The Amityville Harvest was the first of three (unrelated) fake Amityville movies written and directed by Thomas J. Churchill in a three-year span. Of the three, I’d say The Amityville Moon was clearly the best of the trio. This one, while slightly better than Churchill’s Amityville Uprising, is just too inconsistent to recommend.
Churchill does deliver a fine pre-opening credits sequence where a grieving widow gets locked inside a funeral home with only her husband’s corpse to keep her company. This sequence works surprisingly well as Churchill does a good job at slowly ratcheting up the tension. It easily could’ve stood on its own as a strong short subject. However, it’s all downhill after the opening credits.
A film crew arrives at the funeral home shortly thereafter to film a documentary on the Civil War. They are greeted by the obviously evil owner, Vincent (Kyle Lowder), who is clearly a whack-a-doodle of the first order. Eventually, he’s revealed to be a centuries-old vampire who actually (SPOILER) masterminded the assassination of Abraham Lincoln!
Churchill tosses everything in but the kitchen sink. There are vampires, Confederate zombies, a mad doctor, odd dream sequences, ghosts that look like they were created by an out-of-control Spirograph, and even a scene that rips off The Shining. Some individual moments work, but overall, it’s so all over the place that nothing really sticks. The ending in particular sucks, which is a shame considering how much promise the opening scene held.
Lowder makes for a lame villain. He’s just too bland to be menacing and isn’t physically imposing in the least. The supporting cast is pretty good though. Sadie (Wrong Turn 4) Katz makes for a solid heroine, and it was fun to see Eileen (Linda Blair’s double in The Exorcist) Dietz as the cranky old biddy. Johanna Rae is also quite fetching as the documentary’s hair and make-up coordinator.
Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose is listed in the credits as a co-producer. I wonder if she was originally going to star in the film, but then had to drop out and the credit was there as an honorary type of thing. One thing’s for sure, her screen presence is sorely missed. She might’ve been able to make this wildly uneven flick worthwhile.
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