Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (1989) – Sandor Stern.

'Why would a priest be calling about a lamp?'

The greatly diminishing Amityville franchise manifests itself in its fourth infernal incarnation by the schlockily entertaining guise of Sandor Stern's made-for-TV Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes. In one Amityville, the 'evil' hides in a kinky clock, and in part 4, this ceaselessly disruptive demonic entity is unknowingly brought into this cavernous Californian domicile in the ostensibly innocent guise of a chichi looking lamp. I, personally got no specific beef with lamps in cinema, in fact, they even made a decent oner called The Lamp, so horror lamps are all bright in my book! Like many, I regard the original Amityville to be a bona fide supernatural gem, but I also righteously dig the fact that the divinely downward-spiralling Amityville legacy amenably provided examples of primo goofball horror shenanigans. Amityville Four enjoys a conspicuously 80s aesthetic, which, for me, is usually the sticky cherry atop the tastily cliche-clotted cake.

Beautifully executed, or imperfectly presented, gloopily be-slimed, generously blood-basted practical FX are ALWAYS winning content, as in many ways CGI hurriedly rang the death-knell for tactile terror in the 90s, ultimately leading to the digital sloppiness of today's frustratingly fright-less nonentities. Digression done, A-4, has an A-1 (ish) cast, well, Patty Duke's legit, and there's the gumby-looking kid from Puppet Master 3. Some may accuse Amityville 4 of being a lightweight, even low-wattage fright-flick, but I regard it as a luminous, intermittently switched-on supernatural schlocker! I can't believe it wasn't intentional, but the lamp's singular design is almost identical to the malevolent tree stump featured in cult Brit anthology classic Tales That Witness Madness.