The Montelli family happily moves into their new home, not knowing, of course, that this is a house of death! They are fairly tight-knit, but there are problems brewing beneath the surface. Father Anthony (Burt Young) is a belligerent head of the house, who smacks around his wife and kids, not realizing just how on the rocks his marriage truly is. The oldest sibling, Sonny (Jack Magner) is at a really awkward stage in life, where he’s trying to become his own man but also is stuck being an older teen, and there’s also this strange dynamic between him and his sister, Patricia (Diane Franklin). All of this tension builds as the ghosts or demons or whatever haunts the Amityville home, start to seize control. And pretty soon, Sonny isn’t right in the head, and he’s got a gun, and he’s going from room to room, and he’s shooting his family, and there’s a priest who tries to help him and the whole thing leads to a wild and wooly exorcism. Will Sonny be delivered from the evil of the house, or will it possess his soul for eternity?
This is one crazy ride and easily the best of the sequels, in my mind, because it is utter batshit lunacy. They take the very real life murders of the DeFeo family, the people who lived in the house before the Lutz’s moved in, and turn it into a sordid tale of incest, abuse, and demonic possession. There’s murder and plenty of blood and excessive practical effects and the insane idea that anything can happen at any point, and you as the viewer aren’t safe from what’s coming because you simply can’t predict it. I mean, if they’re going to show a brother seduce his sister, if they’re going have someone claw their face apart, if they’re going to show the twitching leg of a dying little girl who just got blasted with a rifle, what are they going to hold back on? Tommy Lee Wallace wrote an eccentric screenplay that really goes for broke, and director Damiano Damiani isn’t shy about throwing that whole Italian we-don’t-give-a-shit mentality to the proceedings. This is a classic, warped, and very weird sequel that easily surpasses the original by leaps and bounds. Yes, there’s not much good taste to be found here, but by God that’s why it’s so damned good.
They never really make clear whether this is a sequel or prequel to the first film (the poster says it’s a prequel and it’s based on a book about the real-life tragedy). It could function as either, but I always took it as a prequel, given its (very) loosely-based on the real life events that proceeded the “haunting” in the first film. In the end, it doesn’t matter. What we’ve got here is a film that gleefully Goes All the Way and delivers so much filth and gutter good times that you have to either despise it or admire it. There are no other choices. You know which way I go.
★★★☆