No longer a haunting at that Long Island home

AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION (1982)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Whether it is a cruddy sequel or prequel makes no difference - "Amityville II: The Possession" bears little relation to the original 1979 shocker or the actual events that transpired long before the real-life Lutzes (the inspiration behind the original book) moved in to that dreaded Long Island home. Although it is not as sleep-inducing as the original film, it resembles more of an "Exorcist" redux at best.

A new family named the Montellis move into the Amityville house with those eerie windows. There is a force within the house that even the movers feel - basically, it is wind that penetrates walls and turns crucifixes upside down. It also turns water into blood and back into water. It ruffles Mama Montelli's shoulders when she is in the basement. Papa Montelli (Burt Young) is already an abusive lout who hates church and supposedly hates all four of his kids and his Catholic wife (Rutanya Alda) - his character is practically cut out of the latter part of the film. Seriously though, what a nice family.

As for the Montelli kids, there is Sonny Montelli (Jack Magner), the older sibling who clearly has a thing for his sister, Patricia (Diane Franklin of "The Last American Virgin" and "Better Off Dead" fame). They share one particular scene that develops with tension and unease as Sonny gingerly gets his sister to disrobe for him - it is the one scene that is handled tastefully if not honestly in the entire movie. There are two younger siblings, a younger brother and sister, who love each other as siblings should without any incestuousness.

If "Amityville II" had handled such difficult material for a mainstream horror flick with such restraint, it might have worked as something more than a casual retread of "The Exorcist." Though this is supposedly based on the terrifying true case of murders within the DeFeo family, the movie skimps on reality and assumes that a demon made Sonny kill his family (to be fair, the real-life shooter Ronald DeFeo initially claimed he was possessed). The house in Amityville is not actually haunted this time; it is more of a malevolent demonic force that occasionally knocks on the front door in the middle of the night and speaks to Sonny via his Walkman!  Then we get the actual shootings by Sonny (with a distorted, demonic face) that remains the most chilling sequence in the entire film. Of course, the actual shootings from the book (Hans Hozer's "Murder in Amityville") claimed that Ronald shot his family while they slept in separate rooms.

Then the movie belabors for another half-hour with the priest (James Olson) trying to convince the police department (including a detective played by Moses Gunn) to let Sonny go and be exorcised at his parish. The movie becomes sillier and more convoluted leading to anything but an actual exorcism. More like a cleansing.

I was never a fan of "The Amityville Horror" but I am fascinated by the book and the bizarre DeFeo family murders. Dino DeLaurentis produced this so-called prequel when in fact it is more of a sequel (the 80's look by way of automobiles and a Sony Walkman) but it doesn't even retain the original's infrequent eerieness. Italian director Damiano Damiani keeps the camera moving and tilting and zigzagging but there is no unifying sense of fright or chills. The actors recoil at bloodsoaked horrors in the kitchen and the bedrooms without the slighest hint of surprise at what they are witnessing. I would be more than willing to leave a house where there is so much blood coming out of a faucet and an unexplained mural in the kids' bedroom with writings that say: "Kill the pigs." Jack Magner does come close to evoking a certain kind of steely menacing look crossed with a little bit of charm. Other than that, this Amityville sequel's singular purpose was to make the bee-line for the box-office.