31 Films for Halloween, #20: Burnt Offerings (1976)

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Was yesterday's film, Popcorn, too much fun for you?

Today's film, Burnt Offerings, is here to fix that for you. It's the least "fun" you can imagine.

It's just a essentially house story. But there are no ghosts, really, in the house; it is the house itself that is doing the haunting.  A pair of elderly siblings rent out their large, elegant but decrepit mansion to a family of four who have rented it sight unseen (because that's a thing that happens in old movies).

In fact. the Dunsmuir Hellman Historic Estate. currently far from decrepit.

Although the renters have an ameliorative effect on the house, which seems to be sprucing up under their stewardship, the house has a deleterious effect on the renters.

Which is not easy when one of them is Bette Davis.

As the summer goes on, the house has increasingly negative affects on the bodies and souls of the renters. The aunt becomes weak, the mother obsessive, and the father choleric.

Well, it's Oliver Reed, so perhaps
"MORE choleric" would be more accurate.

And the annoying child becomes--nah, he's just consistently annoying.

It also has this guy. Nobody real knows what his deal is, but his job is to creep you out.

Eventually, the elderly siblings return to the house and there's good new: the house is a great shape!

If Burgess Meredith is a movie, you may enjoy the movie, it may be a good movie, but it will not be a FUN movie.

Burnt Offerings is tense and subtly terrifying and weird in the way that only '70s movies are.  Even though it's been 40 years since I first saw, it still disquiets me to think about it.  Of all the films in this month's list, it may be the one that stays you the most.


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