Editorials
[Retro Nightmares] ‘Amityville’ Double Feature Revisits Surprisingly Clever Sequels
The second entry in the Bloody Disgusting presents Retro Nightmares series is a double feature that likely raises eyebrows at first glance. October 4, 2018, brings Amityville: The Evil Escapes and Amityville: It’s About Time, the fourth and sixth entries of an uneven and fairly lackluster horror franchise. Aside from being underseen, these particular sequels cleverly took their cue from the destruction of the iconic Amityville house at the end of Amityville 3-D, giving the plot the freedom to go to some surprising, wacky places without the shackles of the house’s limitations. What happens when the evil within Amityville escapes via furniture? Some fun schlock, surprising makeup effects, and a whole lot of Amityville weirdness makes for a fun double feature meant to be seen with a group.
Amityville: The Evil Escapes
Based on the novel of the same name, this fourth entry was a made for television movie that aired on NBC in 1989. The opening sequence backtracks to before the Amityville house was destroyed in order to introduce us to the source of this film’s evil; a lamp. Yes, a lamp. Cut to that same lamp being sold at the house’s estate sale, where an older woman purchases it and ships it off to her sister, Alice, in California as a birthday present. It arrives the same day her widowed daughter Nancy arrives with her three children in tow. What could go wrong?
Being that this is a made for TV movie, there’s more gore than you’d expect. The sister who sends Alice the demonic lamp cuts herself on its sharp edges and contracts one gnarly infection as a result. The biggest surprise, though, is that Amityville: The Evil Escapes actually follows through with a cringe-worthy shredding by way of appliance that a lot of horror films only like to tease. It’s the bloodiest moment of the film.
Patty Duke is the lead as widowed daughter Nancy, and hardcore horror fans might recognize the eldest daughter Amanda (Zoe Trilling of Night of the Demons 2 and Dr. Giggles). The screenplay was written by director Sandor Stern, who also wrote the screenplay for the original film and helmed the underrated ‘80s gem Pin. Stern brings balance to the otherwise campy premise of a demonic lamp. There’s really no way to make a lamp scary. Lucky, there’s enough here to distract from that.
Amityville: It’s About Time
This sequel sees architect Jacob Sterling (Graveyard Shift and The Monster Squad’s Stephen Macht) bring home an antique mantle clock that he found in the remains of an old house in Amityville (yes, that one). Right away that clock embeds itself into the house and begins to affect Jacob, his ex-girlfriend Andrea, and his two teen kids Lisa and Rusty in adverse ways. And by that, I mean that Amityville: It’s About Time goes off the rails in the best possible way.
Directed by Hellbound: Hellraiser II’s Tony Randel, Amityville: It’s About Time becomes a ‘90s descent into special effects madness as Jacob deals with a vicious dog attack turned gooey gross-out infection, Rusty delves into the clock’s centuries-old French necromancy origins, and Lisa deals with some disgustingly goopy side effects of the clock’s presence. This may have been a direct-to-video sequel, but it doesn’t hold back on the effects, fun, and zany plot that a haunted clock presents. Time travel, hallucinations, and an expanding mythology means that this sequel may very well be one of horror’s most underrated. Even better? The death count is higher, and there’s a fun cameo by Dick Miller (Gremlins, The Howling, Demon Knight).
Both Amityville: The Evil Escapes and Amityville: It’s About Time took the concept of a haunted object removed from the iconic Amityville house and used it to create a sequel better than expected in a less than stellar franchise. Demonically possessed clocks and lamps are impossible to make scary, but the sequels themselves are fun despite this. Fans of special effects and campy horror fun, be sure to grab tickets for this double feature.
Amityville: The Evil Escapes and Amityville: It’s About Time will both be playing as part of Retro Nightmares in theaters Nationwide Thursday, October 4th. Get tickets at www.retronightmares.com.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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