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?
