THE AMITYVILLE CURSE (1990) It’s just as well this Canadian production didn’t return to Toms River, New Jersey, where the previous four Amityville movies were shot. Based on a fictionalized story involving the notorious Long Island house, the film’s new location and structure lend this completely different tale a little more credence—but only so much. A pompous psychiatrist (David Stein) and his semi-psychic wife (Dawna Wightman) buy the Amityville house as a fixer-upper for them and their friends, unaware that it harbors the vengeful spirit of a priest who was murdered twelve years earlier. The friends unknowingly expose themselves to the place’s “curse,” manifested through various bizarre incidents, including a nail gun that powers on by itself, strange noises in the basement, and the slow possession of one of their party (Kim Coates) that’s essentially just a replay of George Lutz from The Amityville Horror. Spiders seem to have replaced flies to signify the house’s evil, but one can’t help feel it was easier (and cheaper) for the filmmakers to use the same tarantula over and over instead of wrangling hundreds of flies. The Lutzes don’t seem to exist in this alternative Amityville timeline—a townsperson mentions the DeFeo murders, although its referred to as the “possessed boy who killed his family.” None of this would be a deterrent hadn’t the filmmakers created such a lifeless film. Coates (Sons of Anarchy) gives a decent performance, but the rest of the cast is stiff and unconvincing, just like this movie. C– (Currently streaming on Tubi.)
AMITYVILLE 1992: IT’S ABOUT TIME (1992) A California tract house (not unlike that in Poltergeist) becomes the scene of supernatural horrors thanks to a haunted antique clock. If you’re wondering what this has to do with the Amityville timeline you’re not alone. Actually, the L.A. location was most likely due to convenience on the part of the filmmakers, as well as the apparent decline in budget. Architect Stephen Macht returns from a business trip to New York, where his company has just demolished the street on which the notorious Amityville house was standing. He brings back with him an ugly clock from the old Amityville digs, which immediately takes control of Macht by turning him into a temperamental jerk. Macht’s teen daughter (Megan Ward) turns into an evil seductress, while his son (Damon Martin) finds out the clock was the creation of a 15th century Satan-worshipper and used to open a portal to Hell. The director (Tony Randall—Hellbound: Hellraiser II) is striving for something different, and several scenes are visually impressive, including the climax where Macht’s live-in girlfriend (Shawn Weatherly), in an effort to destroy the evil, reveals the clock’s internal gears are growing inside the house’s walls like a parasitic organism. The writers drop the ball on the clock’s backstory—how and why it ended up in Amityville is never explained—but the characters are mostly intelligent, and the pacing good. Most surprising is the fact Amityville 1992 ends up being one of the better entries in the series. B– (Currently streaming on AMC, Shudder, Tubi.)
AMITYVILLE: A NEW GENERATION (1993) A skid row apartment building occupied by pretentious artists and yuppies—do I detect an anti-gentrification message?—falls under the influence of an evil mirror in this needless but well-acted hodgepodge of every other Amityville movie on the market. Struggling photographer Keyes (Ross Partridge) is given a mirror by a mysterious vagrant, igniting artistic inspiration in Keyes’s neighbor, Suki (Julia Nickson), a painter. It seems anyone who looks into the reflecting glass perishes—the first victim being Suki’s douchebag ex-beau (Robert Rustler), who’s slashed to ribbons after he does the same to one of her paintings. Predictably, Suki’s work begins to manifest into images of demonic creatures as the Amityville house reflects from the mirror’s glass, and more people end up looking like they stepped out of a Picasso portrait, sans canvas. Why is all of this happening? Because the mirror hung in the Amityville homestead the night of the infamous 1974 massacre, although here the family name has been changed from DeFeo to Bronner. Don’t worry—I doubt even the writers can make sense of it. A good cast tries its best, but even the likes of Terry O’Quinn, Richard Roundtree, and David Naughton can’t save Amityville: A New Generation from descending into woeful sequel overkill. C (Currently streaming on Freevee, Shudder, Tubi.)
AMITYVILLE: DOLLHOUSE (1996) Yet another dysfunctional family is used as puppets by the Amityville evil, this time emanating from a miniature replica of the Long Island House of Horrors. A Brady Bunch-like family composed of a father (Robin Thomas), his two kids, and his new bride (Starr Andreeff) and her son move into a house in the middle of the desert. The structure comes complete with a haggard work shed left by the previous owner, which contains the usual assortment of bizarro items, including a dollhouse modeled after 112 Ocean Avenue. Thomas gifts his daughter the dollhouse for her birthday and—wouldn’t ya know it?—strange things immediately take shape. The pet mouse grows to the size of a pit bull, teen Allen Culter’s girlfriend is barbecued in the fireplace, and the youngest (Jarrett Lennon) makes friends with his deceased dad, who fills the boy’s head with murderous thoughts. But it just so happens that Thomas’s sister (Lenore Kasdorf) dabbles in the occult, and her investigation opens a can of worms in the form of demonic activity. It might be the eighth entry in the series but Amityville: Dollhouse‘s inherent stupidity gives the movie a boost of brainless entertainment that was missing from the majority of the other, more “serious” sequels. In fact, the film’s ostentatious visual flare—culminating in a monster-infused climax—is a welcome sight and helps to create a fun little flick that’ll most likely kill some brain cells along the way. B (Currently streaming on Tubi.)