You
might not remember, but a few weeks ago, I was all jazzed to see a double
feature of Amityville Horror: The Evil
Escapes and Amityville 1992: It’s About
Time on the big screen. Due to lack of
interest, the screening was abruptly cancelled, and I was left missing two
Movies of Horror-Ween for the month of October. Thanks to
longtime reader Venom for providing me with copies of both films.
After
the fun Amityville 3-D, the Amityville Horror franchise went straight to TV
with Amityville Horror: The Evil
Escapes. It was written and directed by
Sandor Stern, which makes sense when you consider he wrote the screenplay for
the original movie. It’s silly,
borderline stupid, and has some passages that feel like something out of a
Lifetime Original. However, there’s
enough nuttiness here to keep die-hard Amityville addicts amused.
Jane
Wyatt’s sister buys an ugly lamp at a yard sale at the Amityville Horror
house. She sends it to Jane out in
California as a joke, but the joke’s on her because the old bag cuts herself on
the lamp and dies a week later from tetanus.
Wyatt’s widowed daughter (Patty Duke) moves her family into her house
and almost immediately, her young daughter starts seeing her dead dad. After that, parrots are being found in the
toaster oven, chainsaws start taking a life of their own, and phones are
melting. The only thing that can stop it
are the priests who did the exorcism of the house in Amityville.
The
Evil Escapes starts out with that very same exorcism scene. Lights go on and off, chairs fly around, and
black gunk runs down the walls. Most of
the shocks are just your standard issue Made for TV junk, but we do get one
gnarly scene in which a guy’s hand gets stuck in a garbage disposal that is
fairly gory for a movie starring Patty Duke.
The
movie sort of plays like an overlong episode of the Friday the 13th
TV show in that antiques from a haunted spot carries the evil with it to
another house. The big problem with all
of this is that your main villain is… a GODDAMN LAMP. Sure, they try to make it spooky looking (it
looks like a tree with a fishbowl on top), but it never works out.
The
Evil Escapes is dumber than a bag of hammers, but like most Part 4’s it has a
bigger body count than the original.
Superfluous characters such as electricians and nannies are all
introduced only to be killed off.
Because of that, it’s not exactly boring.
Now,
I’m sure you’ll probably want to pull your hair out during the family strife
scenes of the widowed Duke trying to get along with her crusty mother. This shit is worse than your typical Lifetime
Movie. Hang with it though, because no
matter how bad it gets, I find it hard to hate any movie that ends with an
exorcism, levitating killer kids, and electrical cords attacking like
cobras. There’s also a positively
hilarious set-up for a sequel that I’m sure never got paid off properly, unless
The Amityville Pet Shop Horror is a thing.
AKA: Amityville 4:
The Evil Escapes. AKA: Amityville Horror 4.
Are you craving more reviews of horror sequels? Well, you can read all about them in my latest book, The Bloody Book of Horror, which is currently on sale at Amazon. Get your copy HERE
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