It’s been some time since we last talked about the Amityville films. Some of this comes down to a personal reason for not wanting to think about one of tonight’s offerings, which we’ll get to down the line. At the same time I hate to leave any project unfinished and I’m in need of something to get the writing juices flowing in order to tackle a major paper. Yes that is absolutely a cheap excuse to avoid an assignment. Then again I’m on the honor roll so who are you to judge? So where did we last leave off? Oh yes, after some stumbling the series firmly locked itself into following cursed objects from the original Amityville house as they spread terror across the country. Sadly the franchise failed to follow the evil lamp and clock with the natural progression of demonic toilet. That being said let’s see what’s on tap.
Amityville: A New Generation
What could be more frightening than a house full of New England specters? How about inner-city gentrification? After hitting the more tightly populated setting of modern suburbs in the last film the producers decided to go the urban route with help from the director of Santa with Muscles. Our setting is a dank neighborhood filled with homeless folks that just so happens to have a group of artists renting out lofts and frequenting coffee shops. Not exactly sure why we’re expected to root for artsy yuppies but the sad fact is we’re stuck with em for nearly 100 minutes.
Our chief protagonist is Keyes Terry, the standard scruffy soulful guy with an interest in photography. One day while drinking coffee, alongside fellow insufferable mope Suki, Keyes notices an interesting bum he simply most photograph. Feeling he should share any potential wealth from his photos, Keyes offers the homeless man a few bucks and receives a freaky-ass mirror in return.
Of all the cursed objects thus far the mirror is by far the lamest. While the lamp didn’t have many thematic talents it more than made up for it with sheer ferocity. The clock on the other hand featured all sorts of reality manipulating tricks to unleash on folks. The mirror just shows people basic spooky stuff and attempts to make up for it’s lack of power by looking so obviously evil that one can only wonder why anyone would ever let it in their home.
Getting back to the core group of characters there’s Suki, the sad Asian lady with a bad love-life. She also serves as a side bit of action for loser landlord, Dick, played by David Naughton of American Werewolf fame. Dick’s wife barely exists. Richard Roundtree, aka Shaft, plays another artist whose personality is basically just sleepy Richard Roundtree. Keyes also has a girlfriend who can be summed up as 90s pretty. Terry O. Quin is a detective with a little extra interest in Keyes, and Lin Shaye shows up for a hot minute as an eccentric nurse. Clearly the cast is all over the place in terms of talent and acting style which is amplified further by the tendency for some of them to disappear for large portions of the film, Roundtree vanishes for close to an hour!
You’re probably picking up on an air of negativity towards this movie but before I take a steaming dump on it I will pay it some compliments. For what it’s worth there is actually some effort to make New Generation into a true sequel rather than simply co-opting the Amityville name. One of the characters, bet ya can guess who, has a secret history connecting them to the old house. Timeline wise things get a bit muddled as there was apparently another family shooting before the Defeo one. You’d think that woulda been mentioned before. Of course this may simple be an adjustment of the real-life aspects in order to avoid legal trouble. Either way this is a proper continuation of the series narrative, just not a very good one.
Of all the various problems within this movie, be it unlikable characters, piss-poor production values, or mostly bad acting, the biggest may be just who not scary the whole thing is. Not a single scare lands through this entire film, and that’s on the occasions when the movie even tries to be scary. A big span of time is spent on Keyes sorting out his emotions, which could be a commendable change of pace if there were anything else to support it.
Still; New generation isn’t the worst entry in the series, that honor still belongs to The Amityville Curse. The music isn’t all that horrible, some of the effects are alright, and it’s nifty to see one of these movies were people don’t spend ninety percent of their time in a house. Unfortunately the efforts to make a more dramatic entry largely fall flat which makes for a pretty dull entry in the series.
Amityville Dollhouse
Any of us who are old enough to have fond memories of rental stores have one or two pieces of cover art that, for whatever reason, stick with us. One of mine was Amityville: Doolhouse which was likely due to how inescapable it was. Seemed like every local joint kept a copy prominently displayed at every horror display. At that point I’d already seen the first few movies multiple times through venues like Monstervision though I had little interest in diving into a sea of seemingly disconnected direct-to-video features. Given the troubled release history in the dvd market for these later entries this remained unseen to me until just recently. Turns out this missing piece of the Amityville puzzle is a special kind of stupid.
Long-time producer Steve White steps into the directors seat in order to handle the absolutely minuscule budget, supposedly there were plans to use cardboard cut-outs for some of the monster scenes. Given such a slim production you shouldn’t expect much in the way of recognizable faces save for the late Lisa Robin Kelly of That 70s Show fame.
The story this time around concerns a blended family situation. On one end we have an architect dad with a jock teenage son and generic young daughter. His new wife has a son, Jimmy, who is unbelievably pathetic. Combine Denny from The Room and Troy from The Final Sacrifice and you’ll have a slight approximation of this goober. The supporting characters consist of the jock’s trashy girlfriend, mystic aunt Marla, and a hog-riding supernatural warrior named Tobias. Oh, and don’t forget Jimmy’s zombie dad. Given that collection of personalities you’d be right to assume this movie steps into full-scale cartoon territory.
The story itself is straightforward enough. Family moves into new dream home, uncovers a Dollhouse in nearby evil tool shed, and soon all hell breaks loose. It’s the little details that build-up only to spin out of control. How about we start with the tool-shed left by the former property owners that makes spooky talking sounds and has newspaper clippings about a horrible family tragedy that nobody pays much attention too. See there was a horrible fire on this spot and the dad decides to use the same same chimney as the centerpiece of his new home. Oh and this might actually be his tragic family history, it’s never explicitly stated but it sure adds some creep factor to his character. There are wasps who try to burrow into peoples heads and may in fact be baby demons. Jimmy’s bonding with his undead father while his mom lusts uncontrollably for her new step-son. While all this is going on the mystical aunt entrusts her 7 year old niece with documenting the evil actions of her dollhouse.
Notice how the titular evil object came last in that laundry list of mayhem? That’s a big indicator of how this film operates. There is no point of origin for the dollhouse and nothing to link it to the original Long Island haunting save for its appearance. Given the convoluted backstory it’s difficult to determine if the Amityville curse (not the horrible film) is causing these events or merely teaming up with the bad mojo previously accumulated by this location. Much like New Generation’s mirror there is very little in the way of thematic haunting on display. At a couple points things enter or exit the dollhouse through a sort of void space, and that’s about it.
Despite the abysmal overall quality I can slightly recommend Dollhouse in some regard as a piece of so bad it’s good cinema. For anyone who needs a belly laugh with some friends the movie is both inept and wacky enough to provide a decent time. For my sake I ended up watching it on the same night as a personal tragedy which is permanently linked in my mind. Enjoyably bad or not this just isn’t something I’ll be returning to which is part of the reason for holding off on this article for so long.
And with that I’m out of things to say. Only one more pair of flicks to go before we can put this series in the rear view as it enters both remake and meta territory. Suppose it’s time to act responsible and return to a seemingly endless analysis on mass-consumerism. Pray for me.
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