Movie Myths: Real or Reel?

Article posted Thu Jan 15 11:57:08 2004

The real stories behind theExorcist, Amityville Horror, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre films.

Due to popular demand, I am re-publishing all three installments of my series Movie Myths: Real or Reel? in one three-part article. I discuss the oft-seen tag on films: “Based on (or Inspired By) A True Story!” It is a fair question to ask for some historical accuracy when a film (or book) is touted as having been based on real events. After all, if the story is too fictionalized, why bother to go with the “ripped-from-the-headlines” angle, except for marketing purposes?

People have often complained that fictionalized film scripts based on real events have strayed a little too far from the facts. Oliver Stone’s JFK, for example, was criticized for its left-wing conspiracy theories. Feminists criticized Milos Forman’s The People Vs. Larry Flynt for what they felt was a glorification of the pornographer. (They somehow missed the fact that Flynt’s legal victory—and the whole reason for the film—had nothing to do with porn and was in fact about free speech over a cartoon satirizing Jerry Falwell.) A Beautiful Mind, the 2001 Academy Award winner, took some heat for allegedly glossing over some unsavory parts of the subject’s life. And so on.

Real life is an obvious and plentiful source for fiction, and there are far too many films supposedly based on true events to deal with them all. In this series of short articles I focus on three of the more famous “based on true events” horror films: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist, and The Amityville Horror. As a film critic and horror fan, I have been asked about the “real events” behind these three films far more than any others.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

On October 17, a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre hit theaters. The poster notes ominously that it was “Inspired By A True Story.” Most poster art versions of Tobe Hooper’s original 1974 classic promoted the “true” aspect of the story: One says, “…it happened!”; another crows, “What happened is true…” The back of one video release says it is “A horror cult film based on an actual crime.” The 1974 film’s opening narration, by Night Court’s John Larroquette, hints but doesn’t explicitly state that it’s from a true story: “The film you are about to see is an account of the tragedy…”

Well, okay.

In fact, the true story that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was inspired by has little to do with the film. It didn’t take place in Texas, didn’t involve a chainsaw (as far as I know), and wasn’t really a massacre. The evildoer (doesn’t sound as stupid when I write it as it does when Bush says it) was not a massive, menacing, faceless hulk but a fairly mild and meek fellow, far more Norman Bates than Leatherface.

Both Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were inspired by rural Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein, who killed at least two people and dug up the graves of many more in the 1940s and 1950s. He is known to have skinned the dead and fashioned objects and “clothes” from body parts—hence Chainsaw’s Leatherface. (For those who don’t know, Leatherface is the big monster with the subpar dental work and the chainsaw; he wears a mask of human skin.) Gein also allegedly ate parts a few of his victims, a theme Jeffrey Dahmer would also pick up on. I’ve also read that Buffalo Bill, the serial killer in Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs, was modeled after Gein as well.

Robert Bloch, screenwriter of Psycho, and Tobe Hooper, scribe of Chainsaw, both borrowed bits from Gein’s real-life story. Bloch seems to have principally borrowed the sadistic and haunting mother motif, including the mummified mother. Hooper, on the other hand, found a use for the more visceral and gruesome details about using skin and bones from the dead for household items.

Psycho is much truer to the facts than Chainsaw is, though neither film really tells Gein’s story. If you want that, you can rent Deranged (1974) a slightly fictionalized film based on his case. More recently, Ed Gein’s story was told in one of a series of cheap splatter films about real-life serial killers (other titles in the series feature John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer). I’m not vouching for their historical accuracy, mind you.

The Exorcist

The “real story” behind The Exorcist is a long and complicated one, but I’ll give the short version and direct readers to all the gory (and not-so-gory) details for further reading. There are a number of “this is the REAL story” accounts out there; most of them are simply rehashed and poorly researched books and articles looking to cash in on the film’s success.

The script for The Exorcist was written by William Peter Blatty, adapted from his best-selling 1971 novel of the same name. In fact, Blatty won an Academy Award for his script (Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium). Cashing in on The Exorcist gravy train, Blatty quickly followed up with his memoir about writing the book, this one titled William Peter Blatty On The Exorcist From Novel to Film. In it, he described the inspiration for the film: a 1949 Washington Post article he’d read as a grad student when he was at Georgetown University. The piece, which ran August 20, told of a 14-year-old boy from nearby Mount Rainier, Maryland, who had undergone an exorcism.

Many of the myths surrounding The Exorcist film and “real story” came about because of “the mystic twaddle Blatty gave out to the press while pushing his book” (Kim Mohan quoted in his book Nightmare Movies, p. 43). Blatty had a career and book to promote, and was not above embellishing the story with partly (and wholly) fictional elements. Of course, the film was not a documentary, but Blatty strongly suggested that the film stuck more or less to reality.

Investigative journalist Mark Opsasnick investigated the case and concluded that the Mount Rainier story, as popularly held (and which Blatty used as a basis for the novel), could not be true. For one thing, the family that occupied the home at the time the alleged possession took place did not have a boy there, demon-possessed or otherwise: the occupants were childless. Long-time neighbors denied that anything horrific or supernatural had ever occurred there. There was, however, an actual exorcism done (not in Mount Rainier but in Garden City, Maryland), though virtually all of the gory and sensational details were embellished or made up. Simple spitting became Technicolor, projectile vomiting; (normal) shaking of a bed became thunderous quaking and levitation; the boy’s low growl became a gravelly, Satanic voice. And so on.

Those interested in the full details can find them in articles by Opsasnick. One is “The Haunted Boy,” published in Fortean Times, Number 123, page 34; another is in Strange Magazine, 1998, Number 20. The piece is also available online at www.strangemag.com.

It certainly is true that exorcisms have been (and continue to be) performed, often on emotionally and mentally disturbed people. Whether those undergoing the exorcism are truly possessed by spirits or demons is another matter entirely. Most often, exorcisms are done on people of strong religious faith. To the extent that exorcisms “work,” it is primarily due to the power of suggestion and the placebo effect. If you believe you are possessed, and that a given ritual will cleanse you, then it just might.

A recent book on the topic (American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty By Michael Cuneo, Doubleday, 2001) found no reason to think anything supernatural occurred in the “real” exorcist case, or any other. After attending fifty exorcisms, Cuneo is unequivocal about the fact that he saw nothing supernatural—and certainly nothing remotely resembling The Exorcist. No spinning heads, levitation, or poltergeists, though maybe some cursing and a little puking now and then.

Cuneo credits Blatty and The Exorcist with much of the modern-day interest in the topic: “Over the course of the twentieth century the popular cultural industry, with its endless run of movies, books, and digital delights, has gained a pervasive influence over the national consciousness. It has… attained an enormous capacity for shaping everyday beliefs and behaviors. . . . When Hollywood and its allies put out the Word, somebody’s guaranteed to be listening” (p. 50). As for historical accuracy, Cuneo characterizes Blatty’s work as a massive structure of fantasy resting on a flimsy foundation of a priest’s diary account of the Mount Rainier case.

The Exorcist story gets less and less impressive the farther away it gets from the film that made it famous. As is often the case, sensationalism, hyperbole, and myths replace fact and reality when it comes to making a good story.

The Amityville Horror

The story of The Amityville Horror, as with The Exorcist, begins with a best-selling novel. A book titled The Amityville Horror: A True Story, written by Jay Anson, was published in 1977 and quickly became a hit. Soon it was made into an equally successful horror film starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder. And, as with The Exorcist, several inferior sequels followed in its wake (including a 3-D version). Anson was not a resident of the infamous possessed house, but a professional writer hired to pen a book based on “true events” that happened there several years earlier.…

The story behind the story began on November 13, 1974, when six members of an Amityville, New York, family were killed. The parents, Ronald and Louise DeFeo, were shot in bed while they slept, along with two sons and two daughters. The sole remaining family member, Ronald Jr. (“Butch”), was arrested for the crime and later sentenced to prison. With the family dead (and Butch in no position to inherit the place), the house went up for sale. The horrific nature of the massacre unnerved the otherwise quiet Long Island neighborhood, though no supernatural activity was associated with the house at 112 Ocean Avenue.

The following year, a new family, the Lutzes, moved into the house. George and Kathy Lutz, along with their three children, said that shortly after moving in, the six-bedroom abode became a Hell house. It seemed that perhaps the demons that drove Butch to slaughter his family were not in his head but in the house. An unseen force ripped doors from hinges and slammed cabinets closed. Noxious green slime oozed from the ceilings. A biblical-scale swarm of insects attacked the family. A demonic face with glowing red eyes peered into their house at night, leaving cloven-hoofed footprints in the morning snow. A priest called upon to bless the house was driven back with painful blisters on his hands. And so on.

A local television crew did a segment on the house, bringing in several self-styled “ghost hunters” (including Ed and Lorraine Warren) and other alleged psychics. All agreed that a demonic spirit was in the house, and that an exorcism would be needed to stop the activity. The Lutzes left the house but took their terrifying tale with them, collaborating with Mr. Anson for their book. And, as William Peter Blatty did when he promotedThe Exorcist, Anson vouched for the truthfulness of his fantastic tale: “There is simply too much independent corroboration of their narrative to support the speculation that [the Lutzes] either imagined or fabricated these events.”

Some people expressed doubts about the events in the house, and a few specific parts of it were even proven false (for example, the Lutzes could not have found the demonic hoofprint in the snow when they said they did, because weather records showed there had been no snowfall to leave prints in!). Still, the Lutzes stuck to their story, reaping tens of thousands of dollars from the book and film rights.

The truth behind The Amityville Horror was finally revealed when Butch DeFeo’s lawyer, William Weber, admitted that he, along with the Lutzes, “created this horror story over many bottles of wine.” The house was never really haunted; the horrific experiences they had claimed were simply made up. While the Lutzes profited handsomely from their story, Weber had planned to use the haunting to gain a new trial for his client. The Lutzes also later admitted that virtually everything they had said about the haunting—and everything in The Amityville Horror—was pure fiction.

Their account was likely influenced by another fictionalized story—that of The Exorcist (see part II of this series in the article archives). In fact, it is not much of a stretch to suggest that The Exorcist strongly influenced the Amityville story; recall that The Exorcist came out in December 1973. Demonic possession and hauntings were very much in the public’s mind when Lutzes spun their stories of demonic activity a year or two later. The Lutzes must have had a good laugh at the expense of the mystery-mongering ghost hunters and self-proclaimed psychics, who reported their terrifying visions and verified the house’s (non-existent) demonic residents. Apparently, it was all their imagination.

To this day, the fact that The Amityville Horror story was an admitted hoax is still not widely known; as they say, the truth never stands in the way of a good story.

Details for this article were taken from Joe Nickell’s fine investigative piece “Amityville: The Horror of It All,” in the January/February 2003 issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. See also Stephen and Roxanne Kaplan’s book The Amityville Horror Conspiracy and “The Amityville Horror Hoax” in the May, 1978, Fate magazine by Rick Moran and Peter Jordan.

I hope you enjoyed this series, and I have more planned for February!