5/22/2023 0 Comments Burnt Offerings by Robert MarascoIn adapting the bestseller for the big screen, Curtis and screenwriter William F. A haunted house spooker in the Shirley Jackson mold, playwright Robert Marasco's 1973 source novel added an intriguing level of determinism to the standard "bad house" blueprint, suggesting that the American nuclear family introduced in Chapter One is not so much sucked in by malevolent design but that its members are rather answering the siren call of their respective fates. However harsh that assessment, the film's minor standing in the estimation of both critics (Roger Ebert called it "slop") and the horror hoi polloi ("Dan Curtis is better off making TV films" carped The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film) is a matter of public record. In Nightmare Movies, his essential 1988 horror film overview, writer Kim Newman classified Dan Curtis' Burnt Offerings (1976) as "the dregs of a genre more or less created by Roman Polanski in Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary's Baby" (1968).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |