Macabre Ballad*

Burnt offerings by D. Curtis (1976)

☻☻

I happened to watch a clip from this flick on the tv a long long time ago, I'm afraid the year after it was released in the U.S., so it was very likely in black and white... And the scene was this:

 where the pool tries to drown the young host in the haunted mansion. Burnt offerings offers us a unique chance to see the strangest cast, with

the great Oliver Reed

(still one of the most fascinating looks in the movies)

and Bette Davis, quite convincing as the old aunt

even though the first name either in the titles and on the bill is that of

Karen Black

very likely the most famous heteroforic actress ever, since her special quality is way more glaring than -e.g.- Shelley Long. Burnt offerings doesn't suck; I guess it would be difficult even for the worst movie to suck with such an outstanding cast; in fact I'd say that all of the parts here are greater than the whole, which just couldn't be more than a haunted-mansion-movie, being it set in a haunted (holidays) mansion and telling us the story of the family that will eventually face a tragic fate living in it.

In 1976 product placement was 100 and 3 years old already, and "the  goods [...] placed in a context usually devoid of ads" were the same old venomous crap that our cinematic heroes seem to prefer:

cigarettes

and alcohol

 even the old cinema star can't help but smoking

Hollywood style

So the old, not-so-creepy but severely haunted house finally gets its victims; of the Rolfs remains nothing, except for the insane wife doomed to play the old lady and to haunt the house in any possible future...

A case of mental illness or a series of paranormal phenomena, we'll never know for sure, perhaps we don't really want to; in the end the only one thing I'd like to know is:

whose the heck were the goddamn' broken spectacles in the swimming pool?!?

I know, I know, that was the capital Clue in Chinatown. but... really, WTF??

Academy Award in 1976

for Best Telephone.

*That is the Italian title; I guess they found "Offerte bruciate" to be kind of ambiguous.