The second movie had Diane Franklin in it; I know her only from Better Off Dead but she played a princess-type in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and appeared elsewhere, obviously. The first time I ever saw her in a role where she didn't fake an accent was a TV movie called Summer Girl, where she played a psycho au pair.
The third one had Lori Loughlin in it. Mainly she's known for Full House but she was really good in Secret Admirer. I observe that her hair must've required as much maintenance as the Space Shuttle to look like that, even then. Also, this one had Meg Ryan in it, "Before she screwed up her face," as Mrs. Fungus put it. Heh.
I find myself wondering how many other 1980s teen movie actresses will show up in this series.
Anyway, one of the good things about the third movie is that it didn't follow the trope from the first two, where a priest is trying to convince others in the church that the house is evil, only the other priests don't believe him, and his superior tells him to take a vacation.
Me: "We're priests! We don't believe in the devil!"
*sigh*
I have this semi-inchoate idea about the secularization of the Catholic leadership in the wake of Vatican II (and in the first movie, Rod Steiger is identified as a "modern priest"), mostly fueled by things I've read over at Ann Barnhardt's place, so the idea of priests being skeptical about the existence of satanic forces does not strike me as entirely weird. Of course, the plot of the story required that the priest not get any help from the Church as the horrifying evil drags him down, but because of my prior readings it does have the ring of truth to it. (Of course, the first one was supposedly based on a real story. Not sure how much of that I believe, though.)
In any case, we're watching every one of them in order, except ones that require we buy rather than rent.
Which brings me to the "marvelous technology" part: Mrs. Fungus observed that we didn't need to go out to rent these movies; all we needed to do was to push buttons on the remote control. Several of them cost nothing to watch but what we're already paying for the service.
On-demand video is amazing stuff.
* * *
The other amazing thing about modern technology is that when I couldn't sleep last night, I sat at the computer and fiddled around, as always; but before heading off to bed I did some job-hunting, all from the comfort of my home office. I applied for three or four jobs at two AM, for crying out loud.
That's a damn sight nicer than how it was years ago. When I was starting my career, you had to buy a newspaper and pore over the want ads to find job leads, then get all gussied up and go to the place and fill out an application. If you were lucky they'd interview you on the spot; otherwise you'd have to get gussied up again for the interview.
For more professional positions, you'd mail--paper in an envelope with stamps on it--them a cover letter with a copy of your resume. I find it kind of hard to believe now, but I actually hunted for jobs this way myself.
I think it's important to keep in mind how much the Internet has changed how we do things, and to remember how inconvenient some things were before we had it.