Burnt Offerings: Not a Good Movie

Burnt Offerings was really scary on cable in the 1970s. Last night on DVD, not so much. Unless you count Burgess Meredith’s scenery chewing turn as the brother in the brother-sister pair of haunted house owning maniacs. Or Bette Davis flailing about, chewing the scenery and, no doubt, cursing her agent under her breath.

It does have scream queen Karen Black, scenes of Oliver Reed shirtless and gardening with reckless abandon, and creepy iconic funeral flashback scenes featuring character actor icon Anthony James. But it’s also got a lot of bad writing, overwrought scoring, and blurry cinematography. And, not unlike Jack Nicholson in Kubrick’s verson of the Shining, which bears some similiarities, Karen Black’s character seems batshit insane right out of the gate. Thus, the “slow” descent into madness? Not so slow. The movie, on the other hand, very slow.

4 thoughts on “Burnt Offerings: Not a Good Movie

  1. Reservoir Carl

    I don’t quite comprehend your
    fascination for dreck horror
    flicks of the 70’s (unless it’s
    the forbidden fruit syndrome;
    these were the ones you weren’t
    allowed to watch as a kid. For
    me that would include “The Blob” and “Invaders from Mars”)
    Try to get hold of “Curse of the Demon” (1958) for one that
    keeps you on the edge until the
    very end. For dreck, I hold in
    reserve (for a large group)”The
    Living Corpse”, a Pakistani
    vampire flick filmed a few years after I lived over there.
    Reservoir Carl

  2. rebecca

    Well I did netflix it in the hopes it would be as campy as I remembered. I just heard about the Living Corpse receently from someone else! There’s a fine line in watchable dreck. There’s good/bad and bad/bad and the bad/bad ones just aren’t worth the time.

    This one was at least worth the time in that I was doing other things as well. And, of course, Karen Black. :-)

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