Burnt Offerings (1976)

[Dr Doran]

Has anyone seen this film? It's a perfect example of how scary a horror film can be without as much utterly disgusting gore as nowadays (not that I am complaining about nowadays). It's elegant. Oliver Reed, Karen Black, and the usual overacting by Burgess Meredith. Otherwise quite brilliant. A "classic" in its own quiet way.

 

[jake_fink]

Oliver Reed's face pressed through a hole in a windshield is kinda gory and seared on my memory from when I saw this on television as a kid.

It's kind of silly though, campy and funny more than scary.

Another film that is creepy and scary without any gore is The Haunting (1963) directed by Robert Wise - an up in his up and down career. Have you seen it? What did you think?

 

[kpreed]

Seen it and Karen Black always frightens me anyway (her eyes), but I feel it was a good film. I too feel most of today's films, just do not do it for me.

 

[Julian]

Burnt Offerings was written and directed by Dan Curtis, who also gave us the long-running horror soap opera "Dark Shadows" and the TV movie "Trilogy of Terror" also starring Karen Black.

(Most people remember only one of the three stories from Trilogy of Terror - the Zuni fetish doll that comes to life and chases Karen Black around her apartment with a kitchen knife.)

He also produced "The Night Stalker" and produced/directed "The Night Strangler" TV movies that introduced the character of Karl Kolchak that later got his own series "Kolchak:The Night Stalker."

Curtis also wrote, directed and/or produced about thirty other movies that spanned from horror to historical to family movies.

Sadly, he passed away last year.

 

[jake_fink]

Burnt Offerings was written and directed by Dan Curtis, who also gave us the long-running horror soap opera "Dark Shadows" and the TV movie "Trilogy of Terror" also starring Karen Black.

(Most people remember only one of the three stories from Trilogy of Terror - the Zuni fetish doll that comes to life and chases Karen Black around her apartment with a kitchen knife.)

He also produced "The Night Stalker" and produced/directed "The Night Strangler" TV movies that introduced the character of Karl Kolchak that later got his own series "Kolchak:The Night Stalker."

Curtis also wrote, directed and/or produced about thirty other movies that spanned from horror to historical to family movies.
Sadly, he passed away last year.

Including Winds of War.

His version of "horror" is always teetering on the edge of camp, if not pitching right on over and into it.

 

[Dr Doran]

That's funny, I did not read ANY of Burnt Offerings as camp except for Burgess Meredith. Otherwise I found it genuinely scary. The pale chauffeur scared me quite a bit. In fact the whole thing spooked me a great deal. If my wife saw it I know she would get scared. I suppose anything horrible can seem campy at times: the recent remake of Dawn of the Dead had a zombie birth scene that I found sickeningly unwatchable and then my brother said he found it so over the top that he thought it was funny.

 

[jake_fink]

That's funny, I did not read ANY of Burnt Offerings as camp except for Burgess Meredith. Otherwise I found it genuinely scary. The pale chauffeur scared me quite a bit. In fact the whole thing spooked me a great deal. If my wife saw it I know she would get scared. I suppose anything horrible can seem campy at times: the recent remake of Dawn of the Dead had a zombie birth scene that I found sickeningly unwatchable and then my brother said he found it so over the top that he thought it was funny.

Yeah, it is subjective. Both fear and humour depend on how we react to, among other things, surprise and the unusual. Karen Black and Oliver Reed are always just a little out there to me, but it was the house as living creature thing that Iwas really thinking about.

 

[jazzzbaby]

I own it...I remember watching it when I was a kid
and it scared the beetlejuice out of me!