June | 2021 | Around the World in 80s Movies Podcast

Electricity lines between the houses in a suburban Los Angeles neighborhood allow an unseen but powerful malevolent force to enter homes, where it begins twisting the house’s wiring and everything that is plugged into it to its liking. Eventually, it begins using the home’s appliances to torture the inhabitants within. In one home on a cul-de-sac, the father went crazy and began destroying his home. Now it seems to be threatening the home across the street, where an 11-year-old boy named David (Joey Lawrence) is visiting his divorced father (Cliff De Young) for the summer. David seems to know what’s going on, but he can’t leave until he convinces his skeptical father before they’re stuck in a high-voltage death trap.

Roxanne Hart and Matthew Lawrence also appear in this 1988 eerie story written and directed by Paul Golding.

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In this made-for-network-TV entry, a crack team of Catholic priests comes in to exorcise the demonic presence within the possessed Amityville home. Cornered, the demon finds refuge by traveling through the power cable into a hideous-looking floor lamp. Sensing the evil is gone from the home, the contents of the home are put up at a yard sale, where a frolicsome older woman spies the lamp for a hundred dollars that would make for a great gag gift to send her sister in California.

That sister is Alice Leacock, who lives in a Victorian house overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the fictional northern California town of Dancott. Alice is a bitter fuddy-duddy set in her ways, and unhappy to have to take in her newly widowed daughter, Nancy Evans, and three grandchildren until they can get back on their feet. Alice receives the lamp, placing it prominently in her home, despite her household cat and parrot reacting with alarm to its presence. Not long after, strange occurrences erupt as the evil gets unleashed throughout the house, with the malevolent spirit especially targeting and influencing the youngest of the grandchildren by convincing her that it is her dead father. Meanwhile, one of the priests concludes that the evil may have transferred into one or more of the house’s yard sale items and begins sleuthing, trying to warn the family that they are in possession of a powerful demonic presence that will surely destroy them all.

Around the World in 80s Movies Podcast

A concise podcast reviewing the films released in the 1980s, with history, trivia, fun facts, and film critic Vince Leo's personal recollection with the era that defined a generation's taste in movies.

Monthly Archives: June 2021

Pulse (1988) | Paul Golding

Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (1989)