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| COVER GALLERY |
| Film vitals |
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· Year: 1983
· Also known as: Amityville: The Demon, Amityville III, Amityville III: The Demon
· Director: Richard Fleischer
· Writers: David Ambrose, William Wales
· Cast: Tony Roberts, Tess Harper
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| Series info |
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One of many works involving the Amityville Horror.
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| Information |
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· This film is fictional, though it does mention the real-life DeFeo murders by name.
· In a disclaimer that sounds as if it might have come from The Simpsons, the video says: "Amityville 3-D . . . Home video version. Not in 3-D." And it isn't, though it is fun to pick out some of the more obvious attempts at 3-D.
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| Purchase |
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Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.de
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| Synopsis |
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The first entirely fictional Amityville film deals with a writer who moves into the infamous haunted house, only to have horror and tragedy befall him and his family.
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RATING
Out of 100 |
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55
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| COLD ANALYSIS |
| 2.25 -ATMOSPHERE |
| 2.0 -GORE |
| 2.0 -HUMOR |
| 2.0 -SCARES |
| 2.0 -TENSION |
This third film is a departure point for the Amityville series: it is the last to feature the infamous house and yet the first to feature an entirely fictional plotline (all joking aside). It's also the only film in the series to present the house as an organized, malevolent force. Other films in the series are either too confused in detail (The Amityville Horror and Amityville: A New Generation), vaguely boring (The Amityville Curse), or just plain bad (Amityville: The Evil Escapes and the remarkably horrible Amityville: The Possession) to present a truly focused evil. Amityville 3-D gives us a horror often useful in the genre--a supernatural force that attempts to destroy the characters from within. To be fair, The Amityville Horror tried to accomplish its ends along the same lines, but it was derailed by its bombastic pseudoreligious overtones.
This isn't to say that Amityville 3-D is perfect, or even very good. The writing is at times obvious, some of the scary scenes are almost neutralized due to sloppy directing, and the fake-looking costume effects near the end (you'll know what I mean) run a great risk of rendering the horror mundane. However, the film's references to the real-life DeFeo murders (no aliases this time) and reliance on potentially real-life paranormal phenomena result in a verisimilitude that gives the film a decent atmosphere.
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| RATING |
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This is the only Amityville film I've seen to date (though I managed to catch the end credits of two others!) and I actually quite enjoyed it. Okay, so the 3-D aspects look really tacky when they're not in 3-D, but who knows, I expect it may have been quite impressive on the big screen. At least they attempted something different. The house truly does present a great evil and the threat to the characters is easy to see. It gets creepier when you realise even when they are away from the house they are not safe. With the introduction of a group of teenagers, you fear its going to become a typical teen slasher full of sex and blood, but soon they are out of the way and turn out not to be a major feature. The film stays with its middle-aged main character and carries on providing real fear-inducing moments. It may not be the best horror film I've seen in ages but it's still pretty good and definitely worth watching.
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