The Montelli family move into the Amityville house, and it’s not long before all manner of unusual things begin to take place. Eventually, a Catholic priest (James Olson) is called upon, but the loutish behaviour of patriarch Burt Young drives him away (‘Coz you wouldn’t want to stop an abusive husband/father from being abusive, right?). Eldest son Jack Magner seems to act out, seducing his own sister (Diane Franklin) and exhibiting other more violent behaviour, thus Olson begins to suspect something more otherworldly demonic is at play.
More a standalone film than the prequel or sequel it is often described as, the best way to describe this 1982 Damiano Damiani horror flick is a profit-driven hack-job. The first film was no masterpiece, but a pretty watchable film in a genre with very few entries worth watching. In the corners there are fragments of potentially interesting stuff about a dysfunctional family further disintegrating due to the evil inside the house…or would this tragedy have happened in any house? It’s a shame that the film never fully deals with any of that, despite the occasional trip to “Flowers in the Attic” territory, and Burt Young making for a believable loutish husband and father. He’s like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” where he’s a jerk to begin with, making his transformation into an even bigger jerk far more believable.
I assume the only thing producer Dino De Laurentiis was truly interested in was making money via cheap shocks. Sadly, none of those work anyway. I’m pretty sure the ‘real’ (i.e. Real case of someone making a lot of this nonsense up) Amityville case didn’t involve the eldest son morphing into The Incredible Hulk, and James Olson’s priest character is merely on hand to rip off “The Exorcist” in the final stages. Even some of the camera shots are right out of “The Exorcist”. Shameless stuff, though you had to know this wasn’t going to be true to the known case when the eldest son has gun in hand (And indeed, the murders are the ‘true’ part of this story) at the 30 minute mark.
It actually had the potential to be a better and more serious-minded film than the first, given some of the issues on display here. Unfortunately, it’s so badly written by Tommy Lee Wallace, so obnoxiously directed by Damiani, and in Rutanya Alda’s case, so appallingly acted that it ends up a much worse film. There’s too much going on here too much of the time that there’s no room to let the film breathe so that the horror is actually scare. 8 minutes in and the flies are already buzzing about. 12 minutes in and a mirror smashes onto the ground. That’s way too early, and far too silly. Any sensible family would’ve moved out by about the 15 minute mark. It’s not even 30 minutes in and I had already tired of it. It’s the kind of film where beds are spinning, curtains are blowing, guns are automatically firing, and furnaces go a-blazin’, all in one scene! The active, roaming camerawork by Franco Di Giacomo is occasionally effective, but overused so early that it’s incredibly annoying. Alda is all bug-eyed crazy from moment one here, and she’s not the villain. James Olson is just OK as the priest, whilst the talented and dignified Moses Gunn is saddled with a nothing part. Diane Franklin is as personable and pretty as ever in quite a difficult role, but I’d still rather re-watch “The Last American Virgin”. The gory FX/makeup at the climax seem to have come in from another film entirely. The best thing in the entire film is the top-notch music score by Lalo Schifrin. However, that’s like putting lipstick on a pig. I mean, we’re talking about a film featuring a demonically possessed Walkman telling someone to kill. Yep.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Obnoxious, silly, and clichéd. A pretty terrible film in a decade full of even worse horror films, particularly sequels. Whether you see this one as a sequel, prequel, or confusing hybrid, let’s just call it a piece of crap and move on.
