Amityville: Dollhouse

Bill Martin (Robin Thomas) builds a house to raise a new family of his own with his teenage son Todd (Allen Cutler), his daughter Jessica "Jessie" Martin (Rachel Duncan), and Claire Martin (Starr Adreeff) and her nerd son Jimmy (Jarrett Lennon), an outcast boy that misses his father (Clayton Murray) and has the mouse Max as his only friend. Todd has a girlfriend, Dana (Lisa Robin Kelly), who is frequently with him.

Bill finds a doll house in the garage that is a replica of the infamous Amityville haunted house and he gives it to Jessie on her birthday. Soon the family experiences evil accidents and Bill's sister Marla (Lenore Kasdorf) and her husband Tobias (Franc Ross) discover that the doll house is possessed by demons that are threatening their lives.

"Amityville: Dollhouse" is another story of the franchise "Amityville" with a reasonable plot and terrible conclusion. I saw this movie for the first time on 15 Dec 1999 on VHS and today I have just seen it again. It is unacceptable that Tobias sacrifices his life to save the Martin family and Bill and Claire end the movie laughing, after losing their friend and all possessions in the fire. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "A Casa Maldita" ("The Damned House")

Eddie Murphy gave the best indictment of the Amityville series' believability when, imitating the new owner of the house, he said, "Oh baby, this place is beautiful. There are trees here and dogs and its a beautiful neighborhood and..."

"Demon: Get out!"

"Too bad we can't stay baby."

Again, in this movie, all of the family's problems would be solved if they did one simple thing. Leave!!! Just leave the house. That's always been my policy when my dead relatives come through the closet and giant mice run under my bed. It's time to go! Why does it take these people so long to figure that out?

Even if they don't want to leave the house, why don't they just destroy the doll house? One sledge hammer blow and all their problems are over.

This is a movie that is so bad that you will call friends to tell them it's on just so they can be in on the badness. The real horror is that they keep making dreck like this, keep employing no-talent actors and writers, and waste valuable plastic that could go into useful items like dildos and replacement parts for George W. Bush's head.

Amityville Dollhouse (1997)

The Amityville Dollhouse was an hour and a half of cheeze, horror, gore, terror, etc. The movie had some boring parts, but was for the most part quick moving and entertaining. The whole dollhouse idea was sort a stupid, but hey it works. I recommend this if you haven't seen any of the other Amityville films. 6/10.

"Amityville Dollhouse" is your average low budget B-horror movie, but it isn't too bad in my opinion. It follows a suburban family who moves into a new house the father built, so it seems that there's no way the house could be haunted. But the Amityville evil finds it's way in there, after they discover a dollhouse replicating the Amityville house. They decide to give the dollhouse to their youngest daughter for her birthday, and that's where it all begins. The dollhouse begins to exert an evil force upon the family.

I tend to have a soft spot for low budget, cheesy type horror films of this type. Even though they may not be top notch quality, I find most of them entertaining, and they still manage to be alright in my book. Most of the cast here are unknowns, I only recognized one actress: Lisa Robin Kelly, who plays Eric's sister, Laurie Forman, on That '70s Show (my favorite television show by the way). The whole dollhouse idea is kind of dumb, I don't know what a dollhouse really has to do with "Amityville", but in the context of the movie it seems to work. There aren't really any scary moments, and when it tries to be scary, it comes off more as campy, but I don't really take this film so seriously.

Granted it is a campy, low-budget horror flick, but "Amityville Dollhouse" still finds a way to entertain you, despite the cheap effects and minimal scares that it provides. Some may think I'm crazy, but I was entertained by this flick. It's nothing special and I wouldn't go too far out of your way to see it, but it's an okay corny horror movie. Like I said, nothing special, but not too bad. 5/10.

A perfect late-night sci-fi channel movie, and far more entertaining (for me) than the original Amityville.

The way the dollhouse creates different demons for each character, and the cheap but effective sfx, reminded me very much of the Creepshow or Graveyard Shift movies. Also, the 'fright' scenes skip along at a respectable pace and frequency, as opposed to other films which often plod through the middle.

Sure, the script contains some appalling lines and characterisation, and there are a few moments where more highly strung viewers would be screaming at the stupidity of the characters. I just smile.

With 15-20 years of further advances in sfx, and the cultural tendency of under 30's to confuse sarcasm with valid criticism, I can see why this film has such a low score on the IMDB. Individually, the elements don't stand up to a whole lot of scrutiny, but taken as a whole on its own merits (compared to similar films of the same period), I really enjoyed it. A few better lines, and better known actors, and there's no reason why people wouldn't look on this with the same sort of affection reserved for Poltergeist.

Don't miss if it's on TV.