[Steve_Hutchison]

There are lots of similarities between those 2 movies (dad getting mad, wanting to kill the family with an axe, haunted house, countdown of the days, etc). The Amityville horror came out in 1979 and The Shining in 1980 according to imdb.com but I guess they could be wrong.

In your opinion, who copied who? It's for a little research I'm doing. The Shining was based on the novel by Stephen King in which Jack Torrance tries to kill his family with a croquet stick, not with an axe. Then again, they say that The amityville Horror is based on a true story. I don't know to which extend tough.