So here’s the funny thing about “Burnt Offerings.” I have a very distinct memory of being a young kid and watching the film on a relative’s television set. (My mom and I didn’t have a TV until I was in my teens.) And that final scene, when he goes into the locked room… man, it freaked me out. It calcified in my memory of something terrible.

So, with the Halloween season upon us, I decided a few nights ago to rewatch the movie. To face my youthful demons, so to speak.

I gotta say, the movie still holds up.

What’s the plot here? A seemingly normal family—mom, dad, junior, and an aunt played by Bette Davis—manage to score a large mansion as a summer rental. The brother and sister pair renting the place (including a wheelchair-bound Burgess Meredith of “Rocky” and “Bat-Man” TV show fame) explain that there’s just one catch to this bargain. Their mother lives in a room on the top level. But they basically promise that “you’ll never see her.”

Of course, since it’s a horror film, things start to go wrong posthaste. In particular, both parents begin to take on different personas. It’s not so much that they’re being possessed as influenced, which seems even worse. It’s like the person they were and the person they are start intermingling in the same body.

Additionally, some characters seem to age prematurely, while the plants in the house bloom.

Ultimately, it turns out this normal family has a tension simmering under the façade, a tension a malevolent force in the house is all too eager to take advantage of.

There’s an intriguing feminine-rage aspect.  Karen Black‘s mother character waits on her family hand and foot—vacuuming, cooking, and doing it all with a smile. Her surly husband, played by Oliver Reed, doesn’t appreciate it. But then the tables turn.

Bette Davis delivers many expressions of existential terror.

The film is directed by Dan Curtis, creator of the famed “Dark Shadows” TV series. 

Great stuff! It’s a shame it took me almost fifty years to give it a repeat viewing.