Fiction vs. Fiction (Kind of): Amityville- The Nightmare Continues (1991)

 I took forever to finish this Book, so I missed the chance to make this my 4,700th Post Celebration.

Oh well- I still finished it in the end, so let's do this...

***VS***

The reason for the 'Kind of' in the Title is that this is one of the many Book Sequels.  The Film Sequels are mixed bag as far as the sources go, with some being based on Books and others just whatever they felt like.

This Book doesn't reference 'Amityville: The Evil Escapes,' but also cribs from it too.

Look- I wrote an Article about the Books long ago.  See it here.

What's the Same?

The Plot of the Book involves 2 Kids going into the still-empty House and taking some goods from it.
Said goods kill people.

On top of that, there's an underlying Plot about the mystery of what's still-haunting the House.

What's Different?

In the Films based on the ancillary Books, the whole Story is built around ONE object that creates lots of chaos (killing pets, injuring people, etc) and eventually has to be stopped.

In this Book, the Kids sell/give away items throughout the tale- which takes place over about a Month.
The items tend to kill people THAT DAY.

Said deaths are also just padding, since they rarely affect the Leads.  They are basically the Random Campers/Counselors you see in Friday the 13th Films (and its Ripoffs).

In the Films, our Heroes/Heroines eventually defeat the evil and usually live happily ever after.

In this Book, one of the Kids goes missing forever, the other sees his Father killed by a ghost snake in front of him and his Mother (who gets tried for the killings, despite all logic).  Also the Detective just kind of dies later and nobody lives happily ever after.

Yea.

Here's the biggest thing- this Book pretends to be 100% Non-Fiction.

No, really.

The Author has this elaborate Book backstory involving a friend asking him to write about it and then said friend dying mysteriously before he gets the chance.  He also interrupts the narrative at random points to use 'Notes.'

For instance, he says that the one kid was never found again...four Chapters before the end.  Why?!?

Did he convince me that this was real?  No.
Did he convince people back in 1991?  Maybe.

Final Thoughts

Honestly, despite me being dismissive of the attempts to make this seem like Non-Fiction, I actually kind of enjoyed the Book.

The Author fills it with some freaky visuals that I would kind of like to see on Film.  With the dirge of Copyright-free Amityville Films being made, why not this Story? 

The Plot definitely has many distractions, but it works overall.
Just ignore all of the silliness involving this all being 'a True Story' and it's pretty enjoyable!