Amityville IV: The Evil Escapes

Sincere, earnest, realistic performances from Jayne Wyatt, Patty Duke, and Zoe Trilling (as grandmother, mother, and daughter respectively) try to salvage this surreal Amityville sequel, given the title, The Evil Escapes, essentially disregarding the third film with Tony Roberts and Tess Harper. A grotesque lamp with a bubble sunlit head, branch-like arms straight out of Sleepy Hollow, and a cord that likes to wrap around necks and wrists was in the Amityville house when priests enter in the exorsize the place.

Right out of the gate, the film offers a possessed Amityville house complete with flies on windows, levitating chairs, doors closing on folks, the works. And once the possessed lamp (just writing that cracks me up) is sent to Wyatt by Peggy McCay (her sister) from New York where the items inside the Amityville house (considered cleansed by Norman Lloyd’s Father Manfred) were being sold in a yard sale, the evil that once resided in (and outside sometimes) the structure starts tormenting Patty Duke’s family. 

There is a garbage disposal that takes the hand of a high school student just around the house helping out, the pipes putting out black gooey water (eventually bursting into the face of a plumber underpinned by the evil force which drowns the poor sap in the goo, even spilling out the severed hand taken by the garbage disposal!), the pet parrot found dead in the mini-stove, Duke’s daughter so convinced the lamp is her dad she becomes “enchanted” (herself bewitched by its possessive, persuasive power) with her room later discovered in crayon-mayhem disarray, the maid succumbing to heart attack when the cord wraps around her neck, and Duke’s son (played by Aron Eisenberg) contending with a “manic” chainsaw. 

The lamp even has the shape of a demonic face at times to emphasize the evil possessing it, later in the film going over the cliff into the rocks near an ocean. Fredric Lehne, as the young Father Kibbler, I recognize from Lost. Lehne is nearly killed by the lamp when coming in contact with the evil spirit, knocked unconscious and left in a coma until he fully recovers, having a type of “connection” with it. Lehne is similar to Father Karras in that he is seemingly fated to do battle with the evil once occupying the Amityville house. 

This television movie seemed intended to be one of several focusing on the evil that was in the Amityville house instead of remaining at the New York property specifically. Relocating to California near a coastal setting is a breath of fresh air, although I didn’t think this film really capitalized on that enough. Only at the end does the lamp take a header off the cliff (the house on the cliff overlooking the ocean) before crashing several feet below. I think the film really benefits from certain casting choices, and Duke was indeed a household name utilized to give the Amityville sequel some needed attention. Wyatt is also a connection to fans of television, but the film goes out of its way to establish her contentious relationship with Duke, not exactly happy about this family moving in with her. Duke's husband dies at 42 and Wyatt is too selfish to consider her daughter's grief and frustrating financial situation, much less her unexpected widow, single mom dilemma. Wyatt is quick to blame her kids for every wrong that occurs in the house.

Still, the supposed sequel to derive from the possessed cat (!!!) at the end never comes. I would say this sequel (although given the title officially as Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes) is only loosely tied to the films before it, probably only recognizing the first and second films…some have tried to give it continuity with the third film (where the house gave up the ghost) but I just don’t think any real success can come from it. McCay suffering from “possessed tetanus” when she scraped her finger on the lamp’s metal leaf is quite a creative way to bump her off! But the chainsaw incident, plumbing "mishap", and disposal disruption are not as frightening as they are unintentionally funny. Oh, and the evil driving the plumber's van away is the icing on the cake. I can't say this wasn't entertaining (the music is even ham-fisted), but there is no way I would be irresponsible enough to label it as a success of any stretch.

*  1/2 / * * * * *