‘A return to the most dangerous house in the world’
The Amityville Curse is a 1989 Canadian-American horror film directed by Tom Berry (director of Blind Fear and producer of Scanners II and Screamers) from a screenplay by Michael Krueger (Mindkiller; Night Vision; Lone Wolf), Doug Olson and Norvell Rose. It was edited and produced by Franco Battista for Allegro Films.
It is the fifth instalment in the Amityville series and was released on video in May 1990.
The film was loosely based around Hans Holzer‘s 1981 book The Amityville Curse. Even though the setting of the film is supposed to be in Amityville, it is not 112 Ocean Avenue, the setting for the previous Amityville films. The house used here is a different house. A brief reference is made to the DeFeo murders and to the town’s supernatural history.
Main cast:
Kim Coates (Red Blooded American Girl; Dracula: The Series; Innocent Blood), Cassandra Gava (The Black Room) and Jan Rubes (Dead of Winter; Blood Relations; The Kiss) and David Stein.
Plot:
Marvin and Debbie buy an old house and begin to renovate it with the help of three friends: Frank, Bill and Abigail. However, they are unaware that the former housekeeper, Mrs Moriarty, and priest were murdered there twelve years earlier when the house was a rectory…
Reviews:
“Long scenes of conversations and very little action make this film much too boring to warrant any sort of recommendation. Despite the film’s pretensions towards suspense and mystery, it fails to offer any red herrings, all but giving away the identity of the murderer in the first fifteen minutes.” Canuxploitation!
“Most of the scares are by the book, and even when they try doing something new it doesn’t work – I’m sure “a dog menacing them only to be scared off by a crucifix” sounds eerie on paper, but in a poorly directed, blandly acted, late 80s Canadian horror movie, it doesn’t quite hit that mark.” Horror Movie a Day
“This is definitely one of the weakest of the series (not that any of them are particularly good that is), which in my view was very reminiscent “The Changeling” (I also noticed one or two similarities with “Demons 3 : The Ogre”) and to be honest this could have been made as a standalone horror film, as it really seems to owe nothing to any of the previous films…” Realm of Horror
Cast and characters:
- Kim Coates as Frank
- Dawna Wightman as Debbie
- Helen Hughens as Mrs. Moriarty
- David Stein as Marvin
- Anthony Dean Rubes as Bill
- Cassandra Gava as Abigail
- Jan Rubes as Priest
- Scott Yaphe as Thin Boy
- Mark Camacho as Krabel
Trailer:
Wikipedia | IMDb | Image thanks: VHSCollector.com
