Amityville 3-D Movie Review 443

Amityville 3-D is a 1983 horror movie and another installment in the Amityville series of movies. It is directed by Richard Fleischer and stars Tony Roberts, Tess Harper, Lori Loughlin and Meg Ryan.

John Baxter(Roberts) and his colleague Melanie(Candy Clark) are journalists who go around busting fake mediums etc. They arrive at the Amityville house and catch two con artists. John meets the owner of the house Mr. Sanders(John Harkins) who offers him the house at a very low price. People don't want to live in the house because of its history. John decides to buy it but his wife Nancy(Harper) is not happy because he wants their daughter, Susan(Loughlin) to come over to the house. Nancy doesn't want her daughter going there. Melanie takes some pictures of Sanders and his face shows up as a corpse. She can't understand what is happening. The camera is fine and the film is fine so what is it. Sanders goes to the house to meet John but gets locked into a room and attacked by flies. He dies.

Melanie is spooked.John is skeptical.He finds a well under the floorboards in the basement. Melanie shows her pictures to Elliot West(Robert Joy) who is a paranormal investigator. He can't explain it either. She goes to meet John at the house and has a bad experience when she sees something weird. She refuses to go back in there. John thinks that she is crazy but she tells him that there is something happening in the house. Meanwhile, Lisa and Susan go to the house with some pals and they decide to hold a seance. Their glass goes flying and they get spooked. They finds a boat outside and decide to go out on the water.

Nancy comes to the house to look for Susan and she sees her walking upstairs. Susan shuts the door on her and Nancy calls her to come out. Meanwhile, John comes home and sees Susan being lifted out of the boat. She fell out into the water and drowned. Nancy comes outside to see what is going on and she tells John that it can't be Susan because she just saw her in the house. John thinks that she is mad. Susan is dead. Nancy thinks that she is still in the house with her and John is worried about her.
Elliot offers to bring a team of his people to the house to investigate it. John agrees. They set up their gear and wait for something to happen.

Nancy is up in Susan's room and she hears Susan calling her to follow. She does so and Susan leads her to the basement. Elliot goes too and they look into the well which is looking strange. Elliot calls out whatever is in the well and a monster comes out and pulls him in. John and Nancy are horrified and run out. The house begins to crumble and people are killed. John and Nancy manage to get out through a window and they watch as the whole house explodes. The well is still there though, suggesting that the evil is still in the house.

This film was not great, but then sequels rarely are. I liked Tony Roberts in this. He was a good leading man and the rest of the cast were fine. Meg Ryan had a small part in this film too. There weren't many scares here and it is pretty tame to be honest. I liked parts of it but it did not have the eeriness of the original or the spookiness. This is more like a TV movie and it is worth a look if you like the Amityville series as I do. I watched this on TV recently and I did enjoy it even though it isn't as scary as I would like. So, if you like the old haunted house stories, you might like this. I will give it a middle of the road 5/10.