Thursday, October 24, 2013

3-D Thursday: Amityville 3-D (1983)

Amityville 3-D holds the distinction of being the last of the major 3D releases of the 1980s. A few more independent films limped out in 1984 and 1985, but this November 1983 release was the effective end of the road for the process for nearly 20 years (a couple of minor 1990s releases notwithstanding).

It also holds the distinction of being on Siskel & Ebert's Worst of 1983 list. I'm not entirely convinced I agree with that distinction, however. After all, 1983 also gave us The Man Who Wasn't There and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn, both of which threaten to make this film look like Casablanca.

The funny thing about this is the fact that, like so many other bad movies, one watches Amityville 3-D and is left wondering just how it went so wrong. It shouldn't be as bad as it is. It has a decent enough cast, a pretty good idea for the story, and the director of such classics as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Fantastic Voyage, and Tora! Tora! Tora!. Despite all this, the film manages to lay an absurdly sour egg.

The story has magazine journalist John Baxter (Woody Allen alumni Tony Roberts) buying the Amityville Horror house. As he makes his career debunking hoaxes, he doesn't believe in the stories about the house. So far so good. I can dig a guy with cajones buying up a haunted house. Of course it doesn't take long for weird stuff to happen and people to start dying. Baxter, for his part, just blows it all off.

The Realtor who sold him the place dies in the house? Happens all the time!
Baxter's photographer partner Melanie gets attacked by the house and later is burned to a crisp in her car? Mere coincidence!
Baxter's daughter drowns after a séance where the house threatens her? It's tragic, but what can you do? That's life!

Sheesh, is this guy boneheaded! In fact, Baxter is hilariously boneheaded even after he's attacked in an elevator. Me? I would have been suspicious after the realtor, concerned after the elevator, and convinced after my photographer died. But then, I'm not the victim of bad screenwriting.

The script is just one of the frustrating things about this film. There seem to be two types of people in this movie: stupid people and whiney people. As stupid as Baxter comes across, it can't beat the stupidity of paranormal investigator Eliot West (Robert Joy). This genius decides that the best way to save Loughlin's spirit from the demon in the well is to lean near the well and, when he sees the demon coming up yell to her spirit to save herself. That's it. Naturally, the demon gets him instead. Good plan, there, bub. Didn't think to bring any holy water or anything, did you?

While it's true that none of the 1980s 3D movies are what you would traditionally call "good movies", this one should have been. Besides Roberts and Joy, Candy Clark plays Melanie, Lori Loughlin is the daughter, and Meg Ryan her best (only?) friend. Yes, that Meg Ryan. So this isn't exactly the cast of a Friday the 13th movie. I know, I know. Someone is going to point out that some of those movies have good casts. They don't. What they usually have is one or two (if that) good actors and a bunch of nobodies. This cast isn't a bunch of nobodies. They're a good cast doing a lousy job.

The only one who almost acquits herself is Loughlin and she doesn't get much to do. Even worse, almost all of her scenes are with Ryan, who is embarrassingly bad here. How bad is Ryan? Her performance has all the subtlety of a nuclear explosion. It's bizarre to think that by the end of the decade she'd being doing movies like When Harry Met Sally. Watching her here, however, you would swear she was never going to be anybody.

You can almost excuse those two, however, since they actually were nobodies at the time. Candy Clark, on the other hand, had been in American Graffiti ten years earlier, so she has no excuse. She starts out okay but as the film goes on her performance gets steadily worse. Her next to last scene, where Roberts tries to find out what happened to her in the house is so bad it's painful. Her death by spontaneous combustion scene is so over the top ridiculous as to be unintentionally funny.

Roberts ex-wife is played by an exceedingly shrill Tess Harper. Literally, all she seems to do is whine her way through the part. In fact, she is so annoying, you actually wish she was in the car with Clark when it goes up in flames.

As far as Roberts goes, he plays Baxter in such a blasé manner as to defy belief. You would think that an actor who worked with Al Pacino and Woody Allen would be able to bring some life to his character. But he doesn't, which makes it impossible to feel anything for him but contempt for being so stupid and banal a character. Not good for an actor who has to carry a whole movie. It's like watching a Friday the 13th movie where the character stands by the open door screaming while Jason slowly walks over to them instead of running like hell. They literally deserve what they get.

True, it's not necessarily the fault of any of the actors as the characters themselves are written that way. But the fact that none of these people--except for Ryan who goes way over the top--can make their characters the least bit interesting damns the whole project. And Ryan isn't interesting, she's just goofy and over the top.

Director Richard Fleischer had worked in 3D 30 years earlier with a movie called Arena, so he was better qualified to work with the process than any other director of an 80s 3D movie. He knows plenty about depth and it shows since the depth in the movie is fantastic, far better than most 3D movies today. But the film suffers from what all 80s 3D movies seem to suffer from: so many gimmick shots that many of them are just plain silly. Clark's charred corpse is pretty effective but it's hard to take a movie seriously that spits straws and Frisbees at you. Especially when the Frisbee effect is handled pretty clumsily. Still, if you have a 3D TV and are going to watch this movie, the 3D Blu Ray is the way to go.

In the end, Amityville 3-D ends up being only moderately better than most of it's contemporaries. This, Jaws 3-D, and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone remain the best of the 80s 3D movies. But that's not really saying much.

Though I will give the movie this: there is at least one effectively creepy scene in the movie. Harper is in the house and she sees a very wet (and silent) Loughlin walking up the steps. She follows her right up to the attic and gets the door slammed on her. What she doesn't know is that outside at that very moment, Roberts and some paramedics are trying desperately to revive the already dead girl. It's a well done sequence which shows what the movie could have done with a little more effort. Shame there weren't more scenes like it.

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