AMITYVILLE HORROR: THE EVIL ESCAPES (1989)

 

(a.k.a. AMITYVILLE 4: THE EVIL ESCAPES. TV/NBC movie, aired on May 12, 1989. Director: Sandor Stern. Teleplay by Sandor Stern, based on an unpublished AMITYVILLE story─not co-producer John G. Jones’s 1988 advertised-as-fiction book, Amityville: The Evil Escapes, whose title Jones allowed the filmmakers to use.)

Storyline

The demon-haunted house is cleansed by six priests and its furniture is sold at a yard sale. One of the items, a lamp within which the demon hid, is shipped to a California home, where the horror begins anew.

Review

This fourth, made-for-television AMITYVILLE entry aired on NBC on May 12,1989. When it was released on video, additional footage was shot, most of it brief instances of bright red blood that wouldn’t have been allowed in the NBC broadcast─director and teleplay writer Sandor Stern has said he doesn’t know who shot the additional footage. An R rating was slapped on the video version though it’s a safe-for-television flick.

EVIL takes place before the events of AMITYVILLE 3-D (1983), opening with six priests going into the Amityville house to cleanse it. One of the priests, Father Kibbler, is attacked by the house’s three-hundred-year-old demon who has transmigrated into a standing, twisted tree-like lamp. Kibbler, unconscious, is brought to hospital while his fellow priests declare the house “clean.”

A few days later, Helen Royce (Peggy McCay) buys the lamp from a yard sale and sends it to her sister, Alice Leacock (Jane Wyatt) in California.

Alice’s widowed daughter, Nancy Evans (Patty Duke, THE SWARM, 1978) shows up at Alice’s house shortly after the lamp. Nancy arrives with three children in tow: adolescent Amanda (Zoe Trilling, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 2, 1994); tween Brian (Aron Eisenberg, PUPPET MASTER III: TOULON’S REVENGE, 1991); and pre-tween Jessica (Brandy Gold), who talks to her dead, imagined father.

The lamp talks to Jessica, pretending to be her father. She falls under its dark sway and acts uncharacteristically moody. A doctor (Warren Munson, FRIDAY THE 13^th PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN, 1989) says she needs rest.

Strange things happen in the brightly lit house─there are few dark shots in EVIL. The lights flicker a lot. Bad things happen to people, including Gabe, a plumber (Gary Davies, SHOCKER, 1989), and Peggy, Alice’s maid (Lou Hancock, EVIL DEAD 2, 1987). When Father Kibbler shows up, Alice and their family realize what’s happening─now, if they can exorcise the lamp. . .

EVIL is not a scary flick. The mounting tension between the characters does not get nasty like the Lutzes’ and the Monticellis’. EVIL is also more entertaining (in a white-washed, silly way) than AMITYVILLE 3-D, especially when certain actors ham it up during their terror scenes. Near the end, there’s a farewell-to-a-priest scene that’s directly lifted from THE EXORCIST (1973).

Film geeks like myself might recognize Robert  Allan Browne (PSYCHO II, 1983), who plays Donald McTear, and one of the priests (John DeBello, billed as John Debello, who appears in the 1989 film NIGHT LIFE).

EVIL is a Golden Turkey made-for-television flick, worthwhile if you’re looking for something silly.

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (1979)

 

(Director: Stuart Rosenberg. Screenwriter: Sandor Stern, screenplay based on Jay Anson’s book of the same name.)

Storyline

A dysfunctional, cash-strapped family move into what they believe is a demon-possessed house.

 

Review

1975. A year after the gruesome murder of the DeFeo family, the Lutzes─in emotional and financial distress─move into the cursed murder house, later revealed to be built on a Native American burial ground.

From the get-go, the briefly shown, melodramatic DeFeo murders set the tone for this atmospheric, blood-in-your-popcorn demonic house-possession flick. If you’re a viewer like me, you might laugh a lot, occasionally jump during the barrage-rush of AMITYVILLE’s miasmic mood and obvious-horror-trope terror scenes, which really put the unreliable in unreliable narrator, supposed occurrences that, if they happened, have easily spotted, non-supernatural explanations.

Some of these tropes include: flies swarming inside the house and on windows; demon-stalked Catholic priests and a nun, made sick by an unseen force; extreme, in-a-second temperature changes within the house and doors that slam by themselves, without warning; George Lutz (James Brolin, THE CAR, 1977) has trouble sleeping and routinely wakes up at 3:15 a.m., the exact time Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his family (in real life he claimed he “heard voices”); the hidden, bizarre “red room” behind a basement wall; animalistic, glowing eyes appearing in windows; and so much more!

What makes this potboiler devil-haunted abode flick work is the talent involved in its making. Camera shots are seen in extreme closeups or from a distance, as if characters are being watched by an unseen someone or something. Lalo Schifrin’s constant-state-of-alarm score maintains the film’s pulse-racing tempo (whether those emotions are laughter or terror), Robert Brown’s editing further enhances Sandor Stern’s brisk, constant-jolts screenplay while Stuart Rosenberg’s direction matches its mood and pacing.

The cast, who often scream and yell at top volume at the drop of a penny, is great.

James Brolin’s George Lutz is a man under visible strain, pale and creepy as he stalks around the yard and house with a constantly sharpened axe. Margot Kidder (BLACK CHRISTMAS, 1974) is excellent as Kathy Lutz, an argumentative, passionate Catholic who hums the love theme to SUPERMAN, 1978, while washing dishes. Their name-changed kids, Greg (K.C. Martel, THE MUNSTERS’ REVENGE, 1981), Matt (Meeno Peluce, Dio’s  "THE LAST IN LINE" video, 1984, directed by Don Coscarelli) and Amy (Natasha Ryan, THE ENTITY, 1982) are appropriately reactive, especially Amy who’s enthralled by her imaginary, satanic-porcine friend, Jodie.

Rod Steiger (IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, 1967) is volatile and loud as Father Delaney, who’s repeatedly attacked by the long-range demon. Don Stroud (SWEET SIXTEEN, 1983), as Father Bolen, imbues his secular psychiatrist-priest with quiet, urgent humanity. Murray Hamilton (JAWS, 1975) once again plays a bureaucrat (this time as Father Ryan, a church administrator) who puts maintaining the status quo above obvious human safety.

Other notable players include Helen Shaver (THE CRAFT, 1996) as Carolyn, the Lutzes’ psychically sensitive, basement-exploring acquaintance. Val Avery (FRIDAY THE 13^th:THE SERIES, 1988 episode) is his usual solid and understated self as Sgt. Gionfriddo, who’s called to 112 Ocean Avenue, after George reports a break-in, which appears to be a breakout.

AMITYVILLE’s climax is wow-cataclysmic, with an abrupt and crazy-shots finish. Based on Jay Anson’s supposedly nonfiction 1977 book, this is a risible, fun, and iconic late-Seventies flick.

Suggestion: if you buy it, try to purchase it used. Wouldn't want the con artists who perpetuated this hoax (George and Cathy Lutz, Ed and Lorraine Warren and their estates) to further profit from it.