INTERVIEW: New film investigates real-life ‘Amityville Murders’
Photo: The Amityville Murders stars Chelsea Ricketts as a member of the DeFeo family. Photo courtesy of Skyline Entertainment / Provided by Katrina Wan PR with permission.
What happened at a mysterious house in Amityville, New York, a few decades ago remains a mystery for those involved and those looking for a good scare. In the 1970s, Ronald DeFeo Jr. massacred his family in the house, and the crime and ensuing police case captured the interest of people around the country.
Then came the Lutz family, who moved into the house and started to hear things that went bump in the night. Their “paranormal” experiences were put down into book form by Jay Anson, and The Amityville Horror went on to become a bestseller and series of successful movies.
Now writer-director Daniel Farrands, who conducted extensive research into the DeFeo killings for The History Channel’s Amityville: The Haunting documentary, has crafted a new film that looks back at the multiple homicides that began the headlines. The Amityville Murders, which arrives Feb. 8 in theaters, on demand and on digital, stars John Robinson as Ronald “Butch” DeFeo, Chelsea Ricketts as Dawn DeFeo and Diane Franklin as the mother Louise DeFeo. Franklin interestingly played a character in Amityville II: The Possession.
Ricketts, who has previously appeared in Crooked Arrows and The Hole, was familiar with some of the details of the case before signing up for the project, and she was impressed by Farrands’ dedication to the story.
“I was definitely more familiar with the true-crime documentary that I had seen on it,” Ricketts said in a recent phone interview. “I had actually seen the director Dan Farrin’s documentary that he had made prior, and then of course once I was attached to the project I watched all the films that were made on it.”
Ricketts responded to Farrin’s script because his movie considers all of the possibilities of what happened the night of the multiple homicides. Two people, she said, could walk away from a screening of The Amityville Murders and have wildly different interpretations.
“I think his script kind of showed the background of the family dynamic,” she said. “It showed the drug use. It showed the abuse, and then it showed the potential hauntings of the house. Was he just seeing things in his mind, or was the house actually haunted? So I think you can walk away with any version that you believe may have happened, so I thought that was a really interesting take on the story that we’ve seen a bunch of times.”
Ricketts often works in the genres of horror and thriller, and she finds these stories fascinating. One of her favorite pastimes is watching true-crime documentaries, mostly because she cannot understand the violence and motivations. The Amityville Murders is a movie she would probably have checked out even without her presence in the ensemble — and this ensemble was one of the chief positives of working on the project.
“I think with John [Robinson], he just made my job easy,” Ricketts said. “He’s so talented, and he delivered a performance that was so eerie that it was very easy to play opposite of him and made my job easy in the sense of he did such a good job that I actually was terrified. … I know everybody in interviews is like, ‘I love my cast. They’re wonderful.’ [But] Diane [Franklin] was truly so warm and kind and giving. She just brought a light to the dark subject matter. She’s just so kind, and I have to say I feel so lucky to have gotten to work with Paul [Ben-Victor]. I mean, even his career, I’ve been such a fan of his for so long. Getting to work with him so closely was such a treat as an actor on my end.”
The filming process was difficult because it started with pain and darkness on page two. Being around this subject matter for so long can certainly be a draining process.
“It was difficult material to shoot and long hours,” she said. “It moved quickly though. A lot of films there so much downtime, a lot of time in your trailer or sitting around on set, waiting for the next shot, but we moved really quick, which I enjoyed and preferred. So in that sense it was great, and then filming with the director, Daniel Farrands, he just created such a wonderful, collaborative environment. … He cares about the story, and he cares about the people. And I don’t know that there’s somebody out there that knows more about this event than him, so it definitely made our jobs easier because we were really, really able to lean on Dan’s trust that we were doing the right thing. If he approved it, I felt confident.”
The iconic house, with its memorable windows that seem to mimic the eyes of a demon, was also recreated for this 2019 take. This time, though, the cast was far away from the actual location of Amityville, New York.
“We actually filmed in a house here in L.A.,” Ricketts said. “They had an amazing set designer come in and build the front of the house, like an exact replica of the actual house in Amityville, so the front was a set. And then the interiors were an actual house in Los Angeles that we were filming in.”
In other words, it must have been terrifying to be on set.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Amityville Murders, written and directed by Daniel Farrands, stars John Robinson, Chelsea Ricketts and Diane Franklin. It arrives in theaters, on demand and on digital Feb. 8. Click here for more information.
