The Horror Returns - THR Amityville Watch - Ep. 3: Amityville III: The Demon AKA Amityville 3D (1983)

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

This episode Brian brings you the 1983 supernatural horror film AMITYVILLE III: THE DEMON AKA AMITYVILLE 3D.  Check out everything Horror Returns at: https://thehorrorreturns.com Join The Horror Returns Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1056143707851246 THR Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thehorrorreturns Join The Action Returns Facebook group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/841619946357776 Follow The Action Returns on IG and Twitter: Instagram: @theactionreturns Twitter: @action_returns  Join the THR Presents: Stream Fiends Facebook Group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/3860579827402429 Follow THR Stream Fiends on IG: @thrstreamfiends  

Susan. Oh, Susan. Hold her, John. Don't let her get any closer. John and Susan, let me go. We got to bring out the source. We got to force it out.

I've got to confront it. Susan! Donna, you can't. Episode of THR's Amityville Watch. I'm your host, Brian. And this is episode three, Amityville 3D, also known as Amityville 3,

The Demon. First off, I like to say thank you for continuing to listen as I go down this deep rabbit hole of Amnibil movies that will probably never end. This will probably be a very long series. So I do thank you in advance for sticking with me. I'm not going to get too deep into this movie. And the reason is, if you go over to the Skater Podcast Network, me and Nes for 31 days, I believe, a year or two ago, I think it was a couple years.

We did a in-depth review on Amityville 3D. We did a full review on the movie. So that is the reason I'm not going to get into deep into this movie. But this mostly is going to be my initial thoughts. I did rewatch it. So I'm going to get my thoughts on if whether I liked or disson. like the movie more or less this time around and this

is going to be mostly trivia so let's let's get into Amityville 3D which came out November 18th 1983 through Orion Pictures IMDB synopsis says a reporter moves

into the Amityville house in defiance of the supernatural events connected to it and finds everyone around him besieged by the evil manifestations which are connected to a demonic presence in the basement. The stars, of course, Tony Roberts, Tess Harper, Robert Joy, Candy Clark, Lori Loughlin, Meg Ryan. Very young, Lori Loflin, and Meg Ryan. This is directed by Robert Fleischer, written by David Ambrose.

and let's get into a little bit of trivia the frost that blows out of the basement onto Candy Clark was actually warm wax she later admitted that she had to wash her hair with detergent to get it all out that does not seem like a great thing to go through let's see the character of John Baxter

is loosely based on Stephen Kaplan and his investigation of the house, who at the time was trying to prove that Lutz's story was a hoax. Let's see. The film was a critical financial, a critical and financial failure when it was released, effectively killing off any plans of future

Amntyville-inspired films. That's what they thought at the time. For a long time, every Amniville film that came out after this, one was either straight to video or made for television until MGM released to Amityville Horror 2005 remake in theaters. This film is considerably tamer in subject manner compared to the last two films, especially the second film which dealt with the topics of domestic violence and incest, which I still can't get over how crazy that second Amityville movie was.

This was a deliberate change done to the series as a result of viewer complaints to Amityville to the possession was tasteless. And lastly, due to the lawsuit between the Lutz family and Delo DeLorentas over the storyline which did not involve the Lutz family, Amityville 3D, was not initially promoted as a sequel. and the name Lutz is never used in the film. However, the film does make reference to the original Amityville horror story. So this time around on this rewatch, did my thoughts change on it? I know initially I said I liked it. I think it's one of the better ones.

And trust me, I've seen plenty of these Amityville movies, so I think you just should trust me. Did I like it around on this re-watch? And yes, I still like it. I still like the cheesy 3D effects, especially the opening title card, how it just kind of comes at you. I just, I love those cheesy 80s 3D effects. And something I didn't notice on previous watches, but there's, after the title card happens and it flies at you, there's like the shot of the house on the outside

it's windy and there's like branches that are like hitting the camera lens to I guess give it a more 3D effect I really enjoyed that

and another thing I also enjoyed I like this story around it's not just a family moving in and then slowly being tormented it's a

investigator and he debunks stuff like this all the time and finds out that the house is super cheap because nobody wants to live there because of prior events and he buys the house it moves in shit starts to happen the only thing i didn't understand was stuff would happen to people when they were nowhere near the house. Like it kind of followed them. Like the scene with Candy Clark, I believe, was the actress when she crashes a car, her car catches on fire. She was nowhere near the house.

So I didn't understand why that happened. But we do get another cheesy, amazing 80s. 3D scene where the burnt-up skeleton that's supposed to be her when somebody opens the car door kind of leans forward towards the camera like I said I love that shit and another scene that I didn't understand

why it was happening was with the Tony Roberts character he was at work and he was going coming down an elevator and then I guess the demonic spirits or presence or whatever you call it was affecting the elevator and almost made the elevator crash. I just don't understand how it affects anything outside of the house and that far away from the house. But with that being said, it was nice to see Lori Loughlin and Meg Ryan show up in this film.

I will say this time around I did notice more how much of a freak Meg Rines character was always referencing stuff like people have been known to have sex with ghosts and it's amazing

and that's probably why she's telling Lori Loughlin that's probably why her father bought the house and just I don't know just kind of off the wall shit like that I'm like I'm just wondering what the character is really into. And then you've got the mom of the ex-wife of Tony

Robert's character played by Tess Harper, I believe. She is not feeling the house, doesn't want her daughter there. And she ends up being right because another situation that happens outside of the house, some sort of boating accident causes Lori Laughlin's character to die. And while her mother is in the house, she thinks she sees her, but it's actually her spirit. While the body is outside, being tended to by the ambulance and Tony Roberts' character, sorry I'm saying their character, their actual names. I don't have their character names in front of me, but we'll move on.

and they invite Robert J.'s character who is like some kind of scientist that kind of investigates all kinds of stuff. There was different things he seemed to be investigating, so I'm not sure what kind of doctor he is exactly. But he ends up coming to investigate the house. That's when shit starts to go down

in the house. They end of freeing Lori Loughlin's spirit, I'm assuming. And Robert Jay's character gets sucked in. Oh, I didn't even mention this all takes place in the basement where the well

is, which I believe we see in a few movies. It's like the gateway to hell, I guess. And while down there, his character dies as he's being sucked into, the well. He gets grabbed by

like a demonic monster who at first breathes fire into his face, burns his face, and then grabs him, pulls him into the well. As he's getting pulled into well, he yells for Lori Loughlin's character to get

away, so I'm assuming that that was her spirit because it was like a blue light, so I'm assuming the spirit, her soul or spirit was freed. And he gets sucked down, and then the house starts to collapse and fall apart

and this is one thing I do like because they try to add new aspects to this. They did bring back some old stuff like the flies, which I thought was done a little bit better this time. It looked a little bit more terrifying.

Earlier in the movie with the real estate guy, he goes into a room and there's flies and he gets covered by flies. and eventually has a heart attack and dies. Thought that was done a little bit better than the previous times we've seen the flies. But one thing they did add was, I guess, the whole hell froze over kind of aspect because there was a lot of times where stuff was freezing in the house,

like the afore the previously mentioned scene with Candy Clark when the basement started blowing, freezing cold air at her and it was it looked like frost but they really used wax before the when the house was turned down at the end it was freezing cold in there to the point where he was uh Tony Roberts was trying to bust a window open but he couldn't because everything was frozen

solid so I like that whole aspect they added that they added the little demon but they kept a rich stuff like the fly no incest this time no domestic violence they kept all that out they wanted to go a little bit more tamer but they end up getting out of the house and then the house explodes for some reason but the well is intact and a horribly CGI fly flies out of the well towards the camera and that sure ended a movie Um

If you follow me on letterbox I'm going to start ranking these ones um I did say I had a better appreciation for the original one after recently rewatching it right now number two is better so I don't know where three

fits in I think it's more funner than the original one, but at the same time, I think the original one is definitely the better made movie. So I think if I have to update my rankings right now, it would be Amityville 2 at number one,

the Amityville Horror at number 2, and then Amityville 3D at number 3. So if you don't follow me on Letterbox, you can find me easy. hit me up if you can't find me and I'll send you a link but that's it for this one um yeah if uh if I hadn't have reviewed this one previously wouldn't as I probably would have got a little deeper into it but I will definitely do a deep dive into the next one um like I said that concludes everything for now uh for

more things of the horror returns you can find us at thehorror returns.com the links to everything all the shows there's even links to the skater podcast network and the e-society anchor feed is also on there so hit us up so thank you for listening i'm going to continue to do these so until next time everybody be good to each other