TUBI CONTINUED… THE AMITYVILLE MOON (2021) ** ½

A church in Amityville runs a halfway house for wayward girls.  When the various delinquents, runaways, and junkies begin disappearing, a detective (Trey McCurley) is called in to investigate.  He figures out all the disappearances have occurred during a full moon.  Could a werewolf be responsible for the missing girls? 

Other than the opening title card that states the location of the church, there’s nothing here connecting The Amityville Moon back to the other Amityville movies.  Really, it feels closer to an unrelated Howling sequel than an unrelated Amityville sequel.  If we were judging this on the merits of an unrelated Howling sequel, it would earn relatively high marks (as far as Howling sequels go, that is).  The central premise is similar to Howling V (it’s a whodunit movie where a werewolf is the culprit), and the effects aren’t too bad.  While the werewolf make-up isn’t exactly great, I always prefer seeing a guy running around in a scruffy wolf suit rather than some shoddy CGI shit, so I’ll take what I can get.  We only get one werewolf transformation scene (which makes sense since the werewolf’s identity is kept secret until the end), but it’s a decent throwback to the old school days of werewolf filmmaking.  Crepe hair grows, rubbery fingers stretch out and extend, ears become pointy… shit like that.  The gore is OK too. 

The acting ranges from passable to solid.  The actresses that make up the residents of the halfway house do a fine job, especially in their group therapy scenes.  McCurley makes for an acceptable hero too, all things considered. 

I can’t quite go to bat for this one.  That’s mainly because it runs out of steam before it crosses the finish line.  I do have a tendency to grade these fake Amityville movies on a curve.  If it was a “regular” horror flick, it probably would’ve gotten **.  When watched within the confines of a month-long fake Amityville sequel marathon, you realize it’s not too shabby.  Since it’s certainly more competent than your average Amityville rip-off, a ** ½ rating is more than justified.

TUBI CONTINUED… AMITYVILLE IN THE HOOD (2021) * ½

A couple of gang members find a stash of possessed weed in the old Amityville Horror house.  Dollar signs in their eyes, they sell it on the street, and their customers soon become kill-happy possessed zombies.  Now, this certainly sounds like a can’t-miss scenario.  Somehow, writer/director Dustin (Zombi VIII:  Urban Decay) Ferguson manages to screw up a potentially great idea (Okay… “great” for a fake Amityville movie) in record time.

The set-up is silly, but fun, which is really all you can hope for from a fake Amityville movie.  Although some of it feels a little rushed, there’s no denying the potential of a plot about weed that’s been laced with Amityville evil and turns its users into zombies.  The problem is that once the boring detective character is introduced, everything stops on a dime(bag).  By the time he starts interviewing suspects and witnesses and they start relating flashback after flashback, it just sucks all the fun right out of the picture.  It takes seemingly forever for the film to get back on track with the killer weed plotline, and once it finally does, it craps the bed in spectacular fashion.  To make matters even worse, the editing during the final confrontation is nearly incomprehensible.  

I didn’t realize it when I put this on, but Amityville in the Hood is actually a sequel to Amityville Toybox and Amityville Clownhouse.  If I had known that beforehand, I would’ve watched them in order.  Scenes from both those films are recycled and reused as flashbacks to fill out the second act, and one clip even includes a cameo by A Nightmare on Elm Street 2’s Mark Patton.  If you ask me, the flick needed less scenes from other movies and more of the Amityville ghost ganja shit.  

Despite the plethora of missed opportunities, I still say that any movie that features a homage to the awesome Amityville 3-D poster in the pre-title sequence can’t be all bad.

TUBI CONTINUED… AMITYVILLE IN SPACE (2022) ** ½

A priest performs an exorcism at the Amityville Horror house.  When he realizes he can’t destroy the evil, he banishes it “away from the Earth”, which causes the house to uproot itself and fly off into outer space.  Prospective filmmakers take note:  THIS is how you start a movie!  

A thousand years later, a spaceship stumbles upon the house floating in space.  The crew boards the ship and find the priest who performed the exorcism centuries ago still alive.  They bring him aboard their ship, but the evil entity that possessed the house also sneaks on board and begins to play mind games with the crew.

Amityville in Space is proof that the spirit of Ed Wood is alive and well.  Writer/director Mark (Amityville Island) Polonia didn’t have a dime to make this movie with, but he made it anyway, and some of his… shall we say… “inspired” methods of creating futuristic art direction are downright hilarious.  For example, the walls of the spaceship are nothing more than trash bags that have been spraypainted with glitter.  Also, the “cyborg” wears a costume that looks like it came directly from the Halloween clearance rack at Kmart.  The dialogue is rather choice too.  When the crew finds a Satanic pentagram floating in space, one astronaut quips, “I almost got a tattoo of that!”

Essentially, Amityville in Space is like a no-budget riff on Event Horizon, which was already kind of like a haunted house movie in space.  The opening strikes the right balance of tongue in cheek camp and outright goofiness.  However, things are noticeably less successful whenever Polonia tries to play it straight.  While he wrings as much from the premise as he can with the limited means available to him, the fun does dry up around the halfway mark.  

Although this was leagues better than I expected, I still can’t quite recommend it.  One of the biggest stumbling blocks is the villain, whose voice is so overly synthesized it’s hard to make out what he’s saying half the time.  (He sounds like Darth Vader speaking in slow motion.)  On the plus side, the final monster is quite hilarious looking.  After sitting through Polonia’s Amityville Island and Amityville Exorcism, I never would’ve guessed he could’ve made a movie called Amityville in Space this almost-but-not-quite worthwhile.  Hats off to him for proving me wrong.  

TUBI CONTINUED… AMITYVILLE COP (2021) **

What do you get when you cross Beverly Hills Cop with Maniac Cop?  You get this odd horror comedy from Gregory Hatanaka, the director of Samurai Cop 2:  Deadly Vengeance.  In fact, I’m pretty sure the production company wanted to call this Beverly Hills Maniac Cop, but they probably didn’t want to get sued.  Instead, they just slapped the public domain “Amityville” label on it and called it a day.  (Although there’s nothing that connects the plot back to the famous haunted house as everything takes place in Los Angeles.)  

Miller (Jason Toler) is a wisecracking cop who has a habit of getting in trouble with his superiors.  His latest assignment finds him investigating a series of homicides where all the victims have had their throats torn out.  Turns out, twenty years ago, a devil cult imbued a rookie cop with supernatural powers.  Now, he’s back on the streets killing people.  Eventually, the psycho supernatural cop crashes the New Year’s party at the stationhouse and starts picking off the detectives one by one.  

Since Hatanaka is drawing from such diverse inspirations, the film never quite gels overall.  That said, it isn’t boring, and it’s certainly a lot more fun than his recent spate of Emanuelle rip-offs.  The scant running time (it’s only sixty-nine minutes) also helps things go down smooth.    

Toler’s Eddie Murphy Lite antics aren’t exactly laugh out loud funny, but he has a reasonable amount of charisma, which compensates for some of the jokes that fall flat.  (Sample dialogue:  “You have the right to remain dead!”)  I’ll admit, it was fun seeing Laurene Landon (who was also in the Maniac Cop movies) popping up as the leader of the devil worshipping cult, even though it’s more of a glorified cameo.  Hatanaka regulars like Nicole D’Angelo, Chris Spinell, and Lisa London round out the cast, all of whom do what they can with the uneven, yet fitfully entertaining material.

TUBI CONTINUED… AMITYVILLE CHRISTMAS VACATION (2022) ** ½

Amityville Christmas Vacation is barely a movie.  It’s only forty-seven minutes long.  It’s shot in mostly one location using only a handful of actors on the lowest of budgets.  There’s almost enough of an idea here to fill a fake three-minute Grindhouse style trailer, and even then, that’s being somewhat generous.  

Some fake Amityville movies play it straight.  Some intentionally go for laughs.  Most of the time, the ones that play it straight end up getting more laughs than the ones that intentionally go for them.  This one has charm to spare, and even an occasional (intentional) laugh or two.  I guess what I’m getting at is that it’s far from the worst fake Amityville movie out there.  

Wally Griswold (writer/director Steve Rudzinski, the man who gave us CarousHELL) is a cop who wins an all-expense paid vacation to a B & B in Amityville.  The only other tenant is a ghost who must haunt and kill him.  Naturally, they wind up falling in love, because, after all, it’s Christmas.  

I’m kind of a fan of Rudzinski’s films.  If we are setting the bar at CarousHELL, then Amityville Christmas Vacation falls short of that marker, but it’s about on par with CarousHELL 2, which isn’t too shabby.  Sure, it has its fair share of gags that fall flat.  However, it remains relatively entertaining throughout, especially during the scenes that parody Hallmark Christmas movies. 

Rudzinski is basically a one-man show in this.  He gamely carries the movie while tossing off one-liners to no one in particular.  He kind of has a Bruce Campbell quality about him.  You know, the ability to be the only one on screen, and while utilizing little more than his plucky spirit, is able to successfully sell the cheesy dialogue and effects and make them work.  While I can’t say this is overall his best effort, I will be the first one in line should he choose to direct and star in Amityville Vegas Vacation. 

AMITYVILLE APRIL

Hey, Vacuumers!  This month’s theme is going to be Amityville April.  My task is to watch as many fake Amityville movies Tubi has to offer (and maybe even one or two “official” sequels).  I know I’m already running behind schedule, but I hope to post all my reviews by the end of the month.  So, pack your bags, folks!  We’re going to Amityville!

MILLIGAN MARCH: TOGA PARTY (1977) *

According to the opening crawl accompanying the Blu-ray, Toga Party was originally filmed as a softcore comedy called Pelvis.  Distributor William Mishkin then changed the title to Toga Party to cash in on the popularity of Animal House and hired Andy Milligan to shoot some new inserts to spice things up.  The original cast, unaware of the new scenes, caused an uproar at the premiere, and the film faded into obscurity.  

Farm boy Pervis (Luther “Bud” Whaney) leaves home to go to New York and become a country star.  He only has one song (about fucking a chicken) and can’t seem to get his foot in the door.  Eventually, he becomes a singing sensation, but drugs threaten to derail it all.  Fortunately for Pervis, his gal from back home, Betty Lou (Mary Jenifer Mitchell) shows up to snap some sense into him. Porn star Bobby Astyr (the only actor who appears in both the new and old footage) stars in the Milligan-lensed framing sequences as Pervis’ former manager, Snake who reminisces about Pervis during the titular toga party.  

The cast of the original film, Pelvis might’ve been upset that the newly shot material sucked, but it’s honestly just as bad as the old footage.  There’s just enough toga partying in the new scenes to justify the title, but it’s all ill-fitting to say the least.  It’s obvious this was a hatchet job as the linking material to the new and old footage is tenuous at best.  The new scenes have an OK amount of T & A, although that’s about all it has going for it.  (Comedy is not Milligan’s strong suit.)  

The old footage is often a chore to sit through.  The humor is lame, forced, or just plain unfunny.  If you laugh at pie fights, fast-motion chase scenes, and Wizard of Oz references you may enjoy it, but it’s all pretty dire for the most part.  (I did like the Iron Eyes Cody gag though.)  It doesn’t help that Pelvis’ faux-Elvis demeanor is paper-thin and can’t sustain an entire movie (or even half of one).  Heck, the movie is so bad, it can’t even manage to play out the tried-and-true rise-and-fall-of-a-popstar cliches in a coherent manner.

Milligan Motifs:  Since Milligan was only responsible for the wraparound sequences, there’s none of his typical touches here.

Milligan Stock Players:  Milligan mainstay Hal Borske appears in one of the Milligan-shot scenes.

AKA:  Pelvis.  AKA:  Disco Madness.  AKA:  All Dressed in Rubber.  

Well folks, we’ve finally reached the end of Milligan March.  (I’ve been running late posting these reviews as I took a little sabbatical from reviewing over Spring Break.)  Here is my ranking of the Milligan movies I’ve seen:  

MILLIGAN MARCH MADNESS RANKING

1. Fleshpot on 42nd Street ***

2. Nightbirds ***

3. Blood ** ½ 

4. Seeds ** ½ 

5. The Man with 2 Heads ** ½ 

6. The Body Beneath ** ½ 

7. Carnage **

8. Vapors **

9. Legacy of Blood * ½ 

10. Torture Dungeon * ½ 

11. Bloodthirsty Butchers * ½ 

12. The Ghastly Ones *

13. Guru the Mad Monk *

14. Toga Party *

15. The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here NO STARS

Next (this) month’s theme will be another crossover with the Tubi Continued… column.  It’s called Amityville April.  I’ll be trying to watch and review all the fake (and maybe a few official) Amityville movies Tubi has to offer.  See you then…