Patty Duke stars as a recently widowed mother who takes her three children to live with her cold mother (Jane Wyatt) who's just gotten a strange present from her sister - a odd antique lamp that she got at a yard sale. And guess where it came from? That's right - the Amityville house. In the blink of an eye, this lamp has spread it's evil all throughout the house, making tea kettles piping hot, pushing black sludge through the water faucets, and lopping off teenage boy's hands in the garbage disposal. Even worse, the evil spirits are hellbent on possessing the youngest child in the family. Only a priest who was there at the Amityville house can save the family, but will he make it on time.
While the premise of The Evil Escapes is the very definition of ludicrous, it doesn't start out that bad. Duke's performance and her character are better defined that most characters in films of this ilk and you do feel for her. She's a single mother with no education who's doing the best she can and she's easy to relate to. In fact, Duke might give the film much more than it's worth. On the other hand, Jane Wyatt seems to be sleepwalking through most of her performance.
The Evil Escapes might do a better than average job of giving its character realistic, real world drama, it fails at the horror scenes and, since this is a horror film, that's unexcusable. It's TV movie restrictions don't help, but I can promise you that there are more nail biting episodes of Goosebumps out there.
The Evil Escapes might not be quite as bad as its reputation would have you believe, but it also feels like it pulls to many punches which keeps any sort of tension from every developing.
