This made-for-TV film opens with a group of determined priests bursting into the notorious house in Amityville to perform a sort of cleansing/exorcism. How the house is standing after it was blown to bits at the end of Part 3 is never explained, but that’s alright, because the priests mean business and they get down to it, throwing around some holy water and holding up crosses and praying really hard. One priest gets knocked out by a particularly weird-looking lamp. Later, the house declared clean, a yard sale is run to get rid of all the furniture and belongings left behind (by someone). A woman finds the weird lamp kitschy and buys it, mailing it out to her sister in California. Little does he know the evil that resides in the lamp, and how it will not only assault her family all the way across the country, but how it will infect her, as well.
Written and directed by the screenwriter of the original film (Sandor Stern) and starring a couple of older TV vets in Jane Wyatt and Patty Duke, this is a real odd duck of a film. They play up the usual tropes: things get weird in the house, peculiar stuff happens, and it all of course escalates into a final showdown with the original priest and the family matriarchs. Of particular (hilarious) note is the young son in the family, who picks up a chainsaw in the basement only to watch in horror as it takes on a life of its own, slicing through anything that gets in its way, maybe including his grandma! The haunted lamp itself is pretty creepy and weird-looking, and for some reason reminded me of the Dread Dormammu from Marvel Comics. In any case, this movie starts what will be a run of sequels that all deal with haunted items from the original house that are sent to various households and wreak havoc upon the families there. It’s pretty decent and actually really good, considering it was a made-for-TV film in the late 80s. There’s more than a bit of blood and the danger feels real, so kudos to the filmmakers.
All in all, this is a pretty typical haunted house kind of movie. What makes it of any count is the bizarre lamp, the old stars in the film, and the weird kid with his weird hair and that whole chainsaw sequence. My God, but it is funny as hell. Not essential viewing, but not a bad way to pass an hour and a half of time.
★★☆☆