Friday, October 26, 2018

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: AMITYVILLE HORROR: THE EVIL ESCAPES (1989) **


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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