We return today to the more traditional and better-known entries in the Amityville Horror series, as well as returning to the good old Yard Sale of the Damned theme. And with a title like Amityville: It's About Time, there are no prizes for guessing what the evil household item is this time.
Architect Jacob Sterling returns home from a business trip to Amityville, New York with an antique clock he found in an old house just before it was demolished (and I think we all know what old house that was...) He thinks the clock is "just what [their] house is missing," and the clock itself wastes no time making itself at home. First, it drills down into the mantlepiece and starts to literally become part of the house, and then it starts to perform sinister time-related shenanigans on Jacob, his family and his on/off girlfriend Andrea. Its influence quickly spreads beyond the house too - Jacob is attacked by a neighbour's possibly possessed German Shepherd and badly injured, and strange acts of vandalism and arson start to plague the neighbourhood. Jacob also falls under the clock's influence and becomes aggressive and obsessed with creating a new community of Amityville houses; meanwhile his teenage daughter Lisa becomes a sultry sexpot. It's left up to Andrea and Jacob's son Rusty to try to stop the clock, but can they do so in time?
Amityville: It's About Time is a cheesy straight-to-video effort from the early 90s, but after The Amityville Curse, it's practically a masterpiece. Certainly, it's a damn sight more entertaining. Things actually happen in this movie and the plot doesn't move at a glacial pace. Granted, some of the movie's big setpieces are laughably cheesy, but they're entertaining and that alone is more than enough to keep its audience's attention. At one point a horny teenage boy gets melted into a puddle; at another, an old lady gets impaled by the beak of a large plastic stork from the roof of a diaper delivery van (and not, as Wikipedia and IMDB state, a "duck statue" that falls from a roof).
Amityville: It's About Time was directed by Tony Randel, whose work we've seen on this blog before with Hellbound: Hellraiser II and Ticks. The latter film isn't really a film that can be compared to an Amityville movie, but the former is, and for the most part, the two films are very different. This film is considerably less gory, for example, although it does have its moments, mainly with the seeping and infected dog bites Jacob suffers. There are one or two similarities, however - there's the use of time-lapse storm clouds in the background of some scenes; there's also a small amount of a possessed Jacob waxing philosophical on the natures of heaven, hell and power. The story might once again come from John G James' book, but Randel's influence is still clearly felt.
There was one moment in the film that made me exclaim, "What the [feck]?!" in astonishment and scare the cat, and that was the part where they brought Gilles de Rais into the plot. Somehow, the evil clock from Amityville also had a connection with a disgraced French noble who may or may not have been a child killer and devil worshipper, and who was executed in France a whole 152 years before previous films in this series have told us that all the evil goings-on began. I don't know whether they were implying that the clock was originally in de Rais' possession and then found its way to Amityville in time for John Ketchum and all those Native American spirits to join in with the clock party (which couldn't have happened anyway because pendulum clocks weren't invented until 1656; this is your random knowledge fact for the day), or whether something else was being implied, but regardless it makes little sense.
The film's ending also teeters on the edge of being a cheap cop-out; without giving too much away, it does involve time travel and a variation on the, "It was all just a dream!" ending, but the evil clock does bring it on itself, and so that bit of hubris just about saves it from having me rant about cheap and lazy ways to end your story. In the end, Amityville: It's About Time isn't about to win any awards, but it's actually one of the more entertaining entries in this series, especially when you compare it to entries like The Amityville Curse. It is, at least, worth the time to check out.
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