BURNT OFFERINGS

title: BURNT OFFERINGS
year: 1976
cast: Oliver Reed, Karen Black
director: Dan Curtis
rating: **

A family, consisting of a strong-willed, serious-minded husband; a faithful wife who sets up a room with his typewriter; and their young son moving into a large house for the summer. It's haunted, and within days, the father becomes violent towards the son. The house has a strange past that overlaps into the family's life. And after an extremely predictable ending, the last shot is of the family members seen in pictures within the house: as if they'd always lived there. Sound familiar? This is very much like THE SHINING. Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick both should haven given credit to not only this film, but the novel in which it was based. Although since it's not very good... the suspenseful setup working much better than when the plot takes hold... and no one seemed to care to acknowledge it.