts" garnered from secondary sources and street-corner witnesses. In fact some of the most vociferous critics are long dead, and the arguments against Amityville are actually being carried out by proxies or interest groups who stand to gain by keeping the pot stirred. So much for conviction. Then you have the atheist crowd, who come out of the woodwork whenever any mystical event gets taken seriously. They bellow just as loud. They say the Amityville case is a lie. They say the whole thing was cooked up for a profit. In fact they say just about anything. But most especially they say, Don't see the movie. That's because, deep down, the outbreak in Amityville was in fact a serious religious event, and they don't want you to know it. Why? The answer is simple. Belief in spirits implies a belief in God, and their sole purpose is to cause people not to believe in God. Seeing the movie thus jeopardizes their position. Pretty transparent but that's the way it is. One should therefore be wary of both the grumps and atheists who want your attention on this one: they have an agenda, and that agenda is an extremely devious one. They desperately want to raise doubt in people's minds. They want you to take your eye off the ball and pay attention to them - not to the gravity of the Amityville message. |
