Editorials
Screen Life Film ‘The Amityville Exorcist’ Needs More Pazuzu [The Amityville IP]
For more than two years, Joe Lipsett has dissected Amityville Horror films to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
There’s been a significant amount of backtracking in order to cross T’s and dot I’s for this editorial series. Sometimes an Amityville film drops without notification. Or it is announced and then takes years to debut. Some, such as Amityville Shark House, have never gotten a release.
Finally, there are films like The Amityville Exorcist (2022), which are just difficult to track down without venturing into sketchy corners of the Internet.
The second Amityville film from writer/director/actor Tony Newton harkens back to his first: Amityville Hex (2021). Both films are screen life films that mostly involve actors delivering their dialogue in direct address to the camera via Zoom or Skype, with very little interaction between the cast. It’s a distinctly low budget approach, but it’s not particularly cinematic.
In Hex, this technique was narratively unsatisfying because it felt like individual performers were given a rough outline for the movie, asked to film themselves independently, and then the footage was spliced together. The result was repetitive, lacked cohesion, and was often boring.
The Amityville Exorcist (not to be confused with Amityville Exorcism) manages to solve one of Hex’s three issues in that it is more cohesive. The project is tighter because it only features a few folks in front of the camera (rather than roughly a dozen in Hex) and everyone mostly appears to be on the same wavelength.
The plot in a nutshell: individuals are experiencing sleep paralysis nightmares because they’re in danger of being possessed by demons, including Pazuzu (!). Father O’Breanne (Dean Houlihan) offers his help to perform exorcisms over Zoom calls while imbibing heavily; none of his attempts work, and all of the individuals either die, get possessed, or both by the end of the film.
It’s very straightforward, with little deviation from its basic formula, which is why issues of repetition and boredom plague Newton’s second entry in the “franchise.” Not helping matters is the fact that the camera is static for the first 39 minutes or so, as well as the performances that range from a) amateurish (Newton’s Jake; Ken May’s Kevin), b) over the top (Shawn C. Phillips’ Steve Styles) or c) quietly morose (Sam Mason Bell’s Josh, who fares best).
At least with Amiityville Exorcist Newton has dialed back on the runtime, resulting in a film that clocks in at a mercifully brief 67 minutes (61 without closing credits), unlike Hex’s insufferably long 1 hour 48 minutes.
If directors feel that they must return to this IP well, the least they can do is keep their cash grabs a reasonable length of time.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Father Help Us: Houlihan, whose Irish accent helps to distinguish him from the rest of the cast, doesn’t get much to do in the film other than offer variations of the same four or five lines of dialogue. He’s not a great actor, but the priest’s tendency to drink throughout the exorcisms is a mildly amusing character quirk.
- Improv Dialogue: Much like Amityville Void, there’s a clear sense that everyone got an overview of the plot, then the actors (who are all directors in their own right) made up their dialogue as they went. Alas the results aren’t any better in this film, as characters offer basic variations of the same lines (or repeat them endlessly over the course of their segments). Again: if this were a short, it would be less of an issue, but after approximately twenty minutes, the schtick gets old.
- 39 minutes: Nearly two thirds of the way through the film, Newton suddenly shifts the format from screen life to found footage as select characters film their haunted environments. This doesn’t result in anything too novel or exciting, but it’s wild how even a small change in environment can suddenly recapture your attention (in this case, we catch glimpses of Josh’s barely visible staircase and Jake’s late night bed contortions).
- Nearly two thirds of the way through the film, Newton suddenly shifts the format from screen life to found footage as select characters film their haunted environments. This doesn’t result in anything too novel or exciting
- Horror Moments: There’s not a lot of action or FX in the film aside from the last few minutes. We get some demonic voices on the soundtrack, some chanting (possibly in Latin?) and Kevin coughs up dark blood or black bile (the quality of the film makes it hard to distinguish). It’s…fine? After so much inaction, one wishes it was a little more Grand Guignol (even Hex went bigger), but what can you do?
- Literary Prowess: The film is bookended by a pair of quotes from classic horror novelists. Poe opens the film with: “The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague.” Lovecraft gets the closer: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” These are suitable for the film, in large part because both quotes are generic enough to be applicable to nearly any horror text. But it also feels oddly arbitrary, as if Newton is simply looking to class up his low brow production.
- Fave Cameo! I’d be remiss not to shout out the cameo appearance of reporter Peter Summers (John R. Walker) at the beginning and ending of the film. At this point, he’s one of the most consistent elements of the “series”; he’s appeared in Amityville VR, AI, In the Hood, Hex, Clownhouse, Playhouse and Amityville Backrooms (which we’ll cover shortly).
Next time: Let’s finally discuss that secret Amityville film, The Dawn (2019)!
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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