For more than two years, Joe Lipsett has dissected Amityville Horror films to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.” It’s something of a fool’s errand to try and contain just what an Amityville film is. While part of the goal of this project has been to […]
![The “Franchise” Goes Western with ‘Once Upon a Time in Amityville’ [The Amityville IP]](https://bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Once-Upon-A-Time-in-Amityville-2024.jpeg)
The sole remaining residents are all openly hostile, including Jed (Tim Hatch, Amityville Turkey Day, Amityville Thanksgiving, Space and Island), hotel owner Angela (Natalie Himmelberger, Space), and crooked business Mr. Malcolm (Polonia himself). Only Regis (Jeff Kirkendall, Space), hard at work on a visually familiar set of window frames, seems somewhat amenable to the newcomers.
This being an Amityville film, it’s not long before Miles and Carson note the odd behaviour as well as the strange lights in the sky. Too late they realize that the townspeople aren’t hiding Mathias; he’s already dead and they’re next. In this way the film combines several famous titles that inspired it, including Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in the West and the cult aspects of Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist Manson text.
Alas this elements make the film sound more interesting than it actually is. The biggest criticism of Polonia’s Once… is that the text is kind of boring. A predictable, straightforward narrative doesn’t have to be a dealbreaker, but the reality is that there simply isn’t enough here to sustain the film’s ~70 minute runtime. Throw in stilted and amateurish acting along with shallow characterizations and there’s not much here to hang your (10 gallon) hat on.
The film’s biggest selling feature is that it’s a Western Amityville film, which is immediately novel. Polonia does what he can with costume and a decent, albeit small, set of frontier buildings to disguise the budget limitations. Still, the scope feels limited, particularly when characters ride across the same stretch on horseback or exhaust the range of the set in a matter of minutes.
The effects are also a mixed bag. The CGI visual effects used to simulate a malevolent force in the sky are identical to Amityville in Space (they may literally be repurposed from that earlier film), which is to say: they look cheap. But there’s a high camp value when the winged creature is revealed in the climax to be a cryptid bat puppet, which is summarily dispatched by a steam powered locomotive (operated by a single man!) with a giant makeshift cross attached to the front (!!).
When Once… leans into exceedingly dumb territory, then it’s entertaining. It’s unfortunate that these highlights happen so late in the film because it’s too little, too late by this time.
And so, Polonia’s return to the “franchise” is more miss than hit, but he deserves props for trying something slightly different. Amityville films tend to be low budget/big swings and while this likely won’t be remembered for being anything other than “the Western one,” that still stands out among the nearly sixty other titles in the run of this “franchise.”
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
Next time: A BlueSky connection alerted me to the fact that there’s a random new found footage film called Amityville Void (2024) on YouTube. So let’s check that out next!
