Burnt Offerings | Karen Black, Oliver Reed | One of the top three haunted house films!!

Burnt Offerings | Karen Black, Oliver Reed | not a ripoff of the shining as others have said

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Burnt Offerings

	Burnt Offerings Karen Black, Oliver Reed MGM (Video & DVD), 2003 average customer review:based on 137 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A family of vacationers rents a sprawling mansion for the summer and soon discovers that all is not as it should be. Among other equally strange things dead plants come back to life and the swimming pool kills bathers.System Requirements:Starring: Oliver Reed Karen Black Bette Davis Burgess Meredith Directed By: Dan Curtis Running Time: 114 Min. Color Copyright 2003 MGM Studios.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: PG UPC: 027616888518 Manufacturer No: 1004824

One of the top three haunted house films!!

I have watched almost every haunted house film out there. My favorites in no particular order are The Innocents (1961), The Changeling (1980) and this one, Burnt Offerings (1976). The more recent The Others (2001) with Nicole Kidman is definitely worth mentioning, and I have that one in my collection as well. A lot of people say Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) is the best haunted house film out there however I disagree. I didn't find The Haunting all that scary or engrossing at all. It's not bad, but just not my favorite or what I consider to be the best. I really enjoyed the story, performances, atmosphere and as the Amazon reviewer stated, the soft-focus photography in Burnt Offerings. And of course, I have to love that Bette Davis is featurned as Aunt Elizabeth. Also recommended is the 1989 TV-movie ghost story, The Woman in Black.

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not a ripoff of the shining as others have said

i read in here that some people see this as a ripoff of the shining. let me first off state this there is no way this could be a ripoff of it. the original book was written in 1973 and the movie was released in 1976. the shining was written in 1977, and the movie was made in 1980. i think some people may want to get their facts straight before trying to accuse a movie of being a "ripoff" of another.

now as for the movie, do i think it was the cinematic genius of the latter? no not as much, but wasnt as horrible as it is being stated, its a great old creepy movie. i bought it and enjoyed it very much, it does belong in the classic section of my collection. i definately will be watching it. bette davis and burgess meridith give it that kind of old kooky people parts in it which makes it enjoyable.

but this is only this reporters opinion...

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Burnt Offerings - Good haunted house flick

Burnt Offerings was a good haunted house movie that I feel deserves four stars. I think this was a genuinely good haunted house movie which used only a minimum of special effects. While it did not live up to the great plot of the book, this film presented a good plot, nice character development, and fine performances from some of my favorite character actors (Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Bette Davis, Burgess Meredith, and Eileen Heckart).

The DVD is only a "good" transfer and for some reason I have found that all VHS and DVD transfers of this film are troubled by excessively soft focus, lack of contrast and color problems. However, it is not a terrible transfer and if you enjoyed the film you will like watching this DVD. The idea of an old house feeding off the life energy of occupants was not entirely new, but the literal and visual interpretation of this idea was pulled off very nicely.

I was already familiar with the book and loved it when one night during the summer of 76 I noticed while driving home late one Sunday night that the film had unexpectedly opened at a local Connecticut theater. My wife agreed to see it right then and there without even returning home after our long drive from NY. We both loved the flick and enjoyed this ententaining movie and the acting of Oliver Reed and Burgess Meredith, two of our favorite actors. I remember that my wife couldn't watch the scenes which featured that strange chauffer and found those particular sequences very frightening. Again, here was a fine horror movie which didn't need screen violence or explicit gore to be effective.

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Nasty old house, yummy Oliver Reed = Dark Shadows Lite!

While I was a huge afficianado of Dan Curtis's "Dark Shadows" as a child, somehow I must have been too interested in teenage/college boys by the time "Burnt Offerings" came out to have bothered to take in a viewing...thus, I saw this for the first time a couple weeks ago. I liked it a great deal! I must say that much of the movie's appeal had to do with my nostalgia for "Dark Shadows", because Robert Cobert's musical score (and even the music box tune) were so heavily reminiscent as to almost bring a tear to my eye. I recall a shot or two of Karen Black (Marian) looking suspiciously like a latter-day (and much crazier) Kathryn Leigh Scott (who played several lovely but weak-willed damsels in distress on Dark Shadows over the years), and have to even say that while Oliver Reed (Ben) is a sexy beast par excellance in this movie, even he had a slight Jonathan Frid thing going in a couple scenes. Ah, the days of Mom ironing Dad's shirts with my sister and I in the living room, all 3 getting the daylights literally frightened out of us by some supernatural creatures appearing on a soap opera!

Enough nostalgia for now. I love the tone of many of the '70's horror movies, that kind of psychedelic/hazy around the edges, slow, dreamy pace, and this movie does not disappoint at all from that standpoint. I was surprised (and shocked at all of you who say nothing exciting happens until 2/3 of the way thru the movie) that the father tried to drown his boy so quickly, almost from the get-go, in the first pool scene - the house was able to have a nearly immediate nasty effect upon its occupants, and that was truly startling. I found the attempts of poor Ben to be affectionate/playful with, or make love to his wife, all of which she absolutely repels due to the house's "lock" on her heart and soul, to be sinister and suitably frustrating (you just know his choice to overlook her repugnance and go whack weeds in the garden instead to be a sincere mistake, one he'll never be able to overcome as things progress). Bette Davis is marvelous as the untiring auntie who gets eaten alive by the house, and I mean sucked through a straw like so much chocolate milk. Unlike many other reviewers, I found the child actor to be significantly LESS annoying than either of the boys who play Danny in either of the adaptations of "The Shining". Kubrick's little Danny overacts to the point of ridiculousness, and the nasaly little monster used on the TV mini-series adaptation was so distracting I could barely watch - I wanted to hand him a kleenex in every scene.

But it is Karen Black and Oliver Reed who steal this movie, along with the house itself. The family breaks down, the marriage breaks down, the car almost breaks down, everyone's minds bend and twist, and still those 2 are believable as intense obsession strikes one and equally intense horror strikes the other, & still they struggle to relate as human beings (if nothing else) to one another. Heady stuff, and it's where all the magic of this movie lies.

Just one comment regarding the leering deaths-head chauffeur - truly the stuff of the grown Ben's childish nightmares, he is (to me) clearly representative of the Grim Reaper, or one of his minion, himself. As such, he ushers Ben across the line into the land of death on several occasions (initially just to VIEW the scenery, if you will), and one just wonders if his toothy, sinister grin isn't the last thing Ben sees at his end. Who wouldn't feel "welcomed" into Death by a smile that inhumanly wide?

BRAVO again for Cobert's score, Reed's perseverence, Black's utter strangeness, and Davis's rapid & queasy character descent. BRAVO for the moody, fuzzy, exotic pacing - like a nightmare you might have yourself. Loved it.

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