Burnt Offerings (1976)

Title: Burnt Offerings (1976)

Director: Dan Curtis

Cast: Oliver Reed, Karen Black, Bette Davis, Burgess Meredith,

Review:

While watching Burnt Offerings, I couldn’t help noticing the similarities with a few horror films that came before and after it and how influential this film was in the horror world. Burnt Offerings is a horror film that was made with the intention of making a horror film that gave a lot of importance to characterization, Dan Curtis, this films director (and genre veteran) set out to make a film entirely carried by performances. I thought it was interesting how it is a supernatural thriller yet it never once uses visual effects, supernatural beings and ghosts are invisible to our eyes, but you definitely get the vibe that they are there. In this sense it reminded me of Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963) because we never really see a ghost or anything, the dread all comes from our imaginations and the mood set by the filmmakers and actors.

 In Burnt Offerings we meet the Rolf family, a family that’s looking forward to a beautiful summer vacation in the country. You see the Rolf’s have rented a mansion for the summer and apparently, it’s a real steal! For a mere 900$ they can have the house all to themselves for the whole summer! But of course there’s just one small catch: they have to take care of an old lady that lives alone in one of the rooms in the house. According to the owners of the house, they won’t even know she is there. All they have to do is take a tray of food up to her once a day. That’s it. And that they do. I guess they figure that for that price, and this house, taking food to an old lady really isn’t much of a sacrifice. Problem is that once they settle in, they realize that something is awfully wrong with this house. Small incidents begin to occur that start pulling the family apart. Is some evil invisible force making all these bad things happen? Why is everyone in such a dreadful mood all the time?

 So this is the kind of film in which a home is given human traits, characters talk about the house being “evil”, same way characters talked about the house in Wise’s The Haunting. In fact, same as The Haunting, characters get obsessed with the house, they want to be in it all the time, stay in it, characters get the feeling that this house is their destiny. Or is it? So the film that Burnt Offerings is most similar to is Wise’s The Haunting. It has that same ‘evil house’ vibe going for it, we never see any ghosts or evil spirits but the negative vibes let us know they are there. Sometimes it feels as if The Haunting was the blue print for every other haunted house film ever made. But Burnt Offerings isn’t built on influences alone, Burnt Offerings itself served as inspiration for films that came after it. For example, I also think that Burnt Offering’s influenced The Amityville Horror (1979) with this idea of having a haunted house destroy the family unit by having little evil incidents happen that pull them apart.

 I also caught similarities with Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm (1979). You see, in Burnt Offerings Oliver Reed’s character has these recurrent hallucinations and dreams of a hearse driving up to the house, and a mysterious, tall, skinny undertaker carrying a coffin around. Immediately I thought of the infamous ‘Tall Man’ from the Phantasm films. But the similarities don’t stop there, this film was actually filmed in the same mansion that they shot Phantasm! So on Burnt Offerings you will get these weird flashbacks of the ‘Morning Side Mortuary’ seen in Phantasm. One scene has the woods coming alive and attacking Oliver Reed same as in the Evil Dead films! So yeah, I would definitely say that Burnt Offerings was a very influential film, obviously it made quite an impression on a good deal of filmmakers.

 But is it a good horror film? Well, yeah, but only if you can take extremely slow paced movies. I myself enjoy a good slow burner, but I recognize many viewers will probably end up thinking that this movie is just too slow and that “nothing happens”. But that’s only because this is a film that focuses more on characterization than on special effects. The strength of this film lies on its cast, I mean I always considered Oliver Reed to be such a solid actor, he really adds weight to his performances, always bringing that special brand of Oliver Reed intensity to his characters. Karen Black is on this one and she was the scream queen of her day, in fact, to this day she still appears in horror films. If you guys remember, a couple of years ago she played Mother Firefly in Rob Zombie’s House of a 1000 Corpses (2003), so horror is in this actress’s blood! She’d worked with director Dan Curtis before in Trilogy of Terror (1975), a film that got her some big time recognition especially when we consider that she played four characters in that film! Burnt Offerings reunited her with director Dan Curtis and it was a successful reunion in my opinion, once again Mrs. Black gets the juiciest role in the film. Interesting tid bit of info: Karen Black was four months pregnant while filming Burnt Offerings. At times you can notice her belly in some shots, but most of the time they hid it with wardrobe tricks. Even curiouser: she ended up acting in Tobe Hooper’s Invaders from Mars (1986) with the baby that was in her belly while filming Burnt Offerings! That’s right, she ended up making a horror film with her own son!  

 Another plus on this films cast is veteran actress Bette Davis who plays the grandmother. Horror fans might remember her from such horror classics as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and The Nanny (1965). Burnt Offerings plays a lot with themes of being old and having to accept the fact that age is taking its toll and that time does not pass in vain. Davis has a wonderful moment where she begins to doubt her sanity and starts asking “I wouldn’t forget something like that now would I?” It made me think about how we are all going to be in that position someday, loosing our marbles, scared of the fact that death is literally knocking at our door. And speaking of death knocking at the door, the film has a wonderfully poetic moment dealing with that phrase. And another old timer that adds to the film is Burgess Meredith’s performance as ‘Brother’, one of the owners of the mysterious house. I wasn’t aware of it, but Bergess Meredith appeared as a creepy old man in a couple of horror films, last I saw him was in The Sentinel (1977), which I reviewed a couple of days ago. On Burnt Offerings he is the owner of the house, and he knows exactly what he is getting these new tenants into. A strange and eerie sort of vibe comes from his performance, quite effective.

Bette Davis (front) and Karen Black

 So, all in all, this was a creepy haunted house flick. It’s not as exciting as others I have seen, but still quite good. If you don’t go in expecting to see lot of special effects or anything and if you go in knowing that it’s a slow burner relying on characterization more than anything, you should find yourself enjoying a creepy haunted house flick. This one comes to us from director Dan Curtis a genre veteran who was responsible for many a horror flick. He was the guy behind a lot of episodes from the vampire soap opera ‘Dark Shadows’ that ran during the 70’s and a couple of successful made for television horror films like the aforementioned Trilogy of Terror and it’s sequel Trilogy of Terror II (1996). Obviously, this was a director who enjoyed the good ole horror anthology film! He directed quite a few of these in his day, another memorable one is Dead of Night (1977), which I will be reviewing soon. Curtis was the kind of director who loved old school troupes like cobwebs, giant grandfather clocks sounding off at midnight, old dark houses and stormy nights. He brought all this horror movie knowledge and love to his films, Burnt Offerings being one f them. If you like old school, slow burners with solid performances and characterizations, Burnt Offerings is the haunted house film for you. Stick all the way to the end for a shocker of an ending!

Rating: 3 ½ out of 5    

Poster in spanish. The title translates to 'Diabolical Nightmare'

The Sentinel (1977)

Title: The Sentinel (1977)

Director: Michael Winner

Cast: Chris Sarandon, Cristina Raines, Burgess Meredith, Eli Wallach, Ava Gardner, Jose Ferrer, Beverly D’Angelo, Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum

Review:

In Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead (1981) the suicide of a priest causes the doors of hell to burst open. After that, ghosts/zombies are set loose upon the world and the undead begin to walk the streets, people barf up their innards and maggots fall from the sky. But that’s the Lucio Fulci version of the gates of hell opening. Now that I’ve seen Michael Winner’s The Sentinel, I can see where Fulci might have gotten the idea for his City of the Living Dead, in fact, I’m sure Fulci was inspired by The Sentinel. Both films have lots of similarities in terms of plot, images and situations. This wouldn’t surprise me, since Italians were particularly well known for ripping off American horror films and making lower budgeted versions of them.

 In The Sentinel, we meet Allison Parker a young model living and working in New York City. She’s thinking about marrying her fiancé, Michael Lerman (Chris Sarandon) but she still hasn’t given him the proverbial “yes”. Instead, she wants to find her own apartment and be an independent person; just to prove to herself that she can survive on her own in this big bad world. And find her own apartment she does; It’s in a beautiful building right smack in the middle of Brooklyn, New York. According to the landlady, Allison along with an old blind priest that lives in the fifth floor will be the only ones living in the apartment building. But is that the truth? Allison hears strange noises in the middle of the night and meets a bunch of weird neighbors. Could there be something more to this apartment building then meets the eye? And why is that blind priest always sitting by his apartment window staring at nothing?  

 So yeah, the similarities between this film and Fulci’s City of the Living Dead are pretty obvious. Girl moves into a new apartment, turns out it’s the gateway into hell. She starts seeing all manner of strange supernatural events. Suicide figures into the plot, as do blind girls. The only thing is that Fulci being Fulci, well he’s take on the “Gates of Hell” theme is way more graphic, and gory and over all, pretty freaking nasty. After all it’s not in every film you get to see a beautiful young girl barfing up her intestines. But such is the nature of a Fulci flick, always aiming to shock you. The Sentinel is a much more cerebral and moody film. It doesn’t aim for cheap shocks, or to gross you out with its graphic nature. Instead, it wants to creep you out with its atmosphere. The Sentinel is disturbing on a whole other level that City of the Living Dead (a.k.a. The Gates of Hell) isn’t. This difference between films with similar premise shows us just how much of a difference on a film a director can make. With these two films we have a similar premise, but two completely different films in terms of mood. Give a movie like this to Mr. Fulci and you get a maggot storm. Give it to Winner and you get human oddities as demons.

 If I had to compare The Sentinel to another horror film in terms of mood and atmosphere, it would be with Rosemary’s Baby (1968), the biggest influence on The Sentinel if you ask me. The Sentinel was made in the late 70’s the day and age of the supernatural horror film. Because of the resounding success of The Exorcist (1973), horror films dealing with the supernatural where the order of the day for Hollywood. So films like The Omen (1976), The Amityville Horror (1979) and The Changeling (1980) were getting made left and right. But in my opinion it was Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby that influenced The Sentinel the most. We have a female protagonist, who is not really right in her head. The film is all about a girl moving into a new apartment, in New York City. She is hounded by a bunch of weirdo neighbors, who may or may not have an evil purpose for her. No one is to be trusted, and just like in many Roman Polanski films, paranoia reigns supreme. The similarities with Rosemary’s Baby are all over the place with this film.

With it's evil old people, The Sentinel was obviously influenced by Rosemary's Baby!

Same as in many supernatural themed horror films, the Catholic Church is the one with all the answers and the powers to stop the evil. And yet again I notice how much these films are used to propagate the idea of Christian faith onto the masses. And once again this is a film in which an unbeliever is taught a lesson and made to pay for her sins. In one moment of The Sentinel the main character actually goes into a church to ask for forgiveness for having renounced Jesus Christ, you see, she’s been experiencing a lot of spooky shit and so she wants to be on Gods side, just in case. This is yet another film which brings Catholic fantasies to life. And a big fat fantasy it is, I mean the gates of hell are on the top floor of an apartment building in Brooklyn! The blind priest who lives in the top floor is supposed to be the guardian of these gates, unfortunately he doesn’t do a very good job at it because demons keep getting out and harassing poor Allison. Characters in this film talk about paying for their sins for all eternity and what not, so yeah, this one is all about Catholic guilt, and Catholic beliefs.

 But I will give this to The Sentinel, it does have some truly disturbing imagery in it. On this film, demons harass Allison, the dead visit her in the middle of the night and she has these weird dreams. And it’s the way that these undead entities are portrayed in the film that brings forth the disturbing and unsettling nature of The Sentinel. Director Michael Winner thought it would be a good idea to use real deformed people to portray the demons. So suddenly, whenever demons appear in the film we are treated to an avalanche of fat, old, deformed, handicapped, human beings.  This isn’t the first time that a film director uses human oddities for a horror film. Other examples of this can be found in Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre (1989); actually, any Jodorowsky film can be mentioned here because that’s something Jodorowsky always relied on for his films: the use of human oddities to bring forth a feeling of unease. The use of human oddities on The Sentinel cause some controversy when the film was first released. Is this exploitative? Should it be allowed in films? Is it wrong to use these kind of people in films? Is it ethical?

 Sexuality is also used as a means to convey ‘evil’. For example, amongst some of Allison’s freaky neighbors there is a pair of lesbians. When Allison asks them what it is that they do for a living one of them replies “we fondle each other”. Then Beverly D’Angelo’s character begins to masturbate in front of Allison, in what is without a doubt one of the most awkward moments in the film. A lot of the ghosts appear naked through out the film; in fact, at the crux of the film is a scene in which Allison catches her father in an orgy! So sticking pretty close to Catholic beliefs, sexuality is demonized on this film.

 Finally, something has to be said about the films cast. It’s interesting that the film is filled with so many good actors in extremely small roles. Some of the cast members were not particularly well known at the time, but they were going to be. Bit parts in this film were performed by the likes of Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum and Beverly D’Angelo; all unknowns at the time. The film also has bit parts for famous old actors like Ava Gardner, Jose Ferrer and Burgess Meredith, by the way Burgess Meredith always plays these nice old dudes in his films. I mean, I always remember him as Rocky Balboa's father like figure 'Micky' from the Rocky movies, but on The Sentinel he is this weird old man, he was obviously going for something against the type of characters he was used to playing all the time. We also get Chris Sarandon playing Allison’s boyfriend, I mean, we have a star studded cast for this old school spooky film. And old school it is; The Sentinel has a classic vibe going for it, it is not a film that relies on visual effects or cheap looking ghosts, the emphasis on this one is mood and atmosphere. And I must say that it achieves a spooky, unsettling atmosphere quite effectively. With The Sentinel, you get the feeling that something is not quite right, that there is evil in the air. The Sentinel is one of these ultra-serious horror films from the 70’s; the kind of horror film they don’t make anymore.

Rating: 4 out of 5