Synopsis: A
team of priests led by Father Manfred (Norman Lloyd) enters the notorious Amityville house
to perform an exorcism. Father Dennis Kibbler (Fredric Lehne) enters a room containing a
bizarre, man-sized lamp. As the young priest performs the ritual, the lamp glows, and a
strange force enters it by travelling through its power cord. For a moment, a demonic face
is visible within the lamp; then something throws Father Kibbler across the room, and he
is knocked unconscious…. The next day, Father Manfred inspects the house, and feels
that the evil has departed. A yard sale is held to dispose of the furniture. Helen Royce
(Peggy McCay) decides to buy the lamp as a joke present for her sister in California.
Inspecting it more closely, Helen cuts her finger on it. Her friend, Rhona (Gloria
Cromwell), warns her to get a tetanus shot, but Helen laughs the incident off. The lamp
arrives at Alice Leacock’s (Jane Wyatt) house at the same time as Alice’s
newly-widowed daughter, Nancy Evans (Patty Duke), and her three children, Amanda (Geri
Betzler), Brian (Aron Eisenberg) and Jessica (Brandy Gold). After greeting her family,
Alice opens the gift from her sister and assembles the lamp. Nancy is appalled by its
ugliness. At that moment, Alice’s cat starts to howl, and scratches Amanda. Jessica
stares fixedly at the lamp…. That night, Nancy apologises to her mother for
"invading" her home, promising that they will leave as soon as she gets her
qualifications and secures a teaching job. She then confesses to being very worried about
Jessica, who has regressed emotionally since her father’s death, and keeps insisting
that he is still alive. In the living-room, the lamp begins to glow. The mysterious force
leaves it, entering a power point. All over the house, the lights flicker; in the kitchen,
the electric kettle and the radio switch themselves on. Alice burns her hand on the
kettle. Preparing for bed, Nancy is shocked to see her dead husband’s reflection in
her mirror, She spins around but there is no-one there. Jessica asks her mother if she can
sleep with her. Nancy says yes, but just this once. As she sleeps, Nancy feels an arm
tighten around her: a man’s arm…. Jerking awake, Nancy finds that Jessica
isn’t there. Following her daughter’s voice, she finds her sitting before the
lamp. Jessica accuses Nancy of "scaring him", insisting that her father was
there. The next morning, the family is horrified when Brian finds Alice’s pet parrot
dead in the toaster oven. Meanwhile, in New York, Father Kibbler is released from
hospital. Visiting the house, he is appalled to learn that the furniture has been sold,
and gets Helen Royce’s name from the caretaker. That night, Father Manfred warns
Father Kibbler that evil can and will transmigrate into people or objects. In California,
Brian is inspecting the chainsaw he finds in Alice’s basement when it switches itself
on, demolishing much of the basement and almost injuring Alice. Peggy (Lou Hancock),
insists that they call an electrician, as the house’s wiring must be faulty. Father
Kibbler goes to Helen Royce’s house. Rhona sees him, and tells him that Helen is in
hospital. Hearing how Helen contracted tetanus, Father Kibbler demands to know where the
lamp is now. The son of the local electrician comes to Alice’s house to collect the
kettle and chainsaw for his father. Peggy asks him to help move the lamp into the attic.
Left alone, the lamp starts to glow, although it is not plugged in. Downstairs, Amanda
asks the boy to inspect the garbage disposal unit, which seems to be blocked….
Comments: You know,
every now and then, when you’re in the bad movie review business, there comes a
moment when you suddenly wonder: What am I doing with my life? For my friend and
colleague, Mr Ken Begg, for instance, such a moment occurred while he was reviewing From
Hell It Came, when upon writing, She warns Maranka that the Tabanga has made an
appearance, he was moved to add parenthetically, There’s a sentence I
never thought I’d write! For myself, my moment of introspection occurred at
approximately 3.45 pm, July 28th, as I found myself typing, As the young
priest performs the ritual, the lamp glows, and a strange force enters it by travelling
through its power cord.
That’s right: I’m spending my
Saturday afternoon reviewing a movie about an evil, terrifying, demonic….lamp.
Granted, it’s a horrible, dark, wet
and windy Saturday, so I probably wouldn’t be doing anything more constructive
anyway; but still….
Amityville: The Evil Escapes
(or, as I prefer to think of it, The Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes, Part 4; a
film this clumsy deserves a title that clumsy) is a franchise film in the very worst sense
of the expression. Not only is it built around one of the dumbest concepts ever to grace a
bad movie, it was [*shudder*] made-for-TV, which means that any time anything
remotely scary or gruesome threatens to happen (which isn’t often), we get a discrete
fade to black. What’s left is a mix of soap opera histrionics and unintentional
comedy, punctuated by long stretches of outright dullness. Unlike its predecessors, this
film doesn’t even have the redeeming ongoing presence of The House, which merely by
being there managed to add a few frissons to the otherwise hilarious Amityville
3-D. Of course, a reasonable person might argue that The House couldn’t be
in this film since, as those of you who have been paying attention (i.e. not the
people who made this film) might remember, it blew itself up at the end of the previous
installment. Not to worry, though: here (albeit briefly) it’s back, hale and hearty.
Tragically, however, we get only two fleeting glimpses of it, one by night, one by day;
and then it’s gone….gone forever…. [*sob*] (Oh, sure, they try to
photograph Alice Leacock’s place so it looks like The House, but it’s
just not the same….) Following glimpse #1, a group of priests (what is the
collective term for priests? a cassock? a confessional?) pours through the front doors and
starts going whupass with the holy water. The House responds in a manner somewhat less
than terrifying, shaking its chandeliers, opening and closing its doors, and turning the
gas on all by itself. One priest gets clobbered with a little wooden rocking-chair.
Spooky! Father Dennis Kibbler, the youngest of the holy crew, gets the toughest job: he
enters the room, wherein lies – the lamp. And an evil-looking thing it is too,
with a twisted, tree-like stand, and creepy arm-like projections. (Actually, what this
thing looks like more than anything else in the world is the Evil Tree in Tales That
Witness Madness!) Kibbler goes manfully about his task, and succeeds so well that Evil
is flushed from its hiding place and forced to find a new refuge – which it
accomplishes by scuttling up the lamp’s power cord in a suspiciously cartoon-like
manner. For one brief moment a demonic face is visible within the glass globe, and then
Father Kibbler is blown off his feet and across the room, where he slides down the wall in
a manner that is also suspiciously cartoon-like. The next day, senior exorcist Father
Manfred re-visits the house and declares that The Evil has gone – he can feel
it. And he’s right. The Evil is no longer in the house – it’s out on the
lawn. With a price-tag attached to it….
In on of the film’s more puzzling
scenes, we see that all the furniture from The House is being disposed of in a yard sale
("All items freshly exorcised!"), and the locals, who have been crossing the
road to avoid The House for years, or speaking of it in hushed voices, are now pawing
through the goods like raccoons through garbage. Now, who, exactly, does this furniture belong
to? I guess the answer would depend upon when in the whole chain of events this story is
supposed to occur (and the time-line here is a little odd; more on that later). In any
case, the one person it doesn’t belong to is the caretaker type who is clearly
reaping the profits from flogging it. (This guy could have made a tidy profit over the
years: after all, not one person who moved their furniture into The House ever stopped to
take it out again, did they?) Amongst the pawers is Helen Royce, who takes one look at the
lamp, declares it to be the most hideous thing she’s ever seen in her life, and
announces that she’s buying it as a present for her sister.
Well, what can I say? Sisters are like
that. Trust me. I know.
Still chuckling over her "joke"
(the expression "more money than sense" comes to mind), Helen manages to cut
herself on the lamp. Her friend, Rhona, suggests that she get a tetanus shot, but Helen
waves the advice away. (Later on, Helen will of course be punished for her arrogance,
being struck down in a manner so natural, it will completely fail to terrify the
audience.)
And so the Evil Lamp is sent on its way to
the West Coast. Coincidentally, another source of horror is also wending its way towards
Alice Leacocks’s house: Alice’s somewhat estranged daughter, Nancy, and her
three "adorable" children. (Nancy is played by Patty Duke, who by this stage of
her career could legitimately be referred to as "genre veteran Patty Duke".)
Nancy and her kids have been thrown upon the cold, cruel world by the sudden death of
their husband and father – and sole breadwinner – and are forced to move in with
Alice until Nancy finishes teachers’ college. Alice, it turns out, is less than
thrilled by this development. Still, like they say, "home is the place where, when
you go there, they have to let you in"; and as it happens, the carload of Evanses
arrives at Alice’s front door at the very same moment that Helen Royce’s
"joke" is being unloaded from the back of the delivery van. And so, all
unknowing, Alice Leacock allows The Source Of All Evil into her home. Oh, yeah – and
she has The Lamp carried in, too. No sooner has The Lamp entered the house than it begins
to exert its evil on the youngest Evans child, Jessica, who is suffering from various
psychological disorders because of her father’s death. Proving that (as if anyone
doubted it) animals are much smarter than your average horror movie character, as soon as
The Lamp is fully assembled, Alice’s parrot, Fred, goes nuts; while her cat, Pepper,
yowls and hisses and scratches Amanda, the oldest kid. (Fred, BTW, is an Australian
Eastern rosella. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: way to encourage
illegal bird trafficking!) Amanda and Brian immediately start squabbling (provoking me
into an agonised cry of, "NO!! Not another crappy horror film filled with
sulky, bratty teenagers!!" As it turned out later, my fears were largely unjustified,
since Amanda and Brian are unusually well-behaved. A pair of doofuses [doofi?], yes, but
not totally objectionable), while Jessica stares at The Lamp in an Ominous, Foreshadowing
Manner.
That night, Alice and Nancy have a D &
M in the kitchen, in which Nancy apologises for their "invasion", and Alice (not
arguing with Nancy’s choice of word) displays her sensitivity by dissing the recently
deceased Frank Evans. Meanwhile, The Lamp glows into eerie life, as Three Centuries Of
Evil (as it is later called) chugs its way along the power cord and hops into the power
point. We are immediately tipped off that this is going to be yet another "electrical
devices come to life" movie, just what the world needed. (Hey, if I enjoyed that
sort of thing, I’d watch Maximum Overdrive again, right? Well – maybe
not….) The lights flicker all over the house, and appliances start turning themselves
on, including [dum-dum-duumm] the kettle! Nancy and Alice barely notice, as
Nancy is making a fairly unavailing effort to confide in her mother, expressing her
concerns about her borderline psychotic youngest child. Alice, however, waves this aside
and continues to focus on something much more disturbing: her grandson’s
appearance. "I mean, what kind of haircut do you call that?" she demands.
(She’s got a point. Let’s put it this way: if you were playing Pictionary and
the clue was "mid-eighties", a quick sketch of Aron Eisenberg would fit the bill
nicely. Think Andrew Ridgely circa "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". Hey,
whaddya mean you don’t know who Andrew Ridgely is!?….). Perhaps feeling
that the conversation is not going well, Alice gets up to make more tea, and burns her
hand on the now-demonic kettle - a scene suggesting, not that The Source Of All Evil is on
the loose so much as that Alice bought a shoddily designed kettle. Booga-booga!
After a couple more equally false
"scares", we get the one scene in this whole film that really does work. In a
moment somewhat reminiscent of Mario Bava’s Shock, while Nancy lies sleeping a
man’s arm suddenly slides around her and holds her tight. Nancy smiles in her
sleep….only to jerk awake with a terrified gasp as her conscious mind realises that
this really shouldn’t be happening. But of course, there’s no-one there
– not even Jessica, who was sharing her mother’s bed. Nancy hears her
daughter’s voice and follows it into the living-room, where Jessica is holding a
conversation with – someone. (Although the youngest child in the original Amityville
Horror interacted with "an invisible friend", this aspect of the film does
not reference that, but instead is written and filmed so as to blatantly rip off Poltergeist.)
Nancy is, not surprisingly, rather taken aback when Jessica insists that she’s been
talking to Daddy; and tries unavailingly to convince the girl that it was "all a
dream". The next morning, Jessica has a fever, allowing the diagnosis to switch to
"all an hallucination". Downstairs, Nancy starts breakfast, telling Brian to
heat up the toaster oven, which he does. However, when he goes to put the rolls in, he
finds the oven already occupied – by the unfortunate Fred. Finding Fred’s cage
open, Alice blames herself for his tragic demise, not once stopping to inquire how a one
hundred gram bird managed to open the oven door, hop inside, and then close it again! (I
guess he really wanted out of this film!)
Fred’s death is the best this film
can do by way of bothering its audience. Although "Three Centuries Of Evil" are
supposed to be lurking in The Lamp, its manifestations become more and more gigglesome as
the film progresses. To be blunt (and again to use an expression I heartily despise), Evil
hits like a girl. Its next effort at "terrorising" occurs when Brian follows
Pepper, the cat, into the basement, and discovers a chainsaw lying on a bench. Acting as
if never realised that anything so miraculous even existed, Brian immediately picks it up
(obviously seeing what’s coming, Pepper beats a hasty retreat at this point) and
starts waving it about making "Vroom-vroom!" noises. (Like I said –
doofus!) Of course, the chainsaw then starts itself, and in the course of a hugely
entertaining minute, Brian manages to demolish the entire basement. Alice and her
housekeeper, Peggy, come running to see what the noise is and nearly end up kindling
themselves. Peggy, however, leaps somewhat improbably to the rescue, slamming a metal bar
against the saw, which then decides to turn itself off. Brian pleads innocence, of course
("I’m stoopid, not homicidal!"), and incredibly, both his mother and
his older sister believe him implicitly. Nancy insists that faulty wring is to blame, and
calls an electrician. However, it is the electrician’s teenage son who answers the
call. After helping Peggy shift The Lamp into the attic, the kid wanders into the kitchen
to find Amanda trying to clear a blockage in the garbage disposal unit by sticking her
hand down there. (Doofus!) Telling her that she should have taped the on-off switch off
first, he does so, and then sticks his hand down the unit. No prizes for guessing
what happens next: this is one of the movie’s Discreet Fade To Black moments. The
following morning, the boy’s astonishingly unperturbed father comes to inspect the
site of the accident. His verdict? "My son’s a doofus!" Well, he
doesn’t say that – instead, he decides with a shrug that the kid must have taped
the unit on, not off. Nancy announces sternly that until the problem is
solved, no-one should touch any electrical appliances. This edict lasts approximately two
minutes, until Nancy finds Jessica in the attic chatting with "Daddy". As she
hauls the girl out, kicking and screaming, Nancy yells at Amanda to "get up there and
unplug that lamp!" Looking understandably apprehensive, Amanda obeys, but of course,
it isn’t plugged in…. For its next manifestation, The Source Of All Evil goes
for one of the classics and causes black goop to run out of all the taps. Despite the fact
that everyone agrees it "smells like a sewer", Amanda fails to notice anything
wrong and brushes her teeth with it (doofus!). Both Nancy and Alice have to go out,
leaving Jessica alone with Peggy. The housekeeper reacts to the fact that raw sewage is
running out of the water pipes by doing a load of washing. Meanwhile, the summoned plumber
crawls in under the house (obviously not having bothered to shut off the water!), and
tries to unscrew the end of the main pipe. Suddenly, the pipe swells up, knocking down a
crossbeam and pinning the unfortunate plumber to the ground. Evil Black Goop then explodes
from the pipe (if you look carefully, you’ll also see a remarkably intact hand!),
and the plumber – an audience identification figure if ever there was one – can
do nothing but lie there, trapped, and drowning in shit.
Meanwhile, Good has been marshalling its
forces – such as they are. Father Manfred and Father Kibbler discuss the
latter’s encounter with Evil, and it is here that we get a rather odd potted history
of The Amityville House, which according to Father Manfred has been exerting its Evil
influence for over three hundred years. He goes on to remark that "a dozen years
ago", he would not have believed what he does now, but that "as recently as
1974" a boy was driven by "voices" to murder his entire family. We wait,
but no further evidence of the House’s power – the possession of a priest, the
tormenting of the Lutz family, the attacks on the sceptical John Baxter – is so much
as glanced at. Instead, the screenplay simply ignores the events of two and a half of the
preceding Amityville films! (This is particularly odd since writer-director Sandor
Stern wrote #1 as well!) Crusading Father Kibbler tracks down the whereabouts of The Lamp
From Hell, and decides to travel to California for a final showdown. Father Manfred warns
him that the church hierarchy probably won’t let him go, and suggests they ask the
police to call on Alice Leacock instead – at which point, the film comes perilously
close to acknowledging its own idiocy, as Kibbler retorts, "And tell them what? A
satanic force has taken possession of a lamp!?" Unable to argue, Manfred
promises to "speak to the Monsignor". His intervention is successful, and Father
Kibbler arrives at Alice Leacock’s in minimum time. Since Peggy has just had a fatal
encounter with The Lamp, the door of the house is opened by Jessica, who repeatedly –
and rather creepily – insists on the priest coming in and sitting down. Father
Kibbler, however, is overcome by nausea (know the feeling!), and dashes away from the
house to throw up. (YES!! A puking priest scene!! How gratifying to see the
franchise finally get back to its roots!) Unable to quell his fear completely, Kibbler
writes a note to Alice and drops it into her mailbox, where Amanda later finds it.
Meanwhile, Nancy is disturbed to find Peggy missing, and even more so when Jessica
contends that she "went home". The search is soon on, and once again it is the
luckless Brian – who also found Fred in the toaster oven – who discovers
Peggy’s body. (The verdict is "heart attack", even though we saw her being
strangled by The Lamp’s power cord.) Moreover, Jessica’s room has been
completely trashed, a clear sign of demonic possession. Or hyperactivity. Re-reading the
note from Father Kibbler, Nancy decides to meet with him. She tells Amanda to stay with
Jessica at all times, Brian to lock the attic and hide the key, reassures them that she
"won’t be long", and takes off, leaving her eldest children to stare at one
another in dismay.
In the bar at his hotel, Father Kibbler
explains to Nancy all about the "Evil Lamp" thing, warning her that the Evil
will attack the most vulnerable person in its environment. Realising that this means that
Jessica’s problems probably can’t be solved with Ritalin, Nancy
invites Kibbler back to her place for coffee and a quick exorcism. Meanwhile, Amanda
decides to break up the monotony of babysitting a satanically possessed child by looking
for the cat. It turns out to be on the roof, giving Amanda the opportunity to lean out the
window – which promptly whacks her on the back of the head and knocks her out.
(Doofus!) Jessica evades her brother and grandmother to make a dash for the attic. Nancy
arrives with Father Kibbler. The latter immediately charges up to the attic, but
can’t get the door open. Amanda staggers in rubbing her head, and Kibbler yells at
her to bring an axe. Nancy intervenes, sensibly ordering both Amanda and Brian out of the
house. Kibbler fetches the axe himself (I was hoping for the chainsaw, but never mind) and
bashes his way through the suspiciously flimsy door to where The Lamp is exerting about
100 watts of Evil. What follows is one of the most pathetic "exorcisms"
I’ve ever seen, and believe me, I’ve sat through some doozies! First, Kibbler
starts with the holy water, but is stopped when Jessica levitates towards him shrieking
"Don’t hurt my Daddy!" and brandishing a knife. She succeeds in stabbing
Kibbler in the shoulder before he and Nancy can subdue her and toss the knife away.
Kibbler then moves in with the crucifix, only have it jerked from his hand as The Demonic
Power Cord wraps itself around his arm. Nancy is distracted from her ongoing struggle with
Jessica when the demonic face within the lamp briefly becomes that of the late Frank
Evans, and Jessica reclaims the knife. She goes to stab Nancy, but is stopped by the power
of Mother Love (yecchh!). Meanwhile, Alice has had enough, and she starts in with
the holy water, shouting, "Leave us alone, you son of a bitch!" – which
frankly works better than any of Kibbler’s ritual chants. The Lamp recoils (leaving a
trail of black goop, rather comically suggesting that The Source Of All Evil has had an
accident), and Alice presses her advantage, finally lifting The Lamp and tossing it
through the window. Unfortunately for Father Kibbler, he is still enmeshed in The Demonic
Power Cord. However, The Cord proves to have grown about a hundred yards, and therefore
Nancy has time to snatch up the axe and sever it, freeing Kibbler and allowing The Lamp to
plunge to its destruction on the rocks below the cliff. The film then dissolves into a
scene of mass hugging and kissing as the family celebrates its new-found ability to
express love. "All this sweetness is bad for my blood suger," remarks Alice, who
seems remarkably cheerful considering she’s on her way to her sister’s funeral.
Oh, right – that lamp business…. Alice then departs with Father Kibbler,
the Evanses do a bit more hugging, and everything seems to be sunshine and lollipops. But
wait! – would you be astonished to learn that It Isn’t Over After All?? Well,
frankly, neither was I – although the way in which we learn it is a
jaw-dropping experience. The film ends with – surprise! – a pan across the
smashed lamp, and lurking beside it is Pepper, the cat; and as he yowls and turns towards
the camera, we see that----
----the film-makers could think of no
better way of closing this pathetic excuse for a horror movie than by ripping off another
pathetic excuse for a horror movie, Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula. And if you don’t
know what I mean, shame on you!
It’s always kind of sad watching the
deterioration that sets in over the course of a horror movie franchise, although I guess
that in the case of the Amityville stories, there wasn’t all that great a
height to fall from. Still, the three previous films did manage a few shivers, even if it
was simply by keeping that damn creepy house in front of the cameras. This fourth effort
is simply ludicrous – but then, how could it be otherwise, given its basic premise? I
mean, didn’t anyone, at any stage of the film’s production, stop and wonder
whether focussing their story on a possessed lamp was really a good idea!? In any
case, the film’s supernatural manifestations are rarely other than risible. What
credibility the film has comes not from the alleged scare scenes, but in the depiction of
the tensions between Alice Leacock and her unwanted houseguests. The dysfunctional family
is at the heart of many horror films, of course, and this one is no different, except that
it rather refreshingly acknowledges that a "family" can sometimes be a bunch of
people with little in common who probably shouldn’t be forced to live together. In
fact (and you can hardly blame her, given events), Alice goes through the entire film with
the look on her face suggesting that she wishes she’d had her tubes tied about
forty-five years earlier. Jane Wyatt’s performance (using the term loosely) is
probably the film’s low point; "disinterested" would be a polite way of
describing it. Her expression throughout the climactic exorcism scene is priceless,
though, being chiefly indicative of extreme boredom. Patty Duke and Fredric Lehne at least
put a bit of effort into their performances; while Aron Eisenberg and Geri Betzler manage
to be less irritating than many of their cinematic brethren (even if the latter does
suffer from an extremely distracting case of chipmunk-cheeks: every time she opens her
mouth, you wait for her to spit out whatever it is she’s got in there; that, or go
into her Marlon Brando impression). Overall, Amityville 4 is clear evidence that
the bottom of the barrel had not just been scraped, but licked clean; but I’m sure
that no-one will be surprised to hear that to date, another five alleged
"Amityville" films have been made. And there are those who say that
"evil" doesn’t exist….
Footnote: The
estimable (if power-crazed) gentlemen of Stomp Tokyo have also reviewed this film, and
have provided for their readers’ delectation screen shots of The Evil Lamp and The
Positively Demonic Power Cord. Oh, and Aron Eisenberg’s haircut. THE HORROR!! THE
HORROR!!
|
Director: Sandor Stern