Edgar Allan Pooh . . . would involved Bette Davis hacking off various people's appendages as she'd recently done in HUSH, HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE, and grilling these pieces and bits for her dinner guests. No such luck. BURNT OFFERINGS is more like that Eagles song, "Hotel California" ("You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave"). Only, in this case, it seems like the haunted Allardyce House represents Our Increasingly Decrepit America, in which the Repugs are currently overtaking Drugs, Terrorism, and Riots as our Leading Cause of Death. Bette Davis, for instance, suffers a Health Crisis during BURNT OFFERINGS and is soon shown enjoying the Benefits of TrumpCare. This involves a hearse swiftly arriving to box up Bette. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office and the American Medical Association concurred this month that TrumpCare will terminate the lives of 1.25 million U.S. citizens annually. But let's look on the Bright Side. The Repugs will have to rig another election for Red Commie KGB Chief Vlad "The Mad Russian" Putin in order for TrumpCare to top Hitler's World Record for Genocide. So sit back and savor BURNT OFFERINGS while you can, before TrumpCare chauffeurs you into an oven.

adriangr "Burnt Offerings" is a haunted house movie, not reviewed very kindly among horror fans, and it does kind of lay itself open for this by being a bit daft. Basically, a not-so happy family rent out a HUGE empty mansion for the summer, from very kindly caretakers and for next to nothing (Why is it so cheap? What's the catch? Oh please...). Soon, they are turning on each other and terrible things are afoot. Will they escape alive?I won't reveal the secret of the house in Burnt Offerings, just in case a handful of people wish to find it out first hand, but be aware that the title is completely meaningless! What you should know in advance, though, is that Karen Black, Oliver Reed and Bette Davis (plus small boy) have to be the most unlikely family unit ever in existence - they are all nothing like each other. I know this is supposed to be a dysfunctional family, but there isn't an ounce of screen magic between any of them, they all act like they are not even on the same screens as each other, let alone in the same film. Without this important chemistry, you may find you don't have the slightest interest in the fate of this unlikeable bunch, as none of the characters are even particularly nice people: Black is a whiney drudge, Reed is a thug, and Bette Davis plays almost no important part at all.Apart from the quite picturesque looking house at the centre of all the trouble, there isn't really a lot of on screen excitement to get carried away with either. There are very few shock or horror scenes, and the very low level of evil atmosphere marks this down as more of a "made-for-TV" chiller rather than the big budget theatrical release it is supposed to be. Mind you it was created by TV veteran Dan Curtis, who has a very impressive TV success legacy to his name, but maybe that is exactly what seems to be keeping it rooted in this understated territory. Now I can enjoy a low key thriller, but with all the rather grand presentation, I felt let down that nothing really dazzling ever actually happened.There are however, some good moments. All the characters seem to be menaced in ways that seem tailor made to prey on their personal fears (Reed's visions are of a creepy hearse driver which actives painful memories of his mother's death). This personal manipulation is a nice idea, but it's not new, as characters being preyed on by something that "knows what scares you the most" is an old horror staple, already used a decade earlier in "The Haunting", a film which this movie often draws comparisons with. Still, some of it works. Reed has one good scene when he appears driven to quite roughly (and realistically) drown the young son in the swimming pool - I wondered for a moment whether the boy's struggles were actually acting or not! Black's fate is a bit more whimsical, she appears to drift into reveries that connect with the former residents of the house and ends up moping over old photos and spending all day in the attic. And as mentioned, Bette Davis has an insult of a role that simply sees her fall prone to some degenerative affliction and become bed-ridden and unintelligible.The main problem (and it's one that the film is not alone in), is that there is no reason why these people don't just pack up their stuff and leave. The script still gives us all the various excuses, but surely when lives are very obviously at risk, they would just get out? And when they finally do manage this, the script STILL engineers a way to get them to follow each other back inside, i.e. "She's been gone too long, I'll just go back inside too and check on her...arghhh!"...Groan!Sorry, it's just not exciting or horrifying enough to satisfy horror or haunted house fans. The house is elegant rather than creepy, and the scares are thinly served. Watch it only if bored, or if any of the cast are favourite actors of yours.

PimpinAinttEasy 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.

Johan Louwet 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.