Into nearly every over-long horror franchise a 3D entry must fall, and the Amityville Horror series is no different. "Warning: In this movie you are the victim," the movie poster ominously informs us - which is a refreshing change, as most bad movies don't tend to give their audience any advance warning.
After exposing a fraudulent psychic medium couple (who totally aren't meant to be the Warrens, honest!) who were operating out of 112 Ocean Avenue, investigative journalist John Baxter decides to buy the house and move in himself, firmly believing that all that haunting stuff that made up the last two movies is just a load of superstition. The house seems to take that as a challenge, and it isn't long before the flies are swarming once more, house guests are being half-frozen and terrified, and the ghosts are leaving the hot water running for hours and no doubt running up a huge heating bill. Oh, and demonic faces and omens of death start appearing in photos taken in and around the house. With his family in danger, will John become a believer in time to discover a way to defeat the evil?
You know how, in Amityville II, it was clear that the movie really wanted to be The Exorcist? Well, Amityville 3-D (also known as Amityville III: The Demon) clearly wants to be The Omen, what with its plot point of photos showing people who are going to die, and even a scene where the photographer nearly loses her head in a car accident (which also serves as a device for the film to thrust a large metal pipe at the audience in the name of 3-D). That's not the only film that Amityville 3-D is essentially fanfiction for, however - there's also several scenes that remind me more than a little of both Poltergeist and The Entity (primarily the parapsychology sections). Not to mention that the parapsychology doctor could easily be Dr Herbert West's brother (right down to the name), despite Re-Animator not coming out for another two years. It's really quite uncanny.
Basically, Amityville 3-D wants to be at least three different movies, and the end result is a confusing and boring mess. Just how bad is it? It holds a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes - and has done since it first appeared on the site - and is considered to be one of the worst films of 1983. And this is the same year that featured Geek Maggot Bingo and Grizzly II.
One of the reasons it did so badly was because of the 3-D effects. Now, as usual, I watched a 2-D version, but even then I could clearly see how bad the 3-D effects were. Blatantly superimposed cut-out flies on the screen, a computer-generated waveform floating around the house that was meant to be a spirit, and of course that old reliable trick of throwing things at the camera to try to give the audience a cheap scare. How they ever thought that 3-D like this in the early 1980s was going to be the future of cinema is beyond me... But even people who could see the 2-D had complaints, and Siskel and Ebert complained that the images were3 "indistinct" and that "The 3D added nothing to the experience. All you ended up with was eye-strain." Amityville 3-D was clearly relying on the 3-D gimmick and instead failed miserably there.
The plot is also a mess as well. The Lutz family still had their lawsuit going, so no mention of their experiences was allowed in the film (and technically the film isn't allowed to be called a "sequel" but screw that) and the film has another disclaimer stating that the film has nothing to do with George and Kathy Lutz. But the DeFeo family is brought up, and they're back to being the DeFeos and not the Monettis from the last film. Then there's a photographer who finds strange things appearing in the photos she takes in the house, but she dies in a car accident while rushing to tell John Baxter about it... and then she's not mentioned again. An entire plot thread, gone. And then there's my personal favourite - how come the evil spirits didn't bother the fake psychic couple? Did they actually think it funny that they were bilking people out of their money and just kept quiet and watched?
The other special effects also deserve a mention. There's the well to hell in the basement again, which goes from normal water to boiling water to a pillar of wax that's supposed to be ice... and then there's the "demon" itself. Which looks like a relative of the Flukeman from the X-Files, only less threatening. I laughed out loud when it poked its head up in the well and grabbed Herbert West's brother. Basically, Amityville 3-D was a disaster from beginning to end - the only other thing of interest about it is that it was the film debut of none other than Meg Ryan...
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