Oh, that pesky house. The
first Amityville movie, based on an infamous “true” story,
told the tall tale of the Lutz family and how they were driven from their
Long Island dream home by dark forces. Released in 1979, in the era of
glossy studio horror which saw The Exorcist and The Omen bringing prestige
to the horror genre, the first Amityville was too blatantly daft to scale
the heights of those classics, but it was certainly held in higher regard
than many of its haunted house brethren.
Seizing on the success, and smelling a franchise in the making, Amityville
2 swiftly followed in 1982, and told the alleged story of Ron DeFeo,
the young man who killed his family in the house years before, blaming
demonic voices for his mental state.
Unfortunately, these two films exhausted what meagre morsels lay in the
bucket marked “Amityville Facts”, but Hollywood wasn’t
about to let a little thing like that stand in the way of raking in some
more cash.
Amityville 3D was thus the first movie to openly admit to being complete
fiction, opening with a séance held in the infamous abode.
Turns
out that the ghostly goings-on which ensue are faked (a sly comment on
the veracity of the original story? Probably not) and the séance
has in fact been set up by two journalists from Reveal magazine, posing
as bereaved parents in order to expose the fraudulent mediums who have
rented the notorious location to ply their trade. While touring the house
afterwards, John Baxter, one of the writers and a man in the middle of
a messy divorce, decides to buy the place as his new home – an
offer the owner is more than happy to accept, as the bloody history of
the place has made it impossible to offload.
John hasn’t even moved in when the house claims its first victim – the
estate agent is mobbed by flies until he suffers a heart attack. This
doesn’t seem to bother John much (a trait that becomes increasingly
bizarre by the end of the movie) and his daughter Susan is also curious
about the house, though not as much as her spunky pal, Lisa - and it’s
here that we’re introduced to a 22-year-old Meg Ryan in her first
big movie role.
Lisa is perversely fascinated by the house’s ghoulish history,
and even explains how it’s possible to have sex with a ghost while
prowling its hallways in undisguised glee. She insists on uncovering
the abandoned well in the cellar, which supposedly acts as a portal to
hell, and even plunges her head inside, building our hopes that she might
become a much-needed celebrity victim of the demonic dwelling.
Sadly, it’s not to be. The portal remains a rather dull hole in
the ground, at least for the time being. Things do pick up though. John
gets bounced up and down in a lift, but survives, while his writing partner
fares less well – she gets burned to a crisp in a car crash, a
tragedy heralded by the presence of yet another evil fly.
John reacts to his colleagues demise much the same as he did to the dead
body he found on moving day – with a shrug and deadpan aplomb.
Indeed, even when his own daughter falls victim to the curse – falling
to her death from a speedboat, a very common method of murder for haunted
houses – he reacts with the same level of emotional anguish you
might expect from someone who has just snapped a shoelace. The death
of Susan also means that Meg Ryan’s character vanishes prematurely
from the story, so she misses a final act which rips off Poltergeist
and The Entity (see: Barbara Hershey) with admirable gusto. Parapsychologists
descend on the Amityville house, Susan’s spirit manifests as a
floaty purple optical effect and a big rubber monster pops out of the
well for no apparent reason. Then the house explodes. In 3D.
Ryan actually comes out of this limp and largely inexplicable farce rather
well. Not only is she credited ahead of the marvellously named Peter
Kowanko (he plays “Roger”, fact fans), but her sprightly
character is one of the few bright spots in a consistently lifeless movie,
and her now famous bubbly appeal is very evident. Within three years
she was co-starring in Top Gun and before the decade was out, she’d
faked an orgasm for Billy Crystal and secured her place in Hollywood
history.
Need to know: As the suffix suggests, this third trip to Amityville attempted
to use 3D effects to drum up scares, though the effect is used more for
completely pointless gimmickery such as microphones and Frisbees being
thrust at the audience just to remind them to keep the glasses on. Universal
released Jaws 3D in the same year, so we can only assume that 1983 was
a good time to be in the 3D glasses wholesale business.
The Amityville saga, meanwhile, managed to spawn an alarming five more
movies before finally wheezing to a long overdue halt in 1996. With the
building itself destroyed at the end of Part 3, the series managed to
secure its future by imbuing the Amityville furniture with demonic powers
and following the trail of destruction as this jumble sale of evil ended
up in various unsuspecting homes. Amityville: The Evil Escapes featured
a demonic lamp, The Amityville Curse actually had no relation to the
series and used a completely different house, while the lazily titled
Amityville 1992 followed a bedevilled clock (and had the almost-witty
tagline “It’s about time”). Amityville: A New Generation
chose a mirror as its emissary of doom, while the last in the franchise,
Amityville Dollhouse, proved that even miniature reproductions of the
ill-fated dwelling could harbour sinister forces. A remake of the original
movie enjoyed modest success at cinemas in 2005, so the franchise may
yet rise again.
Availability: Amityville 3D is out on DVD in both the UK and US, though
without the 3D effect – making the numerous items waggled in front
of the camera even funnier.
