Ballata macabra

I'm a kid of the 70's before all the CGI special FX. And this is still an old school fav of mine. I love spooky Karen Black. I always had an affinity for large creepy houses, especially when they become one of the characters in the movie. This is another 70's slow burn in the haunted house genre that more than likely helped fuel my NIGHT TERRORS and SLEEP WALKING issues. Still holds up decent for it's age, but if your looking for a GORE FEST, move on, cause this won't fill your cup. If you like psychological Gothic style horror then check it out.

I saw Burnt Offerings at a local last run theatre in '76 when I was about 12 and it scared the hell out of me. It is a film that proves you don't need gallons of gore and cheap jump scares to be an effective horror film.

It's been a long time since I've seen it but I will never forget several key moments in the story that left a lingering effect after leaving the theatre,namely the creepy chauffeur with his dark sunglasses and a demented smile fixed on his face. Every time he appeared on screen my spine just stiffened. He speaks not a line of dialogue (at least to the best of my memory) but he is as nightmarish as any mask-wearing mad slasher. The reaction of Oliver Reed perfectly captured my own sitting that theatre. For a PG-rated film it is quite scary. It's a slow burn, building gradually as the family slowly succumbs to the evil of the house. It is never explicitly stated what the source of the evil is and is really about how it is working on each family member,especially the Oliver Reed character. There is one particular scene (I will not spoil it here) involving Reed, his mother played by Bette Davis, and the chauffeur that had me clutching the arm rest of my chair. It is a film that should be rediscovered by horror fans. It might lack all the tropes of modern horror films but it is all for the better. Be patient and let the story unfold and adjust to the pace....it is worth the effort.

Talky, but unusual and creepy haunted house movie concerns an ordinary family from the city who rent a country estate for the summer--at a suspiciously low price! A bit confusing at first, but whenever something bad happens (like the father cutting his thumb on the champagne bottle) something good immediately takes its place (the kid switching on what was previously a dead light bulb). The house absorbs the good (the sacrificial new family's spirit and energy) while its inhabitants wither away, physically or mentally. Bette Davis' Aunt Elizabeth ages suddenly (with frighteningly effective make-up), and Anthony James as the chauffeur who haunts Oliver Reed's head is a scary, freaky presence. Karen Black is even odder than usual: I'm not certain whether her not-quite-there expression is what was intended for the role of Marion, but she does something very gutsy for an actress, making herself into a gargoyle (only in her final scene does she overdo it). Superior to the source novel by Robert Marasco, "Burnt Offerings" (the title taken from a biblical reference) is a well-directed slice of the macabre. *** from ****

Burnt Offerings came along with other late 70s slow burn creepers like The Hearse and The Changeling. It has the slimmest of plots being like an early blueprint for The Shining. It crawls along at a snail's pace with very little happening besides episodic slices of marital strain under the guise of the evil house that possesses and ultimately eats people. Filmed through pantihose, this is one of those hazy deals that must have been created to provide a surreal, dreamlike effect but I dunno.... Bette is sort of wasted, Oliver makes it a vanity project and comes through exceedingly well and Karen is of course superb and losing her mind. Your patience will reward you make no mistake, as it is the last third of this movie where it really swings into top gear and will get under your skin. Slow burn indeed. Oh and last but not least, that smiley chauffeur....

It may sound like a round of toast gone wrong but it's actually a religious term: a "burnt offering" occurs when an animal is incinerated on an altar as a sacrifice. The consumption is absolute – soul and all – which may give a clue as to where this 1976 gem, written and directed by horror veteran Dan Curtis, will ultimately go.

Marian (Karen Black) and Ben (Oliver Reed), along with their son Davey (Lee H. Montgomery) and Aunt Elizabeth (Bette Davis) move to a rundown California mansion for the summer. The landlords are creepy siblings whose reclusive mother, Mrs Allardyce, is locked in an upstairs room. For a knock-down rent, the incoming family need only take care of the building and leave a tray of food each day for the mad woman in the attic.

The tenants move in and initially enjoy the peace and majesty of the great old house. But tempers quickly flare. Ben becomes uncommonly angry; Marian increasingly obsesses about the unseen Mrs Allardyce; and Elizabeth falls prey to a terrible manic illness. Is Mrs Allardyce the cause of all these tensions? Or could it be the house itself, which seems to bloom into life as its inhabitants succumb to mutually assured destruction?

For fans of The Haunting (the Robert Wise version, obviously) and The Shining, this is a must-see psychological horror which has been relatively "overlooked" (Shining joke). In a way, Burnt Offerings is a relic from a time where scares were more understated whilst, paradoxically, performances were more melodramatic. It doesn't parody these genre aspects in the way that Kubrick's monolithic milestone would do four years later, but instead plays everything straight. Which is why it seems such an oddity, coming at a mid-70s moment after the dawn of the new allegorical horror of Romero, Hooper, and Craven and before the seedy/gory horror heyday of the 1980s. It's more like The Exorcist, pagan style.

The film relies principally on atmosphere and gradually growing sense of menace and madness. For the first two thirds it's impossible to tell where the insanity lies. Is it in Marian, with her discomforting interest in Mrs Allardyce? Or Ben, whose visions of his mother's hearse are pushing him to hysteria, manifesting as rage? The dynamics work not only thanks to strong lead performances, but because Curtis takes time and care to portray a functioning family, comfortable with each other's foibles; so when the fractures appear, it's genuinely disturbing. When the playful, protective Ben starts wrestling his son in the pool to the point of drowning, it's not only intense but feels terribly wrong. Moreover, the dialogue throughout is well written, so when the silliness kicks in we take it seriously.

Support-wise, Anthony James – a know-his-face actor who played many a memorable creep – rocks up occasionally to smile sinisterly, and there's a supremely creepy cameo from Burgess "Penguin" Meredith, playing Mrs Allardyce's son, who watches Davey playing from the window whilst practically dribbling.

The framing, lighting, and production design is top-notch, and the editing is meaningful. This is a work of poise and control; and these qualities are consistent all the way to the final Hitchcockian scene, which is scary in spite of being, by that point, predictable. Burnt Offerings is a slow, stately, dense psychological horror, low on gore and obvious shocks – and all the more impactful for it.