Even when viewed without the benefit of its 'third dimension', Amityville 3-D is still an enjoyably cheesy piece of 80s horror—not quite as good as my favourite in the series, Amityville 2: The Possession, but still far more entertaining than the po-faced original.

Subtitled The Demon, Part 3 sees its infamous Long Island property snapped up by reporter John Baxter who refuses to believe that the house is home to malevolent supernatural phenomena. Even when several of John's friends and acquaintances die in mysterious circumstances, his scepticism does not wane.

However, after his own daughter Susan (Lori Loughlin) becomes the latest victim of the Amityville curse, the distraught writer finally agrees to turn his house over to a group of paranormal investigators who are particularly keen to check out the hole in the basement floor, which is rumoured to be a gateway to Hell!

This being a 3D movie, director Richard Fleischer is obliged to deliver plenty of 'in your face' action, and objects are frequently dangled and poked towards the audience (which is kind of fun to watch, even in 2D),but to his credit, Fleischer also manages to conjure up quite a bit of atmosphere and a few decent scares along the way: in particular, the scene in which photographer Melanie (Candy Clark) is left alone in the house is extremely well handled and very creepy, as is the moment when Susan's mother is confronted by the sodden ghost of her recently drowned daughter.

Of course, this being a 'second sequel' made in the early 80s and a 3D effort to boot, it's not all well crafted scares: there are plenty of tacky moments for fans of B-movie horror to enjoy, and the messy finalé is a total blast, with almost every prop being thrust into the foreground, and a silly rubber demon popping up to say 'Hi!' from the bottom of his Hellish jacuzzi. Oh, and don't forget that Meg Ryan also makes an early appearance as Susan's ghost obsessed pal Lisa.

I rate Amityville 3D a reasonable 6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb; let's face it, any film that features a 3D fly attack and a flying stuffed swordfish has got to be worth at least that!

In the house where Sonny slaughtered the Montelli family, the reporter John Baxter (Tony Roberts) and the photographer Melanie (Candy Clark) disclose two charlatans, who cheated the persons pretending they were medium. The broker, who presently owns the house, is having difficulties to sell the mansion due to its fame, and John decides to buy the house by very low price. When he moves to the cursed place, many fatal tragedies happen with the broker, his daughter and his lover Melanie. This movie is very silly and boring. Its greatest attraction in the present day is to see Meg Ryan in the beginning of her career. The Brazilian DVD is a shame: it has a recent picture of Meg Ryan on the cover, and her name is highlighted as if she were the lead actress, showing a total lack of respect of the distributor with the viewers and consumers. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): `Amityville 3D'

The law of diminishing returns is already well underway with this, the third in the AMITYVILLE series, which manages to be even worse than the first two. There is even less of a story this time around, merely a string of special effects and strange occurrences with different people reacting to them.

There aren't many good scenes in this film. The best is probably the opening moment where a blatantly fake looking séance actually does turn out to be fake. This scene plays with the audience's expectations and therefore it's probably the cleverest bit in the film. Unfortunately, after this finishes, we're back in the realms of clichés and contrived happenings.

The acting is nothing special, the cast is made up of nobodies, apart from a young Meg Ryan who probably leaves this off her CV these days. It's not that the film is exceptionally bad, it's just identical to many other haunted house films of the time, including the original, so it's just not memorable at all. In fact I find it hard to remember what actually happened throughout the film, other than the supernatural phenomenon.

Which leaves the special effect as the best things in the film. It was actually filmed in 3D, which means that at every opportunity something will be thrown at the screen and at the audience. Silly, yes. The one spooky moment is where a man is attacked and killed by flies which swarm on his face. A female photographer notices that his face is obscured - almost mutilated - on the photographs she has of him. This is pretty disturbing.

There is a car crash, a rotted corpse and, best of all, at the end, a hilarious big bald demon which sits in a well and looks like an overweight version of Yoda, except with worse special effects. It must have had a flamethrower in its mouth too, judging by the flames which spurted out at the camera. After that, the house, obviously made of polystyrene, collapses and explodes, and, surprise, surprise, there is a whole plethora of bits of debris hitting and flying at the camera.

This film is a clichéd mess, plain and simple, with only some unintentional humour at the poor nature of the dialogue and the effects to while away the time. Avoid if you can.