For a 70s kid weaned on “truth”-based pop culture like ‘In Search Of’, ‘Chariots of the Gods’ and the docudrama hilarity of such Sunn Classics entries as THE MYSTERIOUS MONSTERS (1975) and THE LINCOLN CONSPIRACY (1977), the possessed house shenanigans of all things Amityville Horror was right in my wheelhouse. Despite strict Catholic parents, I ate up everything Amityville-related during its period of peak relevance, from the now-debunked novel and newspaper articles to tv specials and, of course, the 1979 movie adaptation starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder.
Followed by a sleazy prequel (1982’s AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION) and a gimmicky 3-D heavy entry starring Tony Roberts, Lori Laughlin and Meg Ryan (1983’s cleverly titled AMITYVILLE 3-D), you would have thought that by the mid-80s audiences would have had enough of the possessed house and its propensity for attracting swarms of flies.
Well, movie audiences had, as evidenced by the fact that A3D barely made back its $6 million budget—but that didn’t mean television wasn’t ready to cash in on a little name recognition. Which brings us to 1989’s made-for-tv thriller AMITYVILLE: THE EVIL ESCAPES starring Patty Duke (!) and Jane Wyatt (!!) as an estranged daughter and her mother who must battle, um, a lamp.
But not just any lamp! After the horrific events at the famous abode, a team of priests—led by Norman Lloyd—clean house before the realtor can, well, clean house and sell the possessions at the world’s most ill-advised garage sale. When one zany buyer snatches up a kitschy lamp and ships it to her sister in California, she’s unaware that the lamp is responsible for landing Father Kibler (Fredric Lehne) in the hospital, where she too ends up after nicking her finger on the damned antique.
Upon its arrival in California, the lamp begins causing all kinds of problems in the already-strained home of Alice Leacock (Wyatt), her widowed daughter Nancy (Duke) and Nancy’s three kids: Amanda, Brian and Jessica. Still dealing with the untimely death of their husband and father, Nancy and kids try not to create havoc in grandma’s seaside home, which proves harder than it sound thanks to little Jessica bonding with Lamp Daddy while everything from chainsaws and garbage disposals to sewer pipes and toaster ovens seems to have an (evil) mind of its own.
While neither scary nor gory, THE EVIL ESCAPES is an enjoyably weird artifact from the days when horror franchises would limp their way to the boob tube before enough time had passed that they could be revived on the big screen (or at least direct-to-video) for a new audience. Shockingly, a recent trip down the Amityville Horror rabbit hole has unearthed close to two dozen Amityville-related titles (such as AMITYVILLE: A NEW GENERATION), some of which – like THE EVIL ESCAPES – aren’t half bad. — Dan Taylor
Dan Taylor is the editor of Exploitation Retrospect and had a lifelong crush on Patty Duke.
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