Helen Shaver is a Canadian actress and film and television director. After appearing in a number of Canadian movies, she received a Canadian Screen Award for Best Actress for her performance in the romantic drama In Praise of Older Women (1978). She later appeared in the films The Amityville Horror (1979), The Osterman Weekend (1983), Desert Hearts (1985), The Color of Money (1986), The Believers (1987), The Craft (1996),Tremors 2: Aftershocks (1996) and Down River (2013). She received another Canadian Screen Award for Best Actress nomination for the 1986 drama film Lost!, and won a Best Supporting Actress for We All Fall Down (2000). Shaver also starred in some short-lived television series, including United States (1980) and Jessica Novak (1981), and from 1996 to 1999 starred in the Showtime horror series, Poltergeist: The Legacy, for which she received a Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television nomination.

The Amityville Horror is a 1979 American supernatural horror film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, and starring James Brolin, Margot Kidder, and Rod Steiger. The film follows a young couple who purchase a home haunted by combative supernatural forces. It is based on Jay Anson's 1977 book of the same name, which documented the alleged paranormal experiences of the Lutz family who briefly resided in the Amityville, New York home where Ronald DeFeo Jr. committed the mass murder of his family in 1974. It is the first entry in the long-running Amityville Horror film series, and was remade in 2005.