While mostly overlooked now, the horror film Burnt Offerings, directed by Dan Curtis, won six awards in 1977, the year following its October release. The movie doesn’t rely on jump startles as much as on a pervasive mood of menace. Its pace is leisurely, fitting for its summertime setting, as it slowly builds to the real horror near the end. While it isn’t the best haunted house movie ever made, it embraces some sophisticated concepts that draw from religious tropes. The very title, borrowed from its eponymous 1973 novel by Robert Marasco, suggests as much. Making a burnt offering is, by definition, a religious act.
Needing a break from city life, the Rolf family moves to a very affordably-priced mansion available for rent during the summer. Parents Marian (Karen Black) and Ben (Oliver Reed), their son David (Lee Montgomery), and Ben’s aunt Elizabeth (played by irrepressible Bette Davis) try to settle in, but strange things start happening. Keeping in mind that The Shining was still four years away, the elements of the unstable father falling apart in isolation play throughout the background in anticipation of Jack Nicholson’s famous performance, as Ben questions his sanity. And Marian loves—really loves—the house. That’s the set-up, of course. Roz (Eileen Heckart) and Arnold Allardyce (Burgess Meredith), the apparently eccentric owners, move out in the summer so the house can repair itself. The renters must include someone who truly loves the house because, in perhaps the creepiest premise of the plot, the aged Allardyce mother never leaves it. The renters must take her food up to her, but will never see her. Small price to pay for a summer away, right?
Check out the trailer for Burnt Offerings:
The film follows the book closely for the most part. Nevertheless, at the end of the movie the viewer might be left wondering about the title. There are gruesome deaths, yes, but nobody gets burnt. And that’s just where religion kicks in. More explicitly spelled out in the novel, the families that move into the house are appeasements to “Mother,” the unseen senior upstairs. Indeed, the longer the Rolf family stays, the more Marian’s obsession with the house grows. She is becoming Mother. Ignoring her family, she spends her vacation cleaning, scrubbing, and restoring a house she’s putatively paying to inhabit only for a short while. In order for this transformation to be complete, however, she must offer her family as sacrifices to the house.
Marion (Karen Black) in the greenhouse
The concept of sacrifice is inherently religious. Not unique to Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, it nevertheless defines these monotheistic religions to some extent. We know from ancient texts that the idea of burnt animal sacrifice predated all three of these traditions. It is one of the oldest forms of religious expression in the world. The idea is simple: that which humans burn in the fire cannot be of material benefit to them. The gods, or god, “consume” the animal’s wasted life, often via the smoke. Some of the earliest stories about this describe gods buzzing like flies around the sacrifice—an idea that could be productively used for a horror film! The monotheistic religions that grew out of this matrix all understood sacrifice as essential, each in its own way.
As the summer wears on, Ben suffers from the increasing distance of his wife. She won’t sleep with him, and she’s not there as he tries to drown their son David in the pool. Ben keeps seeing visions of the hearse that drove his mother away when he was just a boy. His stressed mind sees this nightmare as a premonition, and indeed, the house steps up its sinister behavior. After Ben and David reconcile following the pool incident, somehow the natural gas in David’s room comes on at night. The house repairs itself, even though he is rescued at the last minute. Then otherwise healthy Aunt Elizabeth weakens and dies unexpectedly. Ben’s premonitions come true. The house always wins.
Ben (Oliver Reed) and David (Lee Montgomery) at Aunt Elizabeth’s funeral
While not explicitly shown, religious sensibilities pervade Burnt Offerings. A closer look at the concept of offerings explains how. A number of potential offering types are described in the biblical book of Leviticus. In some instances, the donor of the sacrificial animal receives a portion back for family usage, for example. The kind of offering that was completely destroyed was the olah, the entirely burnt offering. The Greek form of this kind of sacrifice gives us our word “holocaust.” Indeed, the constant use of old photographs of the victims of the house reflects aspects of the Holocaust as Allardyce family treasures are appropriated by the new Mother, Marian. Anticipating Sophie’s Choice, Marian must decide which is more important to her: her family or her house. Once again, the house wins.
Burnt Offerings may leave viewers wondering about this religious trope it never explains. Ben dies (differing from the novel) when Marian, the new Mother, pushes him from an upper story window down onto the hood of his awaiting escape car. David is crushed under a falling chimney (again, differing from the novel). Even Robert Marasco himself was a kind of burnt offering, dying of lung cancer at 62 with several manuscripts left unfinished. In the novel, he explains that the (implied) sinful desire to withhold anything from the house must be burned from the woman who would be Mother. And here is the real horror—mothers are those who most often sacrifice for their families. In this instance, Mother must make a sacrifice of her family.
Ben (Oliver Reed) falls from the roof
Cinematographically, 1977 was dominated by Star Wars. The Exorcist, four years earlier, helped to redefine horror for the 1970s. Burnt Offerings couldn’t live up to the standard of supernatural horror that The Exorcist initiated. Then, just under a year after Burnt Offerings was released, Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror was published. With its very successful 1979 adaptation, America had a new standard for haunted house stories. Burnt Offerings was one of those horror films released between a couple of landmarks and that consequently fell between the cracks. It remains a worthy effort, however. It’s old school horror.
Like so much of horror cinema following Rosemary’s Baby in 1968, religion had settled down to roost in many parts of the genre. Movies like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Amityville Horror make the religious elements overt, but in many other films the ideas are there in much more subtle form. Burnt Offerings is one such film, and the religious element can be found only by considering the title which is never explained in the movie itself.
You can stream Burnt Offerings on Amazon:
And the novel by Robert Marasco has recently been reprinted by Valancourt Books:
Steve A. Wiggins is the author of Holy Horror: The Bible and Fear in Movies. His next book, Nightmares with the Bible: The Good Book and Cinematic Demons is due out next year with Lexington Books. He blogs at Sects and Violence in the Ancient World. He he written for Horror Homeroom previously on Midsommar, Haunting in Connecticut, and The Lighthouse.
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