Amityville: The Evil Escapes (1989)

Well, well, well, if I thought that the third Amityville Horror movie was bad I should really have reserved my final judgment until seeing this film and, indeed, the sequels that would come after it. I'm now quite apprehensive about my future visits to Amityville but I've started so I'll have to finish. It's my OCD and if things just keep getting worse and worse well . . . . . . . . maybe I'll save some other poor soul from my fate and it will all be worth it.

As you might have guessed from the title, Amityville: The Evil Escapes, this movie relocates the horror of the first few movies. The evil from Amityville does, indeed, escape. But how would it make such an escape? Possessing an unsuspecting visitor? Staying indoors while some rich ghosthunter moves the entire house across the country? A portal of some kind? No, the evil essence of Amityville puts itself into a . . . . . . . . . lamp.

It's hard to take a horror movie seriously when the main icon of evil is an upright lamp so fair play to writer-director Sandor Stern (and John G. Jones, who wrote the book) for sticking to his guns and providing audiences with more lamp-centric horror than they probably ever knew that they wanted. Of course, the movie is preposterous AND pretty dull and just downright bad. I was initially going to put all of the blame onto Stern but I now feel a bit guilty for two reasons. 1) The man did write the screenplay for the first movie, proving that he could do a good job with the material. 2) He also wrote and directed the excellent Pin (trust me, seek it out if you like great psychological horror).

The cast are no great shakes and don't do anything to help the weak material. Patty Duke, Jane Wyatt, Fredric Lehne (who is saddled with most of the more ridiculous lines), Lou Hancock, Brandy Gold, Zoe Trilling, Aron Eisenberg, etc, all have at least one laughable moment and none of them manage to give solid performances from start to finish.

There's nothing here to make this movie worth a watch. Not even any of the lowest common denominators - gratuitous nudity or excessive gore. Nope, all we have is an evil lamp. Indeed, the ridiculousness of that sentence really tells you all you need to know about the film.

3/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amityville-The-Evil-Escapes-DVD/dp/B000A0XTP8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346100249&sr=8-2

The Amityville Horror (1979)

You may sneer and laugh at me for saying so but The Amityville Horror remains one of my favourite haunted house movies and I put it up alongside such classics as The Haunting and The Legend Of Hell House. It left an indelible impression upon me when I saw it in my youth and even though I am now older and wiser (and armed with the knowledge that a lot of the story is alleged to be completely fictional) I still can't watch the movie without being affected by the ominous presence of the house at the centre of the supernatural events. That haunting score by Lalo Schifrin doesn't help matters (I rank it alongside The Omen as one of the best horror movie scores of all time).

The story, for those of you somehow unaware of the most famous haunted house since Borley Rectory, is all about George (James Brolin) and Kathy Lutz (Margot Kidder), a married couple with three kids (two boys and one girl) and not too much in the way of disposable income. They move into the house in Amityville, aware of the history it has but dismissing the fact that the house itself is a bad place, and it's not long before things start going bump in the night, bump in the day and bump all over the place.

The Amityville Horror is, despite the fact that none of it actually happened, a fine movie. It takes a number of preposterous ideas and somehow makes them all believable, thanks to a mix of solid direction from Stuart Rosenberg and a great cast including Brolin in one of his best roles, Kidder being a bit less annoying than usual, Rod Steiger, Murray Hamilton and Don Stroud. Steiger is landed with the worst of the roles, a priest trying to help the Lutz family, but he has fun in the role and is always entertaining. The film also proves once again that what you don't see is always a lot scarier than any special effects that could have been thrown around onscreen (the one major visual fright is actually one of the lamest moments in the whole movie).

The book was written by Jay Anson, from the tale that he was told by George Lutz and his wife, and the screenplay by Sandor Stern takes the enjoyable and melodramatic raw material and keeps everything nicely paced en route to an unashamedly bombastic finale.

Yet, in many ways, The Amityville Horror isn't all that affected by the direction, the script or the acting. That music plays and the camera shows the "face" of the house and that's all it takes for the goosebumps to rise and the atmosphere to start taking hold. You might try to say that the house is actually an icon of horror. Or maybe I'd be alone with that opinion.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Amityville-Horror-DVD/dp/B000795L9E/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1342087283&sr=8-6