Amityville: The Evil Escapes 1989

On a rain-soaked night, six priests enter the infamous Amityville house to perform an exorcism, led by Father Manfred Norman Lloyd. Among them is Father Dennis Kibbler Fredric Lehne, who climbs to an upstairs room to bless it. As he begins to chant, a bolt of energy blasts from the outlet, travels along the cord, and feeds into a glowing brass floor lamp. A demonic face seems to form in the large bulb, and Kibbler is knocked across the room, left unconscious as the lamp hums with dark power.

A few days later, a real estate agency hosts a yard sale of the previous owners’ items, and Father Manfred hopes the evil may have departed. At the sale, Helen Royce Peggy McCay and her friend Rhona Gloria Cromwell discover the lamp. Helen buys it for just $100 as a birthday gift for her sister Alice Leacock Jane Wyatt, noting that she and Alice enjoy trading quirky presents. While inspecting the lamp, Helen cuts her finger on a brass collar around the bulb, but she brushes it off and takes the lamp home. The cut festers, her finger becomes discolored, and she later dies of tetanus.

A week later, the lamp arrives at Alice’s large three-story coastal home in Dancott, California. Nancy Evans Patty Duke and her three children—Amanda Evans Zoe Trilling, Brian Evans Aron Eisenberg, and the quiet, enigmatic Jessica Evans Brandy Gold—move in with Alice. Nancy finds the lamp hideous, while Alice is intrigued by its odd charm. When the lamp is switched on, strange phenomena begin: Alice’s parrot dies and ends up in the toaster, the kitchen sink’s disposal whirs to life on its own, and the lamp’s influence seems to reach Jessica, drawing her in more than anyone else.

The lamp gradually begins to manipulate electrical devices around the house and commits a series of unsettling acts—each more brazen than the last. It even kills the parrot and later harms Danny, the electrician Reade’s Alex Rebar son and apprentice, by severing his hand. The lamp’s reach extends to the house’s systems, and it appears to be targeting Jessica, who becomes more convinced that her dead father Frank’s spirit resides inside the lamp. Meanwhile, Father Kibbler, staying with Father Manfred, receives a call from the lamp that emits smoke from the phone and melts the speaker. This alarming message prompts him to travel to Dancott to investigate, worried that the evil has taken possession of an object from the Amityville house.

As the family is away, Jessica’s fixation grows, and the lamp uses its extension cord to thwart exorcism efforts by physically obstructing Father Kibbler. Peggy, the housekeeper, falls victim to the lamp’s deadly reach as it tears through the household staff.

Alice acts quickly when danger escalates: she grabs the lamp and hurls it out of a window. It crashes onto the rocky shore and shatters, seemingly ending the possession. Yet the ending reveals a chilling aftereffect: Jake’s body remains inside the house, and the camera lingers on the lamp’s remnants, showing that the evil within has now possessed Pepper, the family cat, leaving a new, unseen threat to haunt the household.