One of the best of the amityville films...its just a shame that its not actually set in amityville...but the movie does start off in the house which I loved, I just wish it stayed there.the house is finally blessed and all the furniture is sold off, the evil enters the furniture and off it goes to a new location booooooothe evil is the lamp, and its a very creepy looking lamp too, its a low budget horror but its done really well...

A Californian family's lives are thrown into turmoil by the presence of an old lamp sent to them by a well-meaning relative, a lamp that used to reside in a certain old house in Amityville.'The Evil Escapes' came out at a time when several horror franchises had fallen from earlier grace and were seeing low-budget revivals on television: 'Amityville IV', 'Psycho IV', and indeed 'The Omen IV'. Amityville IV for me is most definitely the weakest, with a script about an evil lamp that presumably didn't sell as is, so it was retooled until it could wear the 'Amityville' banner in order to ever see the light of day. Pure speculation on my part, given that it's apparently based on a book (then again, some books are inflatable bath toys), but that's pretty much how it looks from where I'm sitting.Following the house's miraculous recovery after it exploded fairly comprehensively in the last film, priests sweep across its reconstituted floors to exorcise the evil it contains once and for all. This they seemingly achieve, and soon after, the house's contents are sold off in a yard sale, including an old lamp we've never seen before during the time of the Lutzs, the Montellis or the Baxters, (maybe they can cgi it into the original Amityville Horror George Lucas-style) which attracts the attention of a buyer, who figures it'd look good in her sister's house over on the west coast. Unbeknownst to her, the lamp contains the demonic essence of the Long Island house from whence it came and it soon takes over the lives of its new victims. The inconsistencies seem baffling given that the screenplay was written Sandor Stern, screenplay scribe for the first Amityville - unless the original Sandor Stern exploded a few years earlier, reconstituted himself and isn't quite the same person, in much the same way that the Amityville house is quite obviously not the same. Or maybe Spectacor Films' budget didn't stretch to the inclusion of proper continuity.Still, if you put all this aside, 'The Evil Escapes' is not completely without entertainment value. There are a few seat-squirming moments involving certain household appliances as well as a few good practical effects. I'm not really familiar with Patty Duke's back catalogue, very possibly not my cup of tea, but while it's clearly just a paycheck for her, she pulls the drama up a notch with the amount of effort the production deserves. Star Trek fans may enjoy seeing Aron Eisenberg without the Ferengi makeup and indeed Jane Wyatt, although she too barely needs to do more than phone in her lines, much like fellow Trek alumnus Norman Lloyd. Frederic Lehne is also a welcome presence, doing his best to keep his 'frightened priest' a few notches above 'Crispin Glover'.Sandor Stern's direction is smoother than his script, and while no particular shot stands out, nothing seems out of place. Rick Conrad provides a rather uninteresting score powered by those late-80s synths that managed to age faster than Tony Blair's face, but at least it's more consistent than Howard Blake's effort in Amityville III - though Blake was clearly more talented.If you're completely mad like me and watch every installment of a film series (especially horror) even though you're well-aware the sequels are most likely diminishing returns, you'll probably watch this anyway. If on the other hand, you made it through Amityville III without completely losing the will to live and want to know if part IV will deliver the death blow to your sanity, the answer is no. I think III and IV, although very different beasts, offer about the same amount of entertainment value. My yardstick is part II, which I thought was a surprisingly good first sequel. From here on out, it's all straight to video.

This fourth one has a lot in common with the third one. Again, it seems like it's just another Made-For-TV movie: the acting is average, the story isn't scary or suspenseful and the effects are extremely cheap. No real horror here (well, it's called Amityville HORROR: The Evil Escapes !) and it looks more like a PG-13 movie than what it's rated for (15 years and older).The real problem is that the story is rather stupid: a god awful lamp from the original house has the demon inside it. In a few scenes, the demon is showed inside the lamp but they were better off leaving that on the cutting floor. The story is actually based on the novel with the same title. That novel was again used for the 6th one. And that movie (It's About Time) is much better than this which is actually one of the worst Amityville sequels.

This movie is just awful, but in a very fun way. We had a blast watching it, so watch it with a group of people and you will have a good time making fun of it. If you are looking for a drinking game, here it is...During the movie, they make a really big deal about the haunted floor lamp lighting by itself even though it is not plugged in. It happens a lot, trust me. Here are the rules: Every time the lamp turns itself on and does the spooky glow thing, everyone in the room has to say out loud at the same time, "Oh my God, the lamp lights by itself!", and take a drink. Put some emotion into it - it's fun. You better have a designated driver if you do this... the lamp really likes to light itself up.Have fun.