Amityville: It's About Time

Man finds possessed antique clock. Man takes clock home. Antique clock unleashes an infectious evil that seduces the family with sinful glee. The evil spreads.

Listed Run Time: 95 Minutes

Actual Run Time: 95 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Cast: Shawn Weatherly, Stephen Macht, Damon Martin, Megan Ward, Jonathan Penner, Nita Talbot, Dean Cochran.

Director: Tony Randel.

Recommended: Only if you absolutely must have this movie on DVD.

Generally I don't like to talk much about a movies plot but you really do not need to be a brain surgeon to figure this movie out. So here's my take: An architect, and single father, buys this hideous antique clock and brings it home. A clock that, unbeknownst to him, came from the possessed Amityville house. A clock that carries with it it's own evil influences. If that sounds similar to the evil Chinese puzzle box from another franchise you're not too far off. Alas the premise never really goes quite that far. Still it's an interesting premise that sticks out from most of the otherwise slapdash sequels.

The Setting: 20^th century America circa 1992.

The Characters: Jake Sterling, architect and father. The stereotypical hard working dad trying to do right by his kids. Rusty Sterling, the rebellious teen cum mischievous bad seed. Or is he? Lisa Sterling, the innocent good-natured daughter. But for how long?

The Story: This movie has more in common with Exorcist knock-offs than it does the original Amityville horror. As in Amityville 4 the action revolves around a piece of haunted furniture and those who become possessed by it's malevolent influences. There are also a few scenes that could possibly have been influenced by Hellraiser, but they're not quite as gruesome. It's the sort of movie you'll either enjoy or not. It doesn't leave much room for anything between.

The Time: While not the best of the Amityville sequels this is far from the worst and deserved far better treatment. Looking at my DVD I can't help but feel sympathy for those who will be exposed to this movie for the first time via this release. I fear too many people will pop this DVD into their players, be distracted by the horrid transfer, and come away thinking this movie is crap. But it's not only the transfer is!

Moral: Caveat emptor. Especially where old clocks are concerned!

The movie is very simple and straightforward: A haunted antique clock causes havoc to the family that comes into possession of it. The underling premise could be used as the basis of a scenario for Call of Cthulhu, CoC D20, Unbidden, Blood Games, Ghost Stories, Beyond the Supernatural, possibly Dead Inside, or (if toned down a bit) Little Fears. All you need is to fit the basic premise into your game system, whether that means having it be possessed by demonic entities or being some sort of ancient relic channeling evil psychic forces from beyond the asteroid belt; whatever makes sense within your campaign milieu. A simple plot seed my have the characters called in as ghost detectives to investigate poltergeist activity, or maybe they are part of a investigative team looking into the possession of a family member, or perhaps the clock has been given to them, thus leaving it up to the characters to discover the truth about the clock and take care of it as it attempts to work it's evil on them! There are a number of possibilities and more than a few ideas to mine from the movie itself.

Some generic rule systems that may be worth looking into are D20 Modern, A Fist Full of Dice, Action!, GURPS Lite, or JAGS Horror. Any of these might be suitable for adapting the movie as a RPG setting.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the DVD on the shelf at my local Best Buy, and for the unbelievable price of $6.99! You can't possibly go right at that price, right?

Wrong. I was robbed. The picture quality is abysmal. In fact given the extreme grain I'd have to rate the picture quality as fair to poor. (Actually I can't use the adjectives I'd like to describe how I feel about the picture quality, not and keep this review family friendly.) The movie's listed run time is only 95 minutes so there shouldn't be any need for compression, much less evidence of compression artifacting, which I am not certain is the cause for the graininess.

If not compression artifacting then what? My opinion is that this transfer looks like someone took an old analog video master and used dated transfer equipment bought at a yard sale to convert it to digital. This video has the sort of bottom of the barrel picture you'd expect to find on a flea market or dollar store DVD. The sort of DVD that comes from a label you've never heard of. But this is no shady unknown label DVD. This has the Lions Gate Home Entertainment logo on it, which makes this horrid travesty all the more galling.

Who was it that said a sucker is born every minute?

Video Quality: D- (Mucho distracting grain.)

Movie: B

Rating: 3 out of 10 golden apples.

Perspective:

Science-fiction fans should take note. The father is played by genre regular Stephen Macht (Sliders, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Millenium, Babylon 5) but I'll always remember him as Sergeant Thor from the movie Galaxina. Too, the daughter is none other that Dark Skies Kimberly- for those who weren't fans that's Megan Ward- and Shawn Weatherly had a recurring role in T. J. Hooker and appeared in the original Dukes of Hazzard. How can you not love a movie with a cast like that?

For my part I remember this movie from watching it late one night on TV in the mid nineties. Back when the only real alternative to the big three- that's ABC, CBS, and NBC- aside from cable were local independent stations. Stations whose broadcast signal usually required some fancy antenna adjustment, a lot of cursing, and a prayer before the station tuned in. Even then it was often a haze. But it was worth it because the independents took risks.

It was a simpler time. A time when MTV was still about playing music videos. A time when local independent stations actually aired blocks of music videos in a vain effort to compete! They even had their own wacky VJ-host personalities.

Ah, the memories. There was an independent station that aired horror movies and late night European fair. Sure it was rare, and they tended to go off the air for periods of time. Sure the movies were often subtitled, had a bit of blur, and red levels that would drive you to distraction trying to correct the color but they were also often uncensored! To this day I still remember this one movie where a young woman frolics nude on the beach, totally nude, no lie, yet have no idea what the movie was or was about.

But what sticks out in my memory most were the horror movies. They aired with commercials but, aside from a bit of fogging and dead air when curse words were uttered, they actually aired otherwise uncut. And since these were independents the commercial breaks few and far between. Television was much different back then.

It was during one of the local independent stations Halloween week horror movie marathons I first remember watching this particular Amityville flick. I specifically recall being impressed by the mirror scene, or at least the concept, and thinking how that would be a great premise to expand and use as the central theme for a horror movie. Also I decided that I just had to have the movie on video to see it uncensored! Alas I've tried to track this title down on video several times over the years without much luck, until now. Wish the transfer were better. Also I'm not sure if this print is cut or not. The scene in question didn't live up to my memory of it. Still it was decent.

Negatives: Grain. Oh, the humanity! Not even BNR has any effect.

Positives: It's budget priced. They got the run time right. Despite the grain the quality is still superior to most bargain bin DVDs.

Availability: Look for it at your better brick and mortar stores.

Final Words: Lion's Gate you should be ashamed. It's bad enough this is a totally bare bones DVD with a full screen transfer, that we can forgive you for, but there is just no excuse for the (lack of) quality of this transfer. That said if a decent quality transfer were made from the original elements I'd gladly trade in my DVD in for it.