Burnt Offerings (1976)

It had a lot of potential., 26 April 2005

A family finds a nice, big, old house at a reasonable rate to rent for the Summer. The only catch is that they must take care of the old lady who lives upstairs. The house is great and the "catch" seems simple enough so the family soon moves in. It's not long, however, until strange things start happening. The father (Oliver Reed) begins having nightmares while awake about traumatic events from his childhood. The aunt (Bette Davis) gets very sick and has trouble leaving her bed. And the mother (Karen Black) disappears into the old lady's quarters for hours on end. And this is only the start of the families problems. Soon, it becomes apparent that the house is alive and will not let any of them leave.

One problem with the movie is the direction. Burnt Offerings was directed by Dan Curtis. If you're not familiar with Curtis, his primary claim to fame is the 1960s horror soap opera, Dark Shadows. Like other movies he made, Burnt Offerings looks like a television movie. He appears to have had a lot of problems transitioning to the big screen. Special effects, camera positioning, and action are similar to what you could see on television in 1976.

Speaking of cameras and special effects, I'll never understand why someone would so frequently use a gel lens as Curtis does here. It's like watching a movie through Vaseline. After a while, my eyes started hurting from having to try so hard to focus.

But the biggest problem I had with the film was the story. It is so predictable. Once the family moved into the house, it took literally 15 minutes to figure out what was going to happen. If you can't see that Karen Black's character is going to be possessed or if you don't realize that there is no old woman, you must live in a cave and never watch movies. I've never seen such a transparent plot where the ending was so telegraphed from the beginning.

The acting makes up for a lot of the shortcomings in the movie. Oliver Reed is good in almost everything I've seen him in. He has to be one of my all-time favorites. Karen Black does a reasonable job of portraying a woman slowly being possessed. And, while I was ready to hate Bette Davis in the movie, I found her character the most fun and energetic in the whole film. Not bad for a woman who was 68 when the movie was made.

6/10