DVD Review: The Amityville Collection is Scary in a Whole New Way

Oct

Written by: Dom and Ash at 12:37 am

Filed under: DVD Box Sets,Movies

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The Amityville Collection was put out on October 16th by Lionsgate in honor of the upcoming Halloween. Offered in the set are three Amityville movies, A New Generation, Dollhouse, and Its About Time. While none of the movies take place in the traditional Amityville setting, all of them contain items that bring out the evil in Amityville. This, of course, leaves the series open to a never-ending amount of bad movies that contain Amityville items.

I can see it now. Amityville On A Diet: some poor unsuspecting sap picks up the Amityville treadmill at a garage sale not knowing what they really purchased. Amityville Fixer Upper: A saw and some paint come into a man’s home when he is trying to fix things up, but they just don’t go as planned. Amityville: Whack A Bug: All this family wanted to do was get rid of their mosquitoes. Why did they have to get the bug zapper from Amityville?

Sure you’re thinking those are a little over the top, but you never know what to expect with this series of movies. At this stage, you have to imagine that the original family is wishing they never said anything about what happened to them. They could have stopped a little bit of stupid from infiltrating our horror movies.

Needless to say this collection offers three movies. Synopses are listed below or you can click the links above for the full review.

Amityville: A New Generation
Keyes is a photographer who normally snaps pictures of obscure items and junk. One day he takes interest in a homeless man and decides to snap his picture instead. As payment, the man gives Keyes the only thing in his life worth something. He gives him an old, antique mirror. Keyes takes the mirror and gives it to his neighbor only to discover some horrible family secrets and plenty of terror when the apartment building Keyes’ lives in learns the hard way that the mirror holds evil spirits just waiting to enact their Amityville style revenge on anyone who comes near.

Amityville: Dollhouse
A man and woman get married and move into the house, that he built, with their kids. The house is built on a property where the previous house had burned down. Later a mysterious dollhouse is found in the garage and is given to the couple’s daughter for her birthday. The dollhouse contains evil and well, you know how the story goes from there.

Amityville: It’s About Time
A land developer brings a clock home from the job for inspiration. The clock is evil and begins to ruin the family’s life along with many people in the neighborhood. Dogs go missing, girls become sluts, and things get wacky and well they are supposed to get scary, but this being Amityville don’t make bank on that statement.

Audio/Video:
There were slight audio problems with at least one of the discs. With Dollhouse the reviewer had to crank his sound just to hear what was going on. Meanwhile the other DVDs had sound that was normal compared to other DVDs that have been reviewed. The video quality was low budget, but viewable. There was minimal grain and there generally wasn’t a problem getting the idea of what you were watching.

Special Features:
There were little, if any, special features on any of these discs. If you are considering buying this set for the features, you should skip it because you will be disappointed with what little is available.

Closing Thoughts:
The Amityville Collection is filled with three movies that had some potential and blew it. You’re offered lame direction, poor acting, and pathetic writing. Instead of The Amityville Collection they might want to consider calling it The Worst of Hollywood Collection because that has a more truthful ring to it. Amityville is a concept that has been done, redone, and is generally used up. If you’re looking for movies that will make my point, grab this collection and you will see what I mean.

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