Amityville II: The Possession (1982)

It doesn't matter to me whether or not The Amityville Horror is truth or fiction. The truth is that the original film isn't all that exciting. But the sequel? The sequel is pretty much everything you want in a movie — if you love movies filled with horrifyingly sick moments of glee.Damiano Damianim, whose 1960's and 1970's western and crime output were marked by a streak of social criticism, directed this film from a screenplay by Tommy Lee Wallace (who not only played Michael Myers in the original Halloween, but would go on to direct Halloween III: Season of the Witch and the original version of It).The film is actually a prequel, telling the story of the Montellis, who are based upon the DeFeo family. Anthony (Burt Young from Rocky) is the father of this brood. He's rude, ill-tempered and ready to abuse everyone at a moment's notice. If you're looking for any family values — in fact, any values at all — you're watching the wrong film.He's married to Dolores (Rutanya Alda, Carol Ann from Mommie Dearest), his long-suffering and very Catholic wife. They have four kids — Sonny, Patricia (Diane Franklin, Monique from Better Off Dead, as well as TerrorVision and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure), Mark and Jan. Even from the very beginning of the film, the family is on edge. Every single interaction between them is marked by weirdness, before we even get into the occult portion of this film.Things get worse — much worse — after a tunnel is found in the basement. This leads to doors knocking all night long and demonic messages showing up in the youngest kids' room. Turning to the Church, Dolores tries to have Father Frank Adamsky bless the house. That lasts for all of ten seconds before Anthony flips out and throws the priest out.When he gets to his car, the door is open and his Bible is torn apart. Clearly — all is not well. Again — the family is a mess before the Devil even gets involved. Dad is overly strict and abuse, mom clings to the Church and Sonny and Patricia yearn to have sex with one another (seriously, their first interactions define the word creepy).While everyone else goes to church, Sonny stays behind and is taken over by a demonic force. The film nearly descends into body horror as we see the creature take root inside him. Soon, he's playing fashion photographer with his sister, a game that quickly turns into sex. Instead of her being upset, Patricia instead tells him that she loved it. Keep in mind these are pretty much the two main protagonists of the story, so the tale takes a very Flowers in the Attic turn.As Sonny becomes more demonic, Patricia decides to confess to Father Adamsky, but breaks down before she can. At Sonny's birthday party — a scene where this film layers on the insanity — he goes full demon as she freely tries to give herself to him. She decides to call the priest and confess everything, but Father Tom (Simon himself from Simon, King of the Witches, as well as the original version of The Town that Dreaded Sundown) takes the phone off the hook so the priests can go skiing (!!!).Read more at bandsaboutmovies.com/2017/09/26/amityville-ii-the-possession/

This movie is ably acted and the scenery is iconic, yet still this movie can't help but fall on its face. A precursor to the original Amityville Horror, Amityville II takes the franchise in a new direction by telling an evil house story rather than a haunted one. It tells of the Montelli family and the ensuing possession of their eldest son resulting in their murder. Then there is an hour left to fill before the credits roll.This is the ultimate sin of Amityville II, they start to hot then don't have anything to fill time. It takes five minutes to see the first sign the house is evil. Without any build up, the water turns to blood and the mother is being stalked by the specter. From there on, the movie just floors the gas pedal. It could be understandable since this is a prequel, but it doesn't really give you much time to process what is going on. Had they taken the time to slow down and built to just what the evil was, it would have done the rest of the plot a better service.Then the family is killed and the break neck pace runs headlong into a wall. The priest who had tried to help them earlier has to try to help the surviving son now about to be tried by sequestering an exorcism. No longer is the movie an evil house story and has changed gears into a possession movie. Only, its all the stuff that's not that interesting about a possession. It delves into the politics of the Catholic church and slows the movie to a crawl in doing it. Why this couldn't have started earlier when there was more going on I can't for the life of me figure out.The conclusion is ripped right out of the Exorcist almost verbatim. After the priest failed to get the possessed boy into a church, I don't know why he thought it would be a good idea to walk him through the front doors unbound,h confronts him at the Amityville house and tries to exorcise him there. The effects are pretty good, bleeding walls and the boy's head splitting open to revel his demon face, looks like a CHUD, are done well. But the demon proves too strong and so the priest takes the demon unto himself. It took him roughly six minutes to come to this conclusion however, the exorcism is too short and kind of undermines the seriousness of the ordeal.

Surprisingly, this sequel turns out to be better than the original. While THE AMITYVILLE HORROR was a slow moving, dull, relatively action-free flick with a few macabre elements, the sequel is an all out in-your-face film with plenty of gross moments and excess gore. This time around there are lots of supernatural events happening constantly, the film basically moves from one of them to the next, with events building up to the eventual shotgunning of the entire family by the teenage son. This scene is very powerful as he even shotguns the little kids to death, and is obviously not suitable for children, and neither is the incest subplot. These elements make this a very adult film indeed.The cast range from good to not so good. Burt Young (ROCKY) is suitably bullish as the father who enjoys whipping his children, while James Magner undergoes an okay transformation into a demon, although his acting never rises above average. Diane Franklin is great as the teenage sister who becomes a victim, but the mother's acting is atrocious, she opens her eyes wide and screams in an over the top unrealistic and awful way at every available opportunity. Moses Gunn and Andrew Prine lend solid support in minor roles, and James Olson (CRESCENDO) is also good as the nervy priest who becomes convinced that the boy is possessed and tries to perform an exorcism upon him.There are a lot of fairly good special effects, especially the surprise ending where the boy rips his face off to reveal the rubbery demon underneath. This is particularly gory and grotesque and shocking, therefore effective. However the demon makeup is far too reminiscent of THE EXORCIST and indeed, in the final thirty minutes that film is copied copiously, with the priest even taking the demon into himself at the end. It's a pretty good and powerful rip off though. Although overlong and unoriginal, AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION is solid dark entertainment with plenty of unpleasantness and disturbing images for the horror fan. Good.

This horror prequel depicts the events that lead to the massacre of a family. The movie was based on the actual family who lived in the Amityville house, the DeFeo's, who were all murdered by the oldest son. There are inaccuracies to not only the real events, but to the events depicted in the first movie. I remember being told this movie was "scarier than the first one," but I found myself laughing at most of it. Don't get me wrong, there were still some creepy moments (the mother feeling a presence in the basement, Sonny being attacked by the presence and hearing the voices), but it was mainly made up of bad writing and awkward dialog. Some of the special effects were surprisingly done very well for their time. Jack Magner also did an exceptional job portraying a young man slowly losing his mind to a maleficent force. It was decent, even with the bad dialog, until the last twenty minutes or so. The ending was very weak and fell flat. But overall, I would say to watch it for the good parts I mentioned and then make fun of the rest.