Movie Review: Burnt Offerings (1976)

Burnt Offerings (1976) is an excellent cast wasted on a mediocre movie. It stars such legends as Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Bette Davis, Burgess Meredith, and Eileen Heckart. No movie with that kind of talent behind it can be terrible. 

As this movie proves, however, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee success.

(There could be spoilers after this point so if you don’t want to know, don’t look.)

Marian and Ben Rolf are amazed at the super cheap rent siblings, Arnold and Roz Allardyce, offer to stay at their amazing house. The house really is amazing, mind. We're talking built-in-greenhouse-and-a-pool-to-boot amazing. I don't care if the house tries to eat me, I'd live there!

The Rolfs aren’t put off by the fact that there are framed photos of the house on the wall or the fact that they’ll be required to care for the Rolf’s reclusive mother who lives in the attic. Or just how fucking weird the Rolfs are. I mean, it’s Burgess Meredith. He never exactly looked stable, did he?

And at $900 for an entire summer, who could resist, no matter how weird the owners are?

So, Ben moves his wife, kid, and aunt in. It doesn’t take long for Marian to become obsessed with looking after the house and neglecting her family. Meanwhile, saucy Aunt Elizabeth falls ill and mysteriously dies. Other little accidents happen to Ben and his son, Davey (Lee Montgomery) along the way. After each accident, something around the house repairs itself so anyone who’s paying attention might be thinking that the house is feeding off the unfortunate Rolfs.

‘Cause it is.

When the family come to their senses and decide to leave, the house fights back. Totally possessed by the house at this point, Marian takes the place of the mysterious old woman in the attic, whom no one has ever seen, and the house chucks her husband out the window then proceeds to drop a chimney on their kid to get rid of them. The Allardyces return to a house that’s all shiny and new again, thanks to a healthy diet of Rolfs, and are happy to have their “mother” back in the form of Marian.

It is a clever premise. I love the idea of a place living off the lives of the people who dwell within – in contrast to the way humans suck the life out of the world around them. Nice social commentary hiding in there. (Intended or not.) But, although it has a clever premise at its heart, Burnt Offerings is just… blah.

As horror movies go, this one is seriously lacking in horror. It has no real atmosphere, and it doesn’t do much more to represent the supernatural than regrow a bunch of dead plants. The score is unremarkable, and the “twist” isn’t a twist at all. 

Like I said, it’s impossible to make a terrible film with a cast of this calibre – but it turns out you can make a so-so one.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐