Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions.
After the highs of Amityville 2: The Possession, it’s hard not to see Amityville 3-D as something of a letdown. The Richard Fleischer-directed film lacks the visual flare that Damiano Damiani brought and the result is a film that is lacking all of the energy and verve of the first sequel. The new film feels more leaden and by the numbers, even as the film works overtime to justify its 3-D gimmick, which was all the rage in early 80s horror.
One stand-out aspect of the third Amityville is that it’s unafraid of being mean. The women, in particular, are treated horribly; the film’s two cruelest – and most memorable – deaths are reserved for supporting cast members Candy Clark (!) and Lori Loughlin (!!).
Unfortunately, the bulk of the film rests almost entirely on the shoulders of Tony Roberts, who turns in an astonishingly dull and unemotive performance as John Baxter. It makes sense in theory because of Baxter’s job as an investigative reporter who debunks supernatural claims, but, in reality, it makes for a very bland protagonist.
Amityville 3-D starts off well as John and co-worker Melanie (Clark) quickly prove that a pair of elderly charlatans have rigged up the Amityville house to hold sham seances. It’s a fun bit, particularly Baxter and Melanie’s oh-so-obvious matching tan trench coats and Melanie’s glee at hamming it up as a grieving mother and playing paparazzi with the camera.
The film then settles into a bit of a lull as Baxter inexplicably buys the house for a song (he’s divorcing Tess Harper’s Nancy, whose performance can only be described as “shrill and hysterical”). Bizarre events quickly begin stacking up, including the death of John Harkins’ realtor Clifford Sanders (via the now-compulsory Amityville flies) and Melanie has a freezing experience that leaves her shaken and upset.
Throughout it all, Baxter staunchly refuses to believe in the supernatural, even when Melanie is horribly burned to death following a car accident that contains shades of both Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker and Final Destination 2. It ultimately takes the unexpected boating death of Baxter’s adult daughter Susan (Loughlin) to make him finally take the claims against the house seriously.
Doubting Thomas characters are a persistent archetype in horror, and more specifically supernatural films, though they’re rarely interesting figures. Baxter’s insistence that everything in the house is normal is offset by Nancy’s almost-immediate belief in the opposite. In many ways, their relationship harkens back to the marriage dynamics of the original film, almost as though 3-D were a sequel to the 1979 original and not The Possession.
While Baxter is a bore, there is enough odd and unusual material here to merit a look. The (sadly underdeveloped) subplot involving paranormal scientist Dr Elliot West (Robert Joy) is intriguing, particularly the climax when West and his students inadvertently open the portal to hell in the house’s basement. West’s baby face and his supposed paranormal expertise create an odd disconnect, but his inevitable death via a goopy demon that first singes his face, then drags him to a watery death is highly entertaining.
The climax also kills a legion of Red Shirt students and while they’re certainly not characters (they’re introduced solely to be murdered by the house), the dead kids make for a spectacular telekinetic and pyrotechnic display. This is the kind of energy we’ve come to expect from an Amityville film. If only the film had embraced this kind of madcap ridiculousness throughout and wasn’t encumbered by such a dud protagonist!
The Amityville IP Awards
- Best Death: Poor Melanie! She narrowly avoids being facially impaled by a row of pipes, but the house maliciously traps her in her car where she is slowly and brutally immolated. It’s a great sequence and a horrible way to go.
- Best Sequence: Nancy is a bit of a dunce for foolishly believing Susan is okay when she spots her water-logged daughter walking upstairs. This specter, however, is another example of the house’s mean-spirited trolling: Nancy is, of course, already dead on the pier outside by this time.
- Best FX: the flies in Saunder’s death occasionally look like flying specs of poo and most of the 3-D involves mundane objects being thrust at the camera (boom mics?! Really?), but the water goblin that hugs Dr. West in the well is great, gross and memorable!
- Celebrity Sighting: A young Meg Ryan appears as Susan’s “bad girl” friend Lisa and she’s delightful. Sadly the minute Susan bites it, Lisa disappointingly exits the film. Still, even in just a few scenes, it’s easy to see the magnetism of Ryan’s star power.
Next time: we’ve run out of theatrical entries, so we’re headed into direct-to-video territory with Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (1989).
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