AMITYVILLE 4: THE EVIL ESCAPES – The Amityville films are kind of a blur in my mind – I remember the first from TV when I was a kid, but I’ve never been overly wowed. “Get Out!” says the scary voice. I always liked that bit, but I wonder what I’d think of the whole thing now. The deliciously tripe-laden and yet somehow dark ‘Amityville 2’ is the king when it comes to a certain kind of bargain basement eighties fx driven schlock that I’m guessing had little in common with what the makers of the original were going for, but the later numbers and off-shoots are just one big haze to me. ‘The Evil Escapes’ is quite nice though really, very much a rainy afternoon film. It’s about a possessed lamp, into which the ‘evil’ from the original house has relocated itself, and basically unfolds as a steady stream of low intensity cheapo ghost-house moves – there’s gunk and a severed hand in those pipes, but who put the parrot in the oven? A cat’s eyes glow red at the end! A pleasing ‘direct to video’ vibe persists throughout, though now I find it was made for TV – didn’t know that.
AMITYVILLE: A NEW GENERATION – Another sequel. I got them when they were going dead cheap in the last VS sale. I don’t think I’d ever be tempted to pay big bucks for any of them, but for a markdown it’s all pleasantly nostalgic stuff. This one is about a bunch of ‘creatives’ who hang out in a converted warehouse in New York. They look a bit too clean-cut to be the type I remember from my time as a wannabe performance artist, but maybe I went to the wrong art school. Anyway, one of them finds out that the homeless guy across the road is a pivotal long-lost figure from his past, only there’s a mirror involved, and some haunting-related stuff happens, but then someone’s done a load of really mad paintings so maybe they’re possessed. Et Cetera. As always, those tiny moments, such as when a bad glowing green demon effect sprints around for a few seconds then hides in a labyrinth of awful pictures, make it worthwhile. The mid-nineties always make me think of panpipes and Gregorian chants set to slow beats, but I’m not saying either of them feature heavily in this.
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