The Amityville Horror series is girthier than expected. The original series contains eight films. The reboot series tallies up two more. Meanwhile, the Independent movies leeching off the IP include 56 films. Conservatively estimating, Boba Phil has probably seen 117 of them…
The one that started it all, The Amityville Horror (1979), was genuinely bigly successful, however. It was the second highest grossing film of that year, beating such classics as Rocky II, Apocalypse Now, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alien, The Jerk and Moonraker. That is impressive.
The only film that topped The Amityville Horror was Kramer vs. Kramer.
I saw the original The Amityville Horror (at least, as much of it as was visible while peeking through my fingers) because it annually aired on network TV. I even saw the Ryan Reynolds remake. And that is where my experience with The Amityville Horror franchise ended.
I was vaguely aware of other entries in the series. I remember a girl talking about one of them in junior high civics class while rocking a pair of stone-washed jeans. In the moment, I thought about trying to join in on the conversation, but the Ben Gay put in my underwear during gym class did not leave me feeling particularly loquacious.
But now, finally, I have decided to dive deep into the plasma pool that is The Amityville Horror series and endure a triple feature of them, like I did with Monique Gabrielle. Let’s have looksie, shall we?
Amityville 1992: It’s About Time
This entry is directed by Tony Randel. Not the Tony Randall who voiced the Brain Gremlin in Gremlins 2. Rather, the Tony Randel who directed such masterpieces as Def-Con 4, Ticks and the wonderfully goofy Fist of the North Star (1995).
One of the writers, Christopher DeFaria, ended up president of DreamWorks. That is difficult to comprehend.
Amityville 1992: It’s About Time went straight to VHS. Remember how cheap straight-to-VHS films looked back then? The odd thing is that now straight-to-VHS films actually look kind of, dare I say, good. I am so used to the soulless color capture of digital that when I see film, any kind of film, capture light the special way it does, it stands out.
Amityville 1992: It’s About Time is about a dude who brings home a haunted clock. I guess the clock came from the original Amityville home. The clock has a variety of negative effects. It provokes a dog attack, kills a woman with the stork mascot of a diaper service and turns the daughter into a slattern vamp, among other things.
Amityville 1992: It’s Class Time
Despite Dick Miller appearing for five seconds, top billing went to Stephen Macht (The Monster Squad), who looks like Fred Ward’s older brother. Macht seems to have a good time going the route of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. He also gets to sport one of the ugliest leg wounds in film. And that’s about it, really.
Amityville 1992: It’s About Time has a couple of neat ideas. At one point, the son goes to retrieve a phonebook. From his perspective, he is only gone a few seconds. To everyone else, he is gone for hours, as the clock can apparently create time traps. Eventually, a character breaks away the wall around the clock to discover that the clock has grown into the house, spreading gears and levers into the surrounding structure.
That stuff was fun, but most of the film is spent guessing at its plot.
Shout out to Megan Ward (Encino Man) for playing the daughter. She was challenged to portray slattern…and has zero ability to portray slattern. That’s likely a good thing, but the amount of sultriness Ward generates in the film is probably equivalent to the amount of sultriness that Emily Dickinson could have theoretically generated. While wearing a housecoat. And eating cold spaghetti out of a Tupperware bowl.
Amityville: A New Generation
The next film up is Amityville: A New Generation (1993). This one is about a bunch of tortured artists who live in studio apartments and have their lives upended by a haunted mirror, again, from the original Amityville house.
John Murlowski directed. He now makes TV movies, a lot of TV movies. In 2023 alone, Murlowski pumped out seven of them. They are of the Lifetime-style genre.
DeFaria returns on screenplay duties. He crafts a story that attempts to transcend mere cash-in. His Amityville entries are not really horror movies. The standard model for horror franchises like this is to deliver more of the same, which should be MOAR family-terrorized-by-demon-house.
DeFaria seems to aim for themes, however. Amityville: A New Generation is about family trauma and how it expresses itself. Sure, that’s neat and all, but sometimes he would be better served to simply have a wall bleed.
One fun fact about the film: the building is the same exterior used for Paddy’s Pub from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
Amityville: A New Cast
Amityville: A New Generation has an odd cast. Richard Roundtree is in it, along with David Naughton. Terry O’Quinn, Lin Shaye and Robert Rusler (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2).
Remember Co Bao from Rambo II?
What mean expendable?
That’s Julie Nickson who delivered that unforgettable line to Sylvester. Nickson is in Amityville: A New Generation. She also gets to play slattern. Like Megan Ward, slattern is not in her wheelhouse. She is pretty good at wearing jeans that have the Mona Lisa on them, though. She also paints a picture that looks like concept art from Species.
Nickson is a Scientologist. One would think they would start a new advertising campaign soon now that they are no longer the weirdest thing happening in Hollywood. I remember the old Dianetics commercials that ran on TBS during the Bugs Bunny and Friends show. They really knew their target audience…
The star of Amityville: A New Generation is Ross Partridge, who looks like the younger brother of Dermot Mulroney and likes to wear three shirts at once. Partridge went on to be “Curious Man” in The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
I can’t say I remember that character…
Together, the group of them form a group that is in a movie. The movie then has them in a variety of scenes until everyone’s name gets listed at the end. Suffice it to say, Amityville: A New Generation also went straight-to-VHS. It had R-rated and unrated versions. I have no idea which one I watched. I will guess the R-rated version because it showed one breast at one point instead of two. They also know their target audience.
Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes
This entry is a made-for-TV film that aired on NBC May 12, 1989. That would make it qualify for my made-for-TV horror movie series. Alas, it was not meant to be, cherie…
This one features Patty Duke, who starred in Curse of the Black Widow, which we reviewed twice (here and here), plus Jane Wyatt from Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon. Fredric Lehne appears, as well. The two child performers are Aron Eisenberg and Zoe Trilling. Eisenberg went on to star as Nog on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Trilling appeared in Night of the Demons 2. Both are now deceased.
Sandor Stern wrote and directed Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes. Sandor also helmed that weird film Pin (1981), about the doctor and his anatomically-correct medical dummy friend. Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes continues the haunted artifact from the house plotline. This time it is a lamp that they probably borrowed from Tim Burton. The lamp very much represents his twisted-tree aesthetic. Will the family stop the evil lamp in time? Since this film came before long-lasted LED bulbs, confidence is high…
Amityville 4: The Evil King Kong Escapes
I am finishing up Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes as I type this. Truly, LMO is a harsh mistress with stringent deadlines. Currently, the onscreen action depicts a handyman getting a face full of sewage. This franchise entry brought back the slime. Trilling even brushed her teeth with it! For a TV movie, this does not have much problem holding its own with the straight-to-VHS releases. A teen even got his hand severed by a garbage disposal, complete with blood spray. The only thing the film lacks is swears and ladies with clothing challenges.
The highlight of the film is Eisenberg’s battle with an out-of-control chainsaw. He picks it up and pretends to saw a bench. Ah, yes, many is the time as a wee lad when I picked up a chainsaw and pretended to saw things with it. It was one of my favorite games. Anyway, the chainsaw roars into life, and Eisenberg goes all “whoa-ahhh-eehhh!” as it saws up the place, up to an including nearly bisecting his grandmother. The chainsaw is stopped when the cleaning lady heroically steps in front of it and blocks its blade with a crowbar. If I wasn’t dead inside, I might have cheered.
I still got twenty minutes left on this film. Jack Rader shows up. He portrayed the crazy military guy in the remake of The Blob. Oh yeah, and a third child exists in this movie played by Brandy Gold (V: The Final Battle). She is the one the evil lamp has the most influence over. It’s not a good sign for a movie when a key character is someone I forgot was even in said movie until it goes into its third act.
Amityville, As you Know, Means “Friendship”…”Ville…”
Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes also had an old lady get cut by the lamp in the beginning. She later died from the cut as a result of tetanus. Have you ever heard of a haunted MacGuffin kill someone with tetanus? Don’t underestimate this lamp. It can play the long game. Regardless, it is not enough. Patty Duke and Friends eventually defeat the lamp by throwing it over a cliff. Or do they? The film closes on the family cat, now with glowing red eyes…
Sandor Stern, you magnificent bastard. You nailed it!
And that brings us to the end of our Amityville Horror triple feature. The biggest surprise was the effort these films made to be more than common-denominator slop. They could have all copied the first film and had new families move into the house. Instead, they all pushed things beyond the house and attempted to have meaningful stories. Okay, somewhat meaningful stories…
In the end, these films could best be described as feature-length episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series. I am happy to close some of the gap in my knowledge of the Amityville Horror sequels. It was either that or the films of Ingmar Bergman. I’m pretty sure I made the right choice…
