MY CALL: What a delightful little bad movie. This has no real connection to its namesake, and has few effects worth mention. Still, this somehow entertained me just enough. MORE MOVIES LIKE Amityville Dolhouse: Uhhhhhh, when it comes to Amityville sequels, I’d stick to Amityville II: The Possession (1982) and otherwise tread carefully into the depths of the extended franchise. Part II has all the dumb fun you’re looking for with great pacing, but Amityville 3-D (1983) and Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes (1989) are both boring slogs. I haven’t yet seen Amityville Curse (1990), but it is the 5th in this sequence of non-sequels.
Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes (1989) continued the Amityville story with a hideous cursed lamp. Now, in this sort-of sequel, director Steve White uses a dollhouse. He never directed anything again, so that may be informative of how well this horror sequel was received.
Having just moved into their new house, recently remarried Bill (Robin Thomas) and Claire (Starr Andreeff; Club Vampire, Dance of the Damned, Vampire Journals, Scanner Cop, Syngenor, The Terror Within, Ghoulies II) unpack with their kids, nerdy preteen Jim (Jarrett Lennon; Highway to Hell), kiddo Jessica (Rachel Duncan; Rumpelstiltskin) and teen Todd (Allen Cutler). Todd and Jim both struggle with their new “family.”
So already I’m confused. We learn that Bill’s ex-wife lives in New York, where the original The Amityville Horror (1979) takes place. But as they move into their new home, Todd’s girlfriend (Lisa Robin Kelly) (because she lives nearby) drives over to the new house on day one. We also learn they live in a western time zone. So how could this possibly be an Amityville movie if there is no connection to Amityville, New York?
Bill built their new house on a property that already had an old shed which spiritually calls to Bill. It’s filled with tools, skulls, old biological illustrations of insects, a newspaper clipping telling the story of the death of the family in the house (with the father as a prime suspect, just like The Amityville Horror), and an old dusty dollhouse. I guess this sequel is ignoring the other sequels entirely, and even the 1979 original. Because this house is in a western state, and the article is not about Amityville, NY, but the house that burned down where Bill built his new house! So guess what, folks? You’ve been lied to! The only connection to The Amityville Horror (1979) is that the dollhouse Bill finds looks just like the house from the original movie. This should just be called “The Central California Dollhouse.”
The cheapness of the movie is harbingered by the first signs of the supernatural, which manifest as simply “turning off/on” the gas fireplace, turning on and moving the car, and the dollhouse lights illuminate on their own. Later, a tarantula “appears” in a pinata, and a bunch of dust and leaves are blown in through a window (like, literally, by a leaf blower). These effects are all manageable on a special effects budget of $0. I was a bit worried during the first third of the movie.
About 30 minutes into the movie, the effects upgrade from $0 to ultra-cheap, when we see a giant, campy rat tail sticking out from under Jessica’s shaking bed. This happened after Jim’s pet mouse wandered into the dollhouse, and under the model bed in the dollhouse bedroom. So the dollhouse actively makes things happen. Moreover, it seems that whatever happens in/to the dollhouse is mirrored in the actual house. Unfortunately, we later find that is not the case.
The supernatural influence of the dollhouse affects everyone differently. Bill has dreams of his daughter calling for help through the fireplace, Jessica is getting increasingly nervous about her dollhouse, Claire becomes obsessed with Todd (yes, in a sexually weird way), and Jim is haunted by his deceased father. Luckily there eventually are some real effects. Jim sees his dead biological father who has dark plans for Bill. Every time he appears, he is more and more decomposed. Todd’s girlfriend Dana’s head catches fire and the result is actually kinda’ satisfyingly gross.
Ultra-spiritual Aunt Marla (Lenore Kasdorf; Starship Troopers) and Uncle Tobias (Franc Ross) sense something from the dollhouse and consult their occult collection. They conduct a séance that goes horribly wrong. It’s dumb, but not unenjoyable. And this segways us to the final scenes, where the finale gets even more clunky. It’s truly as if Jim’s dead father is the evil antagonist, who wants to bring his living wife and son to Hell with him. But why? And what about the dollhouse? Wasn’t the dollhouse important?
We find out that the previous house burned down leaving only the fireplace, which Bill left in place (to save money) and rebuilt his new house around it. Apparently, this fireplace was cursed because of what transpired there, making it a portal to Hell and a portal leading inside the dollhouse. So, of course, if you go through the portal, you are miniaturized to scale. But wait! Does that mean that inside the dollhouse is an interdimensional Hell? Like, actual Hell?
Bill travels through a portal that brings him inside the dollhouse to save his daughter from… the tiny slimy roaring demons that live in the dollhouse. WHAT!?!? Tobias joins him and sacrifices himself while casting spells to hold off the diminutive fiends that kind of look like discount rack Cenobites. These fiends have no further explanation than the fact that they exist, they are evil, and they must be stopped. But what about Jim’s dead dad? He didn’t want to take everyone to Hell. He only planned on bringing his living wife and son. He seems to be a completely mutually exclusive antagonist! So, it seems like there were two very different plots that got mixed together and never fully clarified during a rewriting process. And that is how we get solid gold bad movies! In the end, then they just burn the dollhouse inside the fireplace that was a portal into itself… so they imploded Hell? I guess.
I watched this wanting and expecting bad, and boy did I get what I wanted. This movie is awful, yet somewhat pretty fun to watch as long as know what you’re in for. This was definitely more enjoyable than parts 3-4, not that this was in any form “good.”