While I think I covered this forth film in the franchise as well as to be expected back in October of 2018, I didn't like it at all back two years ago. It sure doesn't feel like it has been two years. It was just a regular afternoon in the week when I watched it, and this does feel like it is very much a weeknight movie for cable in the summer; not particularly carrying that autumnal feel of the 1979 or 1982 original and its "prequel", Amityville IV: The Evil Escapes (1989) was still on my mind and I was like, "Fuck it, it's a late Sunday evening time waster". It's just not an Amityville horror film in the typical sense. That actually might be an endorsement for some. A lamp is possessed by the demonic presence of the Amityville house in New York once priests go in to exorcise it. And so the lamp ends up in California at Jane Wyatt's three story beast of a house overlooking an ocean from a long cliff. Wyatt's home does sort of have the eyes familiar to Amityville fans but it really isn't the same. You do get to see the 112 Ocean Avenue briefly at the beginning, and Lehne and Lloyd go in with other priests to "clean" the house, pretty much restoring the property so it can be sold without the frustrating damaging reputation remaining corrupted. I bet it would still be a bitch of a problem getting the property occupied without a hell of a deal. I think the selling point will always be Patty Duke and kids in a house with a demonic evil. The garbage disposal, chainsaw, and bad piping (and the evil starting up the van and driving it off somewhere!) antics are the film's evil lamp horror activities. There are "little girl wielding a knife" sequences, and that killer neck choking cord doesn't have any give to it. I can see why the filmmakers felt the need to get away from the Amityville home considering three films already went that route. But basically they just went across the country and committed to more demon possession effects, just with an ugly lamp that looks to have been cut from a Sleepy Hollow tree (or in those damned woods in Tennessee where Ashe battled the Evil Dead). Duke gets across the loss of her husband, the pains of getting along with a headstrong mother, dealing with a daughter who can't shake the loss of her dad, and the eventual demonic activity just making matters even worse. This has that made-for-cable feel to it that I think folks nostalgic for that might gravitate towards. But this, budgetary-wise, very much looks like it scraped up just enough budget for television. And Duke's attachment by the late 80s/early 90s assures us that this is very much a television product. If she had actually dealt with demonic evil in the Amityville house, I'm curious how different this would have been. Probably not much. I did move my rating up for the film from 1.5 to 2.5/5. I think this is better than the third film with Tony Roberts and Tess Parker, but that's not saying much. I still think "Amityville 3-D" is the better drive-in option while "The Evil Escapes" feels perfect for 7:00PM on TBS on a Thursday night in 1991.
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| The brief opening of the Amityville home. |
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| Wyatt's house in Cali. |
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