Editorials
‘Amityville Frankenstein’ Isn’t Worth Reanimating [The Amityville IP]
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
This editorial series has spilled a lot of digital ink analyzing how IP is the driving factor in the vast majority of Amityville films. This is hardly surprising considering Hollywood’s predilection for repurposing /capitalizing on successful titles and the legal freedom that the Amityville name provides as both a selling feature and an easy cash grab.
Throughout the history of the ~45 films we’ve looked at to date, there have been no shortage of individuals who have picked up a camera (or phone), shot some footage over a weekend, and then waited for the money to roll in.
Artistically this hasn’t produced the most creative or interesting selection of films, however. Folks who have been reading along for the last few years have undoubtedly noted that the vast majority of the “franchise” films under review have earned scores of 1 star or less.
All this to say, I went into executive producer, writer, and director Nick Box’s first Amityville film with a certain amount of trepidation. Amityville Frankenstein is the first of three Amityville films that Box released in 2023…in the span of a single week (April 13-20).
How is this possible? Well, Amityville Frankenstein debuted as an interactive feature film/Steam game called Fiendish Thieves back in 2020 before it was rebranded by Box as an Amityville film in 2023. We’ve seen this phenomenon before, with Against the Night, which was released in 2017 and later rebranded Amityville Prison.
The result, unsurprisingly, means that Amityville Frankenstein is barely an Amityville film.
The film follows Shawn C Phillips (director of Amityville Karen, and actor from Amityville Thanksgiving, Karen, In The Hood and Hex) as Viewer, an indiscriminate viewer who eschews his large physical media collection to watch “Terror Telly” with horror host Maurice Morbid (Chan Walrus). The film Maurice is screening is called <drumroll> ‘Fiendish Thieves’ and follows “bungling burglars” Ted (Julian Seager) and Steve (Boyd Rogers) as they try to steal a watch from the lab of a Dr (Jamie Smith – and yes, that is how the character is credited). Unbeknownst to them, the Dr has created a Frankenstein creature (Matt Stuart) and its female companion (Scarlet Brooke), who awaken when Ted inadvertently electrocutes himself while turning on a light.
What happens next? Well, the thieves are scared off, the creatures disappear, and the Dr is mad. And…that’s it!
Nothing of consequence happens in ‘Fiendish Thieves’ and, by extension, nothing much happens in this 62-minute Amityville film, which runs 58 minutes without credits. In tried and true fashion, this is barely a feature; Amityville Frankenstein is little more than a bland collection of scenes that go on interminably long in what is ultimately a flimsy attempt to pad the runtime.
Do you want to see two thieves climb a flight of stairs for four minutes? What about watch a character get electrocuted for the same amount of time? If the answer is yes, then Amityville Frankenstein is the film for you!
Much like Amityville Death Toilet or Ghosts of Amityville, there’s barely enough content here to justify a short, never mind a feature-length production. Unlike Death Toilet, however, this film barely even has a sense of humor; whereas the former title tried (and admittedly failed) to insert zany comedy into the proceedings, the only part of Amityville Frankenstein that remotely works is Walrus’ slightly hammy performance as a late night horror host who resents the actors and films he screens.
Alas, Box is content to spend too much time on Steve and Ted walking up stairs in the dark or witnessing the Viewer try to toss cheese popcorn into his mouth (or farting – a running gag for Shawn C. Phillips in these films). But Amityville Frankenstein isn’t interesting and too much of the film plays like filler, which is all the more grating when the finished result doesn’t even hit the one hour mark without having to run the title card and credits twice (a total of nearly 5 minutes of screen time).
It’s insulting and boring, which are two apt descriptors for this laziest of cash grabs. Give me the weirdness of Amityville Ride-Share over this slop any day.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Baffling Phillips: It is wild that Shawn C. Phillips is so plugged into this “franchise” (we’ll see him in no less than four more films, two of which he directs). He’s an atrocious actor, who can’t even improv natural dialogue about selecting movie snacks without resorting to lines about water like “They call it ‘aqua’, but I prefer to call it ‘la chuga.’”
- Lighting Lizzie: It’s wild that a crew member (simply called Lizzie) is credited with lighting because 95% of Ted and Steve’s laborious climb up the stairs is so dark that you can barely see a thing. The decision to film the ‘Fiendish Thieves’ portion (ie: the majority of the film) in black and white doesn’t help; there’s no depth to the cinematography, so it all just looks like a wash.
- Joke: Wasted: One of the best gags is Maurice Morbid’s preview of the following night’s film. Entitled “I Drink Tea And Watch You Die Slowly”, the film is exactly what the title describes: a man drinking tea while another man, tied up and bloody, expires in front of him. It’s very dumb and provides a solid laugh…until it goes on for six and a half minutes. It doesn’t matter how silly/clever the joke is initially, nothing can justify that creative decision.
- <Insert Flatulence>: Once again, if pressed to describe this film using only a single still image, it’s a pretty obvious choice…
Next time: our journey into Nick Box’s contribution to the “franchise” continues with another previously released film that has been rebranded under the Amityville banner: 2023’s Amityville Job Interview (aka 2018’s Strange Vibes).
Lionsgate’s The Strangers: Chapter 1 launches a reboot trilogy based on the 2008 home invasion film, all three movies shot simultaneously under the direction of Renny Harlin.
To tide you over until Chapter 2, Chapter 1‘s home video release offers an audio commentary from star Madelaine Petsch and producer Courtney Solomon that hints at what’s to come.
Here are six things I learned from The Strangers: Chapter 1 commentary.
1. The opening music cue was inspired by The Shining.
The film’s opening establishing shot roving over the woods — with Bratislava, Slovakia standing in for the small town of Venus, Oregon — evokes the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, which was also a point of reference for the score.
“When we were scoring this, we looked at The Shining,” says Courtney Solomon, referring to Wendy Carlos’ iconic main title theme. “‘Cause we were looking for how, even though it’s dated, they were in that open, sort of everything environment, musically.”
Justin Caine Burnett (I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, 9-1-1: Lone Star) composed the score.
2. The cold open features an important character to the trilogy.
Shot together like one long movie, The Strangers trilogy will take place over a four-day period, with each subsequent entry picking up immediately after its predecessor’s finale.
Chapter 1‘s cold open features actor Ryan Bown — doing his own stunts, as Petsch points out — as a character who will play a bigger role in the coming installments.
“Jeff Morell, we’ll come to find out who this guy is as we go through all three chapters, but we sort of begin here,” Solomon notes.
“He’s a pretty important piece to this puzzle,” teases Petsch. “Some might say the piece.”
They also hint that viewers haven’t seen the last of Rachel Shenton’s Debbie, who Petsch’s Maya talks to on FaceTime, along with many of the townspeople from the diner scene.
3. Petsch was terrified of the project due to her love of the original film.
The shadow of the original Strangers looms large over Chapter 1. Petsch is “such a fan” that she was hesitant about doing a new version:
“I was terrified to touch that property. I think it’s an incredibly perfect horror film. I’ve seen so many horror films, and I feel like it’s one of the only ones that’s truly scared me to my bones, that I still think about all the time. So as we were trying to expound upon that story, with the second and third movies, we had to naturally repel the first story.”
Solomon similarly thinks highly of the original:
“I love the original Strangers. I wasn’t as big a fan of the sequel [2018’s The Strangers: Prey at Night], because it was just another story in a trailer park with the Strangers. I didn’t love that two of the Strangers got killed. That was just me personally; there are people that liked it. I was like, ‘I’d like to do something more interesting.’ In order to do it, to find that balance of retelling what made the first one so great as the basis to be able to launch off and tell the rest of the story.”
Petsch adds, “As we know, at the end of the first one, one of the last shots is Liv [Tyler]’s eyes opening. I’ve always wondered what happens after that.”
4. The killers’ hair is concealed to hide their identity.
Although the filmmakers opted to keep the look of the titular Strangers true to the original, Dollface and Pin-Up Girl’s hair is now concealed. This was a “purposeful change” to hide their identities, which will presumably be revealed later in the trilogy.
“We had a specific reason for doing it, obviously, because you do end up meeting a bunch of the folk from this small town,” explains Solomon. “You don’t know who’s wearing the mask, so if we had given up the hair that would make that identification a little bit easier.”
5. Petsch conceived the shower scene based on a personal fear.
In addition to starring in all three films, Petsch is an exclusive producer on the trilogy. More than a mere vanity credit, she had creative input throughout the stages of production, including the addition of Chapter 1‘s shower scene.
“This was not in the original script, the shower. Maybe our first week we were talking about what would be the scariest thing for me if I was in a situation like this,” she recalls. “I shared with you that every time I take a shower and I’m at the point where there’s suds of soap in my eyes and I’m shampooing, I’m always sure that’s when the serial killer’s gonna walk in. So we wrote this in, because I think that must be a common experience.”
6. Remaking the original film was a conscious decision to kick off the trilogy.
It’s not until the end titles that the pair directly address the thought process behind launching the reboot trilogy with a retread of the original.
“Some people may go and watch this and go, ‘Oh, my god. It was a remake of the original.’ But actually this is just act one of our giant movie! If you watched it as a whole, then you’d be like, ‘Oh, shit. That’s just where it started,” says Solomon. “This is the 90-minute setup of the entire thing.”
Petsch concurs, “Don’t get me wrong. I also feel like the original is so good that it would be crazy to just do a remake of the original, but in order to tell the story that we were trying to tell, you kind of have to go back and do a repurposing of that story with these two new characters.”
“They did the whole first movie, the original, amazing, but that’s the jumping off point. This entire giant movie that’s become three chapters was done with a lot of love,” Solomon concludes.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 is available now on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
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