The Amityville Curse

The first thing you'll notice about The Amityville Curse is that the house in which it is set isn't the iconic property that we've all come to know and fear from the earlier films. And if they can't be bothered to even get that right, what hope is there?

Sure enough, The Amityville Curse is a truly lame addition to the franchise, the terrible script attempting to combine the supernatural with psycho killer shenanigans, with characters that are hard to give a damn about.

A group of obnoxious adults buy the infamous Amityville house with the intention of renovating it and then selling it, doubling their investment. Ignoring most of what has occurred in the previous movies (there's mention of Sonny Montelli's murder spree from part II, but no sign of the house being built over a gateway to Hell), this film sees the friends discovering that the building has been used to store a confession booth in which a priest was murdered. Random spooky stuff happens, there's a large tarantula in the house (reason enough to leave the place pronto), and the priest's killer reveals himself at the end, engaging in a spot of clichéd stalk and slash.

3/10.

My review was written in May 1990 after watching the movie on Vidmark video cassette.

"The Amityville Curse", the fifth film about the Long Island spook house, is a rather tame home video entry made in Canada.

Based on Hans Holzer's book rather than the Jay Anson novel, pic is set 12 years after the murder of a priest at David Stein's family and friends are arriving at the haunted house.

Poltergeist phenomena begin occurring with increasing frequency, driving worrywart Dawna Wrightman to distraction. At the climax, Kim Coates goes nuts and terrorizes Wrightman as if possessed. Ending is perfunctory.

Lacking good effects, pic is of little interest to genre fans. Its best chance is as a time-killer in a tv syndication package.

When I decided to binge watch the Amityville films I hadn't seen before I feared the worst. Partially because they've hardly impressed me and partially because the IMDb ratings for them were really poor.

Starring Kim Coates this one screams milking the franchise, it doesn't look or feel like an Amityville film in fact I think it's barely even acknowledged twice maybe three times throughout.

Random visions, a person possessed and a whole lot of nothing is what you can expect from these 90 minutes of sheer unadulterated boredom.

Terrible flawed storyline, lackluster performances and very little to draw your attention for a moment let alone maintain it.

The Good:

Nope

The Bad:

The psycho music, really!?

Unforgivably boring

Was that even the Amityville house?

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I learnt that this Amityville binge might have been a bad move

THE AMITYVILLE CURSE is a junk addition to the AMITYVILLE HORROR franchise. It's an entirely forgettable production that looks and feels like any old low budget haunted house flick as there's no real connection to the other films in this series. What we have is a very typical horror film in which a group of friends move into a dilapidated old house in order to renovate it but instead find themselves menaced and then possessed by a gang of spooks.

By all accounts this was an early straight-to-video film and that shows in its level of ineptitude. Absolutely nothing happens in this production that we haven't seen done better in other horror films and the various scare scenes are a joke. The direction is probably the worst thing about this, as he chooses to shoot most of his scenes in the dark so that the viewer is straining to see what's going on. The only familiar member of the cast for me was the lead, Kim Coates, who's gone on to appear in the likes of BLACK HAWK DOWN, but like the rest of the actors he gives an entirely undistinguished performance.

I usually reserve the month of October for scary or horror movies to celebrate Halloween, and I thought this movie might serve as a nice attention-grabbing creepy thriller. Under than a few mildly moments that jump at you, this movie is basically an all-talk flick with no suspense, a weak plot, bad dialog, and horrible acting.

From IMDB's summary, five people spend the night in an abandoned house dubbed the Amityville house, but it has nothing to do with the infamous Amityville horror house or story. The people find themselves terrorized by ghosts (which hardly shows up in the film), venomous insects (which is just one single spider that crept up on a couple of people), and apparitions (which hardly shows up).

The Debbie character played by Dawna Wightman can't act to save her life. She over-exerts herself during distress or emotional scenes. The Marvin character played by David Stein tries to act professional or dramatic, but fails miserably. And, the Abigail character played by Cassandra Gava tries to be the sexy one, and tries to be the one with reason, but the acting just isn't up to par.

Go ahead and pass on this one for a Halloween scare.

Grade D---