Movie Info
Movie Name: Amityville: The Evil Escapes
Studio: Steve White Productions
Genre(s): Horror/B-Movie
Release Date(s): May 12, 1989
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
I love my dad-lamp
The home 112 Ocean Avenue lies empty as a group of ministers attempting to drive out the evil in advertently make things worse. The evil has moved into a lamp that has been sent across country to the home of Alice Leacock (Jane Wyatt). Alice’s daughter Nancy Evans (Patty Duke) and her three thrildren Jessica (Brandy Gold), Amanda (Zoe Trilling), and Brian (Aron Eisenberg) have just moved in with Nancy after the death of Nancy’s husband, and Nancy’s daughter Jessica isn’t taking it well. When Jessica begins speaking to the strange light, everyone thinks it is her coping method…but it could be much worse.
Directed by Sandor Stern, Amityville: The Evil Escapes (also called Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes) was a made-for-TV movie that originally aired on NBC on May 12, 1989. Following Amityville 3-D in 1983, it is based on the John G. Jones novel Amityville: The Evil Escapes originally published in June of 1988. It was met with largely negative reviews.
I saw Amityville: The Evil Escapes when it was new or close to it. I had an interest in Amityville as a kid and read the book. While the first two sequels to the original film weren’t great (they’re pretty bad in fact), this film manages to be even worse since it isn’t even so-bad-it-is-good.
Rage against the dying of the light!
The whole premise of the movie is questionable. The movie seems to borrow from the TV series Friday the 13th: The Series which featured people trying to stopped cursed objects. The objects themselves were sometimes scary but other times they were simply household appliances. Here, you have movie makers trying to make a (hideous) lamp “menacing”…it isn’t possible, but it also isn’t even campy it is so bad.
The cast is pretty typical for “made-for-TV” in 1989. You have TV movie star Patty Duke teamed with an aging actress in Jane Wyatt and rather bland priest played by Fredric Lehne. Other notable cast members include Hitchcock actor Norman Lloyd as Father Manfred and future Star Trek: Deep Space Nine star (Nog) Aron Eisenberg as one of Duke’s children.
You light up my life
The original Amityville Horror films at least had some atmosphere. You had creepy music, an odd looking house that could somehow look menacing, and demons…here, you get a lamp. The lamp cord is kind of like a snake I guess, but that doesn’t make it scary. The style and shooting of the film are predictable and there are no scares or jumps. It feels like a complete waste of time.
Amityville: The Evil Escapes is for hardcore fans only that have absolutely nothing else better to watch. Being made-for-TV in this case meant cheap instead of resulting clever ways to scare within the rating system. The horror might have escaped the house (this film really doesn’t tie in with the other films well since the house blew up at the end of Amityville 3-D), but it should have stayed home. Amityville: The Evil Escapes was followed by The Amityville Curse in 1990.
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