Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes

Surprisingly good 4th installment in the now tired franchise. This time a woman buys a lamp from the infamous Amityville house and sends it to some relatives that live in California. As soon as grandmother Jane Wyatt plugs it in, the evil forces make themselves at home. Good story, acting, and music score. ***1/2 out of *****. Skip the next installment "The Amityville Curse" and get "Amityville '92: It's About Time" and the two that follow after that.

Patty Duke plays a woman who must protect her family from the evils of Amityville after a lamp from an estate sale transfers the evil to her home.

Duke carries the film beautifully, giving it her all and treating the material seriously without any winking at the audience and she's the highlight of the film. The haunted house sequences are par for the course for a film like this, but there is one nasty bit involving a garbage disposal that's unexpected for a film that, mostly, plays it too safe.

A fairly decent sequel without much connection to the original (tone or story-wise). Full of haunted house cliches despite it seeming unique somehow...perhaps thanks to the strength of the mostly female cast. It's middle of the road...not offensive, only mildly entertaining.

One thing that this movie stands out from the rest is that the main villain is a lamp (I'm not even kidding). The idea of it is a ridiculous one and the movie takes itself seriously with it's concept. I mean the movie tries way too hard to make the lamp creepy and it doesn't work at all. Also movie have a lot of dry parts in it and it's pretty stale on what is presented here. And the movie is easily predictable.

But there is some enjoyable and suspense to be found in this movie. Like when the electronics is going out crazy and the lamp causing these things to happen. But the movie ends with a cliche.

Patty Duke stars as a recently widowed mother who takes her three children to live with her cold mother (Jane Wyatt) who's just gotten a strange present from her sister - a odd antique lamp that she got at a yard sale. And guess where it came from? That's right - the Amityville house. In the blink of an eye, this lamp has spread it's evil all throughout the house, making tea kettles piping hot, pushing black sludge through the water faucets, and lopping off teenage boy's hands in the garbage disposal. Even worse, the evil spirits are hellbent on possessing the youngest child in the family. Only a priest who was there at the Amityville house can save the family, but will he make it on time.

While the premise of The Evil Escapes is the very definition of ludicrous, it doesn't start out that bad. Duke's performance and her character are better defined that most characters in films of this ilk and you do feel for her. She's a single mother with no education who's doing the best she can and she's easy to relate to. In fact, Duke might give the film much more than it's worth. On the other hand, Jane Wyatt seems to be sleepwalking through most of her performance.

The Evil Escapes might do a better than average job of giving its character realistic, real world drama, it fails at the horror scenes and, since this is a horror film, that's unexcusable. It's TV movie restrictions don't help, but I can promise you that there are more nail biting episodes of Goosebumps out there.

The Evil Escapes might not be quite as bad as its reputation would have you believe, but it also feels like it pulls to many punches which keeps any sort of tension from every developing.