Amityville 3-D - Awfully Good Movies

Amityville 3-D – Awfully Good Movies

June 9th 2021, 11:00am

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Amityville 3-D (1983)

DIRECTOR: Richard Fleischer CAST: Tony Roberts, Lori Loughlin, Meg Ryan

With the CONJURING franchise's latest installment THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT scaring audiences in theaters and on HBO Max, Awfully Good Movies is investigating another long-running horror franchise based on a (supposedly) true ghost story with the final theatrically released sequel to THE AMITYVILLE HORROR: AMITYVILLE 3-D!

That's right, the AMITYVILLE series went down the same route as FRIDAY THE 13th, JAWS and so many other movies in 1983 by filming in good old red-and-blue 3D to have the supernatural scares coming towards the audience's faces. But due to a lawsuit against producer Dino De Laurentiis from the Lutz family that fled the Amityville house after 28 days of ghostly torture, the movie's advertising had to specify that it was not a sequel to either THE AMITYVILLE HORROR or AMITYVILLE II.

That was probably for the best though, because the third AMITYVILLE could very well be one of the least scary horror "sequels" in history, with the plot centering around a skeptical journalist played by ANNIE HALL co-star Tony Roberts who moves into the house to prove that the alleged hauntings were a bunch of hooey. In spite of its cheesy 3D gimmick and having both a pre-fame Lori Loughin and Meg Ryan pop up in the cast, AMITYVILLE 3-D has far more endless exposition dialogue than horrific encounters with demons and ghosts, with the movie's few kills lacking any balls due to its PG rating. Whether or not the story of the Amityville Horror is true, the third film based on it is truly terrible, with or without the cardboard glasses. And just you wait until AMITYVILLE 4, where the main villain of the film…is a demonically possessed lamp. "Get out", indeed.