Surprisingly incoherent and boring

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I saw this film as part of a trail I'm plotting through old movies, in an effort to add a spark of movie history, such as it is, to my memory pool. I liked this film quite a lot. Wasn't overly sure in the beginning, but once it was all finished I was really quite pleased with it. Some great performances. The house itself, feeding on it's inhabitants to keep itself up and running, in effect, was used to great effect, a character in it's own right. A nice, alternative approach to a ghost story. Reminded me of some films prior to it, such as Psycho (I won't say why to avoid spoiling it to curious, similarly new viewers), and a number of films that may have been somewhat influenced by it, things like The Skeleton Key. If you've seen both of those, and wonder into this movie, you might know what I mean.

Not the best film ever made (not that it was meant to be), but Oliver Reed was very good, Karen Black was a bit strange ....But the Chauffeur took the whole film to a creepy level beyond creepy.I remember seeing this when I was quite young, and that chauffeur caused endless nightmares.Certainly worth a watch for the whole atmosphere.

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.

Burnt Offerings is a pretty typical haunted house flick- albeit one where the supernatural manifests itself in a wholly psychologically way.When a young couple & their son are offered an incredible deal, renting an old isolated mansion that comes fully furnished...they simply can't pass it up. There is only one caveat: that an old woman- whom they never see- resides in an upstairs room. She isn't a bother. But the family is required to offer her a plate of food 3 times a day.The family moves into the house with their elderly aunt...and things start off well enough. However, the wife and husband soon seem to exhibit irrational outbursts of anger. He starts to suffer from haunting nightmares; while she seems to have become extremely overly-attached to the house. All while odd incidents begin to occur at an increasingly alarming rate.Something sinister is targeting the old aunt and young boy; while the wife and husband begin to grow distant from one another. He wants to get the hell out of the house and back to their old life; while nothing can convince her that the house is worth giving up. She's adopted as her own...or so it seems, at least.Only after their aunt is killed and their son nearly dies, does the husband take it upon himself to escape...without his wife. Though he failed to realize that once you occupy this house....there is no escape. Your fate is sealed.While it is engaging, there is nothing particularly spectacular about this film. It does have some creepy moments of tension, but (until the end) they tend to manifest themselves in very subtle ways- with almost all the hauntings affecting the psychological well being of the characters.That being said, the film does wrap up with a bit of a triple twist. While two thirds does come off a bit cliché and predictable, they manage to redeem it with an ending that is both extreme and absurd.It's a long film that plods along slowly, but it's worth a watch if you are into that.Can someone please explain to me why it's called Burnt Offerings though!? Because that explanation eludes me...6 out of 10.