Burnt Offerings (1976)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Be ready for a creepy thriller that moves a little slow, but the atmosphere will drag you in to stay. Marian (Karen Black) and Ben (Oliver Reed) Rolf are on vacation with their son and Ben's aged Aunt Elizabeth (Bette Davis) and decide to rent a Victorian Mansion in California. The vacation turns weird rather quickly; dead plants come back to life and an ill kept swimming pool becomes vibrant seeming like a trap of some kind. This strange and odd activity seems to be caused by the owners of the estate, siblings Arnold Allardyce (Burgess Meredith) and his sister Roz (Eileen Heckart). The house is definitely haunted to a certain degree and seems to be regenerating to the pulses of the injuries of the occupants. Mystery behind locked doors and past memories cause some grave concern. The story line moves rather slow and out of date, but there are times of outright funniness.Veteran actress Davis was pretty well wasted of her talent. And there are several close ups of Ms. Black that you'll never be able to un-see! Also in the cast: Lee Montgomery, Dub Taylor, Orin Cannon and Anthony James.

After watching this at night which was a very bad idea, it was absolutely frightening and gripping. I swear, I couldn't sleep til 4am in the morning, the movie would seriously mess up your mind and Im not joking here! I was really shocked that Karen Blacks character as the mother in the end, became the old lady of the house. How was that even possible?! She was outside the room the whole time and I honestly was stunned. I still have my mouth open because like, I didn't expect that the ending was going to have twists and turns! I was even surprised that Reed's character jumped out the window and Montgomery as the son, was killed by the house falling on top of him! I really would've loved to have seen what Black as the old lady had in common with the two house owners who the brother & sister. I honestly wish the movie was longer, I just think it would be so interesting to find out what happened next.This film is too underrated, it should've deserved a lot of awards, it is just brilliant especially with Bette Davis as the grandaunt!

Stanley Kubrick writes a letter to Dan Curtis after watching Burnt Offerings: Dear Dan,I caught Burnt Offerings at a screening recently. It is such an impressive film, so unlike some of the loud, unremarkable and tasteless horror movies that are released every week. As you might know, I am about to start work on The Shining which is based on the Stephen King novel. King has admitted to borrowing some of the plot ideas from the novel on which Burnt Offerings was based.You were fortunate to assemble the cast you had. Oliver Reed was intensely brilliant and Karen Black was the perfect foil as his bimboish wife. Some of the exchanges between them, although meant to be serious were quite amusing. I have quite a few ideas for the exchanges between my lead pair in The Shining that I have come up with after watching your movie. If I may say so, I have a superior cast in Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall.Alas, Betty Davis was almost unrecognizable.The swimming pool scene was genuinely scary. Did you use a wave machine to create the waves? You could have done a lot more with it. I wish I had a swimming pool scene for The Shining.I also liked the way you shot the Victorian house. That table with those symmetrically arranged photographs was a fine show piece. A few more scenes in the city would have helped establish the isolation of the house occupied by the family. There was also not much of a background to the husband-wife relationship.Oliver Reed's dream sequences deserve special mention.I fear that the plots of our movies are extremely similar and my film might be compared to yours. I intend to work harder on my film.Best Regards,Stanley.

Now I was never a fan of this house making people going crazy theme and I couldn't understand why. I thought yeah maybe it's just not my cup of tea. I saw "Rose Red", "The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer", "The Shining (1980)", both of "The Amityville Horror" movies. Except for Amityville Horror remake I found them all pretty forgettable. The idea of each of this movies behind it was good but the execution was seemingly more focused on visuals and putting in a lot of stuff that didn't really was important to the story. Well I now understand why those movies really didn't do it for me as I now have watched the movie who used the theme in an effective way without needing to stoop to stunning visuals nor putting in stuff that really isn't important for the story. Even though I could predict a lot of things (the pictures on the closet were not family members but previous "victims" of the house, the old lady was not a lady of flesh and blood, I knew Marian was slowly taking over the old lady's role and I knew that was going to be her in the chair when her husband came to check on the old lady). Still I couldn't have predicted it all without seeing movies using a similar theme so I really am not going to downgrade the movie for that.I was thinking about Psycho too when watching this movie, but in the end it was pretty much different. Actually liked this one much more than Psycho. Simple but effective. The only thing is the duration, could have been shorter. Karen Black and Oliver Reed are splendid in their roles, and even though not so much to do Bette Davis is always an asset to a movie. Weird to see her as normal and not the crazy person I'm used to. Had I never seen a similar movie before I would probably rate it a 9/10, now I would go for 7,5/10. So for all the ones not having seen this and loving one or more of the movies I mentioned in the first paragraph, I would recommend to also watch and (hopefully) give some credit to "Burnt Offerings". I dunno if Burnt Offerings story came first or The Shining but Burnt Offerings movie was first and for me a case of OK this one put the idea to good use so for me no need to use later movies who don't do it as well.