Burnt Offerings (VHS)

As I preface, every movie Bette Davis acts in I will rate excellent because of her performances, first & foremost. However, as a literary & cultural critic, I have developed a theory about why Davis chose (after she was freed from the Warner Bros. contract) to act the characters she played--Davis was conveying herself through roles.

None could be more exemplary of my theory than "Burnt Offerings." Davis plays a woman, Aunt Elizabeth, who might be around her real life age: 68yo.. That's one of Davis' expert choices as a career move: not to do the idiotic Joan Crawford head trip & try to make an audience believe the actor is a generation or two younger than they are in real life!

Davis was a Hollywood pioneer by daring to take roles that made her seem her real age; or roles that made her appear nuts, very ugly, man-eating independent, over-the-edge mean-spirited & a clever woman murderer (if we can call any murderer clever). As a self-proclaimed, "Yankee woman," from Boston, being real & a straight shooter that wouldn't pad & flower words, Davis was interested in reaching audiences filled with real people who make the same or similar mistakes as the women in roles she took on. That's why so many audiences relate to her then & now. I imagine audiences will relate to Davis' women for unborn generations.

The only thing she tried her best to be perfected at was acting: life was full of errors & people were loaded with flaws; including herself. Why else could we think she had a pattern of particularly despising actresses who were superficial snobs pretending to be perfect people? Certainly, at the top in her profession, there is no reliable evidence that Davis was, or had cause to be, the least bit jealous. (Joan Collins recently said why bother to audition anymore when they're going to give the parts to Shirley MacLaine? That's how it was for Bette Davis--she got the parts. She was so powerful she also got parts for other people, especially to be in films when she played the lead).

To the plot & characters of "Burnt Offerings": The Rolf Family, Ben (Oliver Reed), Marian (Karen Black), their young son, David (Lee Montgomery) & Ben's Aunt Elizabeth (Bette Davis), move into a haunted old mansion as summer caretakers, believing that it's going to be something of a luxurious holiday for the entire family.

Like many wiser older women can, dear Aunt Elizabeth seems to feel there's something amiss about the whole deal stepping foot upon the property. Like only Bette Davis could, Aunt Elizabeth first expresses her grave reservation with a remarkably suspicious casting of her eyes. No words are necessary to convey what Aunt Elizabeth's intuitively sensing.

It's very difficult to write any more about this horror story without spoiling it! Let's just say that the boy becomes the target for a series of life-threatening mishaps that are unexplainable. His Great Aunt Elizabeth remains the sole family member who's watching out for her great-nephew's safety; until his father finally catches on, like his Aunt.

What they figure out is that the house needs to consume life, especially youth, in order to rejuvenate itself. I'll leave the terrifying particulars to view for yourself.

As a horror, this is not a Hammer Studios, blood & guts type. Instead, it's a psychological horror; no blood needed when events are scary enough.

But of course, Davis relentlessly steals the show! We're the beneficiaries of every scene she's ever stolen!~