It’s more than a year since I promised in passing that I would, at long last, be wrapping up the original Amityville series by reviewing the final entry in the franchise. So what took so long? Simple: after making that promise, I sat down and watched the damn thing.

AMITYVILLE DOLLHOUSE (1996)

An uncomfortably blended family moves into a house built by on the remains of a property that burnt down under mysterious circumstances. In the shed at the back of the property, the father finds an elaborate dollhouse, which he gives to his young daughter. But as soon as the dollhouse enters the home, the family begins to be assailed by strange and possibly deadly forces…

Having even less to do with the early films than its immediate predecessors – which is saying something – this final entry in the Amityville series almost made me glad to see the back of the entire franchise.

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Almost.

I do love that house…

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(And also at long last, I have reformatted The Amityville Curse (1990) and added some screenshots – such as they are; it’s not exactly the most visually arresting film.)

Still more SCIENCE IN THE REEL WORLD:

DR EHRLICH’S MAGIC BULLET (1940): – a fitting tribute to the brilliance of Paul Ehrlich, and a fascinating example of studio manoeuvring under the Production Code.

POWDER TOWN (1942): – in which the worst fears of Eros the alien are justified…

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In other news, I have recovered, re-formatted and added screenshots to my review of Destination Moon (1950), and re-formatted The Flying Saucer (1950).

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Just a few short updates:

LASER MISSION
It’s obvious that while director BJ Davis is a director of limited skill, he knows exactly how to make a low-budget 80’s action movie. Every single thing you need in the movie is present, and if it’s not expertly realized, it’s usually at least delivered in a competently incompetent manner — a statement that will make perfect sense to anyone who watches a lot of these movies. A movie like Laser Mission can really only disappoint me by not delivering on the predictable formula to which it cleaves. That happens a lot with low-budget action movies, but not with Laser Mission. It may not deliver on the promised lasers of the title, but it delivers exactly what you’d want from a cheap, goofy 80s action movie.

KADIN DUSMANI
We come to the seedy Turkish thriller Kadin Dusmani via a circuitous but highly entertaining journey through a number of different types of film that built on a central theme — the simply murder mystery — and made it increasingly outlandish and bizarre. Picking a solid starting point is almost impossible — even if one could distill down to the “the first of its kind” in movies, there’s the fact that the early efforts were all based on various types of novels and pulp stories that underwent a similar evolution to the film that would eventually grow from them. So, for the sake of not falling into a bottomless pit, let’s pick a logical point at which to begin.

Plus, we added new pictures to GOLDEN BUDDHA and WORLD WITHOUT END

That’s right. Drink it in, people.

…and I’m not afraid to say so – AGAIN – even though the last time I used that line, it provoked snickering from some immature types who apparently didn’t understand that the operative word in that sentence isn’t “lady”, it’s “snake” Hmmph!

Anyway…

THE SNAKE WOMAN (1961)

In which some stalwart Brits set out to prove they can make a film as bad and stupid as anything produced in Hollywood, and succeed.

In a small village in the north of England, at the turn of the last century, a mad scientist injects his wife with cobra-venom, in order to treat her mental illness. Unfortunately, besides being insane, she is also pregnant. The child, a girl, is born with cold blood and strange, staring eyes. She survives an attack upon her father’s house by a torch-carrying mob, and almost twenty years later, a wave of deaths from snakebite strikes the residents of the village…

Then Scotland Yard feels compelled to investigate. Interfering bastards!

(In other news, I have also re-formatted Cobra Woman, and re-formatted and added screenshots to Cult Of The Cobra. Ohhh, yeah!)

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Well, it’s been a long, long time, but I’ve finally resurrected SCIENCE IN THE REEL WORLD, my look at science and related matters in a non-science fiction context. And to make up for the silence, here’s a triple update:

THE SILVER CORD (1933) – Science versus smother love.

DIVE BOMBER (1941) – Physiology meets misogyny.

NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY (1951) – Scientists are NUTS!! Oh, sure, they save lives; but basically, they’re NUTS!!

And in house-keeping news, I’ve added some screenshots to my reviews of HALLOWEEN and HALLOWEEN II.

After the failure of The Oz Film Manufacturing Company, it was a decade before the next attempt to bring the Oz stories to the screen. In 1924, silent comedian Larry Semon paid a small fortune for the rights to Frank Baum’s first Oz novel – and then proceeded to toss 99% of the book aside, creating instead a nightmarish pseudo-Oz tale featuring bottom jokes, sexual harassment and vomiting farmyard animals.

That whirring noise you hear is Frank Baum spinning in his grave. 

THE WIZARD OF OZ (1925)

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While we’re on the subject of horrors, I’ve also tried to fix up the screenshots in my review of ZOMBIE, although I think they’re still a bit dark.

HEED YE THIS WARNING!! STRIP YOUR HOUSE OF ALL APPLIANCES LEST SATAN FIND AN ENTRANCE!!!!

Giving up the fight to think of something new for Long Island’s most famous piece of architecture to do, the screenwriters of the next set of Amityville sequels took a tip from author John G. Jones and packed up their troubles in an old piece of furniture. 1989′s Amityville: The Evil Escapes sees “Three Centuries Of Evil” on its way to the west coast hidden inside – [*snicker*] – a demonic lamp; while three years later, the same Evil (or is it??) takes a similar journey embedded in the workings of an antique clock, in Amityville 1992: It’s About Time. The results aren’t exactly terrifying, but they might make you think twice before you give into that urge to redecorate.