Three dimwitted thieves raid the home of a mysterious old woman and inadvertently free an ancient genie from a lamp. Afterwards the lamp reaches a museum in Galveston, Texas where the genie momentarily inhabits the curator's teenage daughter Alex (Andra St. Ivanyi). Under its evil influence Alex convinces her visiting high school group, including boyfriend Ted (Scott Bankston), to sneak back into the museum that night. Also loitering about the premises after dark are Alex's thuggish ex-boyfriend Mike (Red Mitchell) and his moronic sidekick who intend to cause trouble for the clean-cut kids. Inevitably the genie breaks loose and slaughters its way through hapless security guards and horny teenagers alike, prompting Alex's father Dr. Wallace (James Huston) and his schoolteacher girlfriend Eve (Deborah Winters) to try to save her life.
For its American theatrical release The Lamp was re-titled The Outing, presumably to trick people into thinking it was another summer camp slasher film. Nonetheless this kitschy Eighties horror belongs to a silly sub-genre of evil genie movies that spawned the lousy if maddeningly successful Wishmaster (1997) movies, Tobe Hooper's Arabic produced Djinn (2013) and more recently the more mainstream Wish Upon (2017). Filmed on location in Galveston, Texas (which alone earned it a small local fan-base) the film seesaws between colourful monster romp and cartoonish ineptitude and seemingly ran out of money and/or imagination midway through production. Screenwriter and producer Warren Chaney is actually married to top-billed Deborah Winters who lands an associate producer credit, plays multiple roles including the old woman to no great effect but gets to beat up a high school bully with a broom. Chaney briefly segued into directing with Into the Spider's Web (1988), a family adventure based on his own series of children's books, and low-budget western The Broken Spur (1992) but of late has been more active writing Christian-themed novels.
Stylistically The Lamp lifts the roving demon-cam from The Evil Dead (1983) and the comic book surrealism of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) but falls short of both. Chaney's plot leans heavily on a bog-standard teens-trapped-in-a-spooky-location scenario and makes less of its Monkey's Paw-like conceit than many would have hoped. The film fumbles the all too mild conflict between father and daughter (who, thanks to awkward casting, look more like husband and wife) that ought to serve as the story's emotional spine. Given the plot hinges on what seems a merely rash teenage outburst, for which would-be Molly Ringwald Alex instantly apologizes, both her 'punishment' and whatever moral the film is trying to convey are overstated. To its credit at least The Lamp tries to craft sympathetic characters and imbue events with some kind of emotional resonance beyond mere scare tactics.
Alas, ineptitude undoes whatever good intentions were inherent in the initial concept. Tom Daley dawdles through not one but two laborious prologues, including the moronic thieves and their topless female sidekick falling afoul of the genie, then takes a whole hour to get the teens into the museum. Thereafter The Lamp stumbles through a succession of slapdash scenes where our suspiciously-mature looking teenagers sneak off some place to get laid and meet ridiculous deaths. None of which prove especially imaginative (i.e. the old snakes attack a naked girl in the bathtub bit) while a scene where two racist thugs rape the lone black girl crosses a line into the blatantly offensive. Location and atmosphere are especially important when making this sort of a horror film. While splendidly-named cinematographer Herbert Raditschnig gives The Lamp a pleasingly comic book ambiance, the museum itself is not especially creepy. However the climactic reveal of the big rubber monster is fairly effective even it is hard to understand what he is saying with that ridiculous croaky voice.
