Former haunted-house owner George Lutz says he's now being haunted by the way he was portrayed in "The Amityville Horror."

Lutz is suing the studios, producers and screenwriters involved in the recent remake of the 1979 horror classic for defamation and breach of contract, claiming he has suffered "loss of reputation, shame, mortification and hurt feelings" from the film's depiction of him as "a homicidal maniac."

Lutz says he never engaged in the crimes — including animal cruelty and attempted murder — committed in the movie by his namesake character, played by actor Ryan Reynolds.

But while Lutz may not see himself as the film's creators envisioned him, legal precedent indicates that Hollywood has the upper hand when it comes to the question: Is seeing believing?

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"The courts typically say, 'C'mon, it's a movie. This is not a history lesson. People expect some form of fictionalization in a movie,'" said John Aquino, media law attorney and author of "Truth and Lives on Film: The Legal Problems of Depicting Real Persons and Events in a Fictional Medium."

Aquino was a consultant in a failed case against the makers of "A Perfect Storm."

The family of deceased boat captain Frank "Billy" Tyne, played by George Clooney, claimed that Tyne was wrongly portrayed as a reckless, self-absorbed excessive risk-taker who led his crew to their deaths off the coast of Nova Scotia.

The Tynes lost, essentially, because dead men can't sue for libel.

Just last month, an appeals court upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by a Harlem librarian who says she was defamed in the 1996 roman à clef "Primary Colors," which was based on Bill Clinton's 1991-92 presidential campaign.

Lutz's home ownership nightmares were first recounted in the 1977 book.

Both book and movie implied that the Clintonesque character had a sexual encounter with a Harlem librarian during a campaign stop. The court ruled that any similarities between the real librarian and the character in the book were too superficial to merit a suit.

Lutz claims, however, that when he sold his life rights, a clause in his agreement stated that no new Amityville movie could "intentionally defame or libel" him.

His contract was handed down through several parties before being assigned to Dimension Films, who in turn teamed up with MGM, United Artists, Radar Pictures and Platinum Dunes, the production company run by "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake producer Michael Bay, all of whom are named in the complaint.

Because the remake purports to tell the "true story" of what happened at 112 Ocean Avenue, using actual 911 calls, autopsy photographs and newspaper headlines, Lutz fears that moviegoers will believe he truly committed evil acts.

Haunting aftermath

Lutz's chilling real-life tale opens on Long Island some 29 years ago.

In January 1976, the 28-year-old fled with his wife and children from the now-infamous Dutch Colonial clapboard house with the jack 'o lantern bay windows after living for 28 days with demonic apparitions, disembodied voices and paranormal interlopers.

Those 28 days spawned Jay Anson's bestselling 1977 book "The Amityville Horror"; Anson's book begat the 1979 film of the same name; the film inspired several sequels churned out on a thin strand of the original story.

Paranormal investigators would later trumpet the entire haunting as an elaborate hoax. But Lutz, to this day, maintains that he, his wife Kathy, and their three children lived under the ghostly residue of a brutal mass murder committed upon the house's prior inhabitants.

In November 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot his mother, father, two brothers and two sisters as they lay asleep in their beds. DeFeo is serving 25 years to life in prison. His next parole hearing is in September.

George and Kathy Lutz bought the tainted riverfront house at a bargain price in December 1975, only to leave virtually all their belongings behind, never to return.

And while Lutz may have become obsessed with the house and believed he was going mad, as the remake depicts, he did not take an ax to the beloved family dog. (The dog lived for many years after they left the house, his attorney assures.)

Nor did Lutz build coffins for his healthy brood, try to drown Kathy in the houseboat, shoot at his children with a rifle or try to attack them with an ax.

"What MGM and the producers of the movie did to Mr. Lutz is pretty horrible," Lutz's attorney, Larry Zerner, told Courttv.com. "They portrayed him as someone who would try to kill his own family."

Nonetheless, he would still like to be paid for the inaccurate depiction.

Lutz's complaint, filed June 10 in Los Angeles Superior Court, asks for an unspecified amount of general and punitive damages for defamation. He also claims Dimension has yet to pay him a promised percentage of net and merchandising profits, as well as $50,000 once the film exceeded $10 million in box-office receipts. The picture has grossed more than $81 million since its April release, according to the complaint.

A Dimension spokeswoman declined to comment.

Producer Michael De Luca, former head of production at Newline and DreamWorks studios, has spent the past 20 years perfecting the art of the deal in Hollywood. He was not involved in the remake of "The Amityville Horror" but is quite familiar with the story.

"The original movie has James Brolin, as George, stomp around the house with an ax looking like he's going to kill his family. The remake just amps it up, but it's still allowed," De Luca told Courttv.com.

George Lutz, portrayed here by Ryan Reynolds, says the new movie makes him look like a "homicidal maniac."

"There's no law saying a movie — not a documentary — of a public domain story can't take liberties in the pursuit of drama," De Luca says. "[Lutz] has no case. All movies based on living people take liberties."

Author Aquino agrees that filmmakers' broad protection under the First Amendment allows them to focus on their first priority: entertaining the audience.

"You don't want people to walk out and say 'Well, that was really long and boring, but I guess it was true,'" he said.

Even films that purport to be "based on a true story" like the Amityville pictures, Aquino says, are typically protected by that universal disclaimer that follows the end credits: "Certain characters and events have been changed to heighten dramatic effect."

This endgame statement evolved from a landmark 1934 defamation suit, when a London court ordered MGM to pay Russian Princess Irena Youssoupoff 25,000 for suggesting in the film "Rasputin and the Empress" that she had been raped by the mad monk.

But Lutz may find some comfort in a recent notable exception.

Retired white boxer Joey Giardello defeated Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in an undisputed 1964 bout. But in 1999's "The Hurricane," the match was reimagined as a racially tinged and undeserved victory against the black boxer, Carter.

Giardello sued for defamation, and the studio settled for an undisclosed sum. Director Norman Jewison also agreed to make a clarification on the DVD version of the film, saying that Giardello was a solid fighter who beat Hurricane fair and square.

The plaintiffs in Lutz's suit are expected to file their response by Monday. In the meantime, Lutz may want to trot out those post-Amityville photos of his beloved family dog. The DVD version of the remake is scheduled for release this fall.