Leofwine_draca AMITYVILLE IV: THE EVIL ESCAPES is the first of the ultra-cheesy Amityville sequels with increasingly spurious connections to the first films in the series. This one's a TV movie which doesn't help, as the production values are noticeably lacking compared to the earlier films. The storyline involves the Amityville curse being transferred into a creepy old lamp, which is subsequently purchased as a gift for an unsuspecting family who begin to suffer strange hauntings as a result.This is a rather dull film that stretches out for long moments of boredom and occasionally intersperses them with silliness. It's also incredibly cheesy and not the least bit scary, so it's a film to watch if you've got a sense of humour. Patty Duke as the put-upon mother is the only actor here who gives anything approaching a legitimate performance. Scenes involving flies and priests feel like weak retreads of what has come earlier and are largely without merit.The film is better when it works in new supernatural events (even if they are ridiculous). THE EVIL ESCAPES has the best garbage disposal scene since ROLLING THUNDER, although that moment is eclipsed by a later set-piece involving a plumber and a blocked pipe that has to be seen to be believed. The cheesy highlight involves the woman's son (played by a dwarf actor) having an encounter with a possessed chainsaw in the basement; a moment that truly has to be seen to be believed. Stuff with a creepy blonde possessed girl is too obviously indebted to POLTERGEIST and the ending is routine, although that last freeze frame is pretty funny.

BA_Harrison Given everything that happened in the first three films, you have to question the wisdom of buying anything from a yard sale at the infamous Amityville house, but that's exactly where Helen Royce (Peggy McCay) goes to get a present for her sister Alice (Jane Wyatt). An ugly light stand powered by three centuries of evil, the unlikely gift turns up at Alice's home in California just as her recently widowed daughter Nancy (Patty Duke) and grandchildren Amanda (Zoe Trilling), Brian (Aron Eisenberg) and Jessica (Brandy Gold) arrive to stay.Very few horror series reach a fourth instalment with much dignity intact, and it seems that the Amityville movies are no exception: The Evil Escape is totally dumb and devoid of logic. Thankfully, it is also so daft at times that it becomes one of those 'so bad it's actually quite entertaining' experiences that can be passable fun just so long as one watches it accompanied by several beers and a few mates with equally questionable taste in movies.Much of the film's unintentional hilarity can be attributed to podgy faced actor Eisenberg, whose awkward mannerisms and unconvincing facial expressions are almost as terrible to behold as his nasty 90s hairstyle (Eisenberg's 'best' scene: Brian wrestling with a possessed chainsaw in the cellar), but the film also gets chuckles courtesy of its laughable central prop (the supposedly malevolent lamp that looks like a balloon-headed tree-person with glowing hands), a couple of silly death scenes (plumber drowned in goop, strangulation by lamp cord), and one hell of a crazy climax that sees the evil defeated by elderly Alice, who simply throws the lamp out of the window!Sadly, being a made-for-TV movie, Amityville 4 suffers from minimal gore (the only bloody scene being when a guy gets his hand caught in the garbage disposal) and nudity is non existent despite Zoe Trilling looking more than qualified for a gratuitous shower scene.

Muldwych A Californian family's lives are thrown into turmoil by the presence of an old lamp sent to them by a well-meaning relative, a lamp that used to reside in a certain old house in Amityville.'The Evil Escapes' came out at a time when several horror franchises had fallen from earlier grace and were seeing low-budget revivals on television: 'Amityville IV', 'Psycho IV', and indeed 'The Omen IV'. Amityville IV for me is most definitely the weakest, with a script about an evil lamp that presumably didn't sell as is, so it was retooled until it could wear the 'Amityville' banner in order to ever see the light of day. Pure speculation on my part, given that it's apparently based on a book (then again, some books are inflatable bath toys), but that's pretty much how it looks from where I'm sitting.Following the house's miraculous recovery after it exploded fairly comprehensively in the last film, priests sweep across its reconstituted floors to exorcise the evil it contains once and for all. This they seemingly achieve, and soon after, the house's contents are sold off in a yard sale, including an old lamp we've never seen before during the time of the Lutzs, the Montellis or the Baxters, (maybe they can cgi it into the original Amityville Horror George Lucas-style) which attracts the attention of a buyer, who figures it'd look good in her sister's house over on the west coast. Unbeknownst to her, the lamp contains the demonic essence of the Long Island house from whence it came and it soon takes over the lives of its new victims. The inconsistencies seem baffling given that the screenplay was written Sandor Stern, screenplay scribe for the first Amityville - unless the original Sandor Stern exploded a few years earlier, reconstituted himself and isn't quite the same person, in much the same way that the Amityville house is quite obviously not the same. Or maybe Spectacor Films' budget didn't stretch to the inclusion of proper continuity.Still, if you put all this aside, 'The Evil Escapes' is not completely without entertainment value. There are a few seat-squirming moments involving certain household appliances as well as a few good practical effects. I'm not really familiar with Patty Duke's back catalogue, very possibly not my cup of tea, but while it's clearly just a paycheck for her, she pulls the drama up a notch with the amount of effort the production deserves. Star Trek fans may enjoy seeing Aron Eisenberg without the Ferengi makeup and indeed Jane Wyatt, although she too barely needs to do more than phone in her lines, much like fellow Trek alumnus Norman Lloyd. Frederic Lehne is also a welcome presence, doing his best to keep his 'frightened priest' a few notches above 'Crispin Glover'.Sandor Stern's direction is smoother than his script, and while no particular shot stands out, nothing seems out of place. Rick Conrad provides a rather uninteresting score powered by those late-80s synths that managed to age faster than Tony Blair's face, but at least it's more consistent than Howard Blake's effort in Amityville III - though Blake was clearly more talented.If you're completely mad like me and watch every installment of a film series (especially horror) even though you're well-aware the sequels are most likely diminishing returns, you'll probably watch this anyway. If on the other hand, you made it through Amityville III without completely losing the will to live and want to know if part IV will deliver the death blow to your sanity, the answer is no. I think III and IV, although very different beasts, offer about the same amount of entertainment value. My yardstick is part II, which I thought was a surprisingly good first sequel. From here on out, it's all straight to video.

witchcraftpentagrams Warning, This Comment Contains Spoilers For 2 Other Movies. I have seen all of the Amityville movies and i say this one tops the lot in the most entertaining column. I am very surprised that this movie was based on a book and came out on TV. Lots of interesting features have been added into this movie. For example, the evil escapes through an ugly looking lamp from the power cord and goes into a different house the same way but in reverse. Now the Food Remains Grinder scene is one of the best scenes i have ever seen. It is very good that they show the boys hand getting ground up and spurting blood on everyone instead of having a stupid camera angle that makes everybody get upset. It is also good that it actually ground up his hand. I have seen the grinder scenes in final destination 2 and halloween h2o and the grinding never happened. Very entertaining ending with lots of character commotion but a very ugly cast i must say. All the straight-to-video Amityville films are very rare over here in Australia and this one is the second most rare, so if you see this, hire it or buy it as soon as you can.