An almost subtle film with a leisurely, yet creepy build this is one haunted house movie I will not forget any time soon. Starring the great Bette Davis, Oliver Reed and Karen Black, I was creeped out in a few parts! The build is definitely worth it in the end. It's become one of my favorite haunted house movies.

Quiet dislocation of the senses for a family on summer vacation. Beware mysterious old, isolated houses in the California countryside. Oliver Reed and Karen Black give good performances, with the great Bette Davis.

http://satanicpandemonium.blogspot.com/2011/11/burnt-offerings.html

Burnt Offerings moves at a slow, deliberate pace that is probably the biggest culprit in this film coming off as unremarkable IMO. The acting is good from Reed, Black, and Davis and the atmosphere seemed to work. And if you can withstand that slow, deliberate pace, then I think you will enjoy the ending as I did (even if it wasn't exactly unpredictable). Could have been a better horror film with a couple more good scenes and better pacing.

The air of dread is pervading but watching Oliver Reed, Karen Black and Bette Davis quietly tormented by a house never quite reaches the bone-chilling intensity of its contemporaries, in spite of excellent performances.

Apart from the chauffeur, who is genuinely terrifying.

this is top shelf 70s style haunted house business. spooky, weird, evil & just a wee bit campy but always keeping it pretty classy. gotta love that a movie can this weird and spooky with just about zero special effects. this baby does the whole thing by setting a mood and does it perfectly. the fact that in 1976 this came out with a PG rating blows my mind. the poor child character in this movie is non stop tortured by his spooked out family!!
this is on netflix streaming and if you haven't watched it yet, do it soon.

Oliver Reed is great, and there are one or two decent scenes, but overall this is mediocre at best. Good for a few laughs!

after another watch this doesn't seem nearly as special, but still a fairly enjoyable pre-Shining Shining for fans of The Shining.

Reed is great in it, and the last few scenes are super tense

Final week of the Karen Blackathon. Great film that pre-dates Kubrick's THE SHINING in theme. Written by Mr. Dark Shadow's himself Dan Curtis. Features big performances by Karen Black, Oliver Reed and Bette Davis. Remember seeing this for the first time back in the mid '90s when Joe Bob Briggs showed it on TNT Monstervision.

Burnt Offerings really didn’t do much for me. It came across as The Shining lite and was just a pretty dull watch. It’s very slow moving and never really has any scares or atmosphere at all. The performances are all really good and I particularly enjoyed watching Betty Davis as the aunt. The ending is ok too and is the only time the film comes across as creepy. Otherwise I found nothing of worth here.

Not a fan of Karen Black, but she's actually excellent in this (given the material). Everything else is arch nonesense. At least Burgess Meredith appears to be in on the joke...

Moments of real tension and darkness get lost in a film that is painfully overlong and a simple story that feels somehow over complicated by difficult to grasp character motivations.