Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes

Surprisingly good 4th installment in the now tired franchise. This time a woman buys a lamp from the infamous Amityville house and sends it to some relatives that live in California. As soon as grandmother Jane Wyatt plugs it in, the evil forces make themselves at home. Good story, acting, and music score. ***1/2 out of *****. Skip the next installment "The Amityville Curse" and get "Amityville '92: It's About Time" and the two that follow after that.

Patty Duke plays a woman who must protect her family from the evils of Amityville after a lamp from an estate sale transfers the evil to her home.

Duke carries the film beautifully, giving it her all and treating the material seriously without any winking at the audience and she's the highlight of the film. The haunted house sequences are par for the course for a film like this, but there is one nasty bit involving a garbage disposal that's unexpected for a film that, mostly, plays it too safe.

I know this isnt one of the best Amityville films but i still found it enjoyable. Patty Duke is great as Nancy and the plot outline isnt that bad either! The fx arent upto scratch but dont let that spoil the fun as you get to see a man have his hand cut off by a shredder! Its the old woman Alice that i hate she never stops moaning and doesnt seem to like her daughter and grandkids much!

One thing that this movie stands out from the rest is that the main villain is a lamp (I'm not even kidding). The idea of it is a ridiculous one and the movie takes itself seriously with it's concept. I mean the movie tries way too hard to make the lamp creepy and it doesn't work at all. Also movie have a lot of dry parts in it and it's pretty stale on what is presented here. And the movie is easily predictable.

But there is some enjoyable and suspense to be found in this movie. Like when the electronics is going out crazy and the lamp causing these things to happen. But the movie ends with a cliche.

From everything I'd read here and elsewhere, I'd expected Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes to be a horrid, made-for-TV movie that looked like it. I found a copy on the internet and indulged it.

Hey, not bad.

The sheer horror of The Possession and the slick suspense of 3-D isn't really there... I guess it's more like the first movie, but in a different house. You see, the Amityville house is now vacant (presumably after the people from the first movie left it with something of an urgency) and everything in it goes up for a yard sale. A lamp gets sold to an old lady who then sends it to her sister (I think) in California. Wouldn't you know, this lamp has the DEVIL inside.

Sounds like a tacky plot device to teleport the Amityville evil to another house, but it actually kind of works. Not on the scale of the first one (OK, what's scarier - a house built on Satanic witch ground with dead bodies buried there of Satanists that's perpetually haunted, or just a normal house with an EVIL lamp?), but not too far from it. You'd have to see it to understand. As far as effects, they're there. The flies from the first movie are back, flies flies everywhere (even the black tar too). Also scary demon imagery here and there, neat lighting effects, etc.. It holds up well.

Strange, though, that the movie is packaged sternly as "Amityville 4," yet totally disregards the ending of Amityville 3-D, where the Amityville house was completely destroyed and burnt to cinders. In the beginning of Amityville 4, a gang of priests do gangbusters in the house, which is mysteriously still standing. Though ... if you look at Amityville 3-D's credits on the DVD from MGM, it says "THIS MOVIE IS NOT A SEQUEL TO THE AMITYVILLE HORROR OR AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION"... but yet Amityville: The Evil Escapes gets a "4"? What was 3 then, if not 3-D? Ah well, things to muse...

Note: This entry also began the tradition in the series of different items from the Amityville house being brought to other houses to haunt them. i.e., the clock in Amityville 1992, the doll house in Amityville: doll house, etc.