Burnt Offerings (1976)
A vampiric house feeds on its caretaker family.
Genre
Characters/Groups
Young Ben - Todd Turquand
Character thumbnails with links to profiles
Detailed Synopsis
Ben (Burnt Offerings)|Ben, Marian and David (Burnt Offerings)|David drive to the house on 17 Shore Road and are shocked to see how large it is. They knock on the door a few times and eventually Walker answers the door and lets them in. He has them sit in the waiting room, while he gets Brother and Roz. David asks if he can play outside and Ben tells him to stay close to the area. Marian walks around the house and enters the greenery which is full of dead plants. Ben and Marian then look at a series of photographs of the same scene, the house, but at different periods of time. Roz comes downstairs and meets Marian and Ben and Roz is happy to hear they have a young son. Marian tells Roz that Aunt Elizabeth will also be staying with them and Roz asks if they will take the place from the 1st of July until Labor Day. When Ben is hesitant about being able to maintain upkeep of the house, Roz assures him the house takes care of itself. Roz helps Brother with the broken wheelchair lift and wheels him into the room. Roz tells Brother that Marian and Ben have a son and Brother asks to look at him through the window. He watches as David is playing and falls and hurts himself and when Ben offers to bring David inside, Brother insists David can stay and play outside. Roz and Brother then tell Marian and Ben that the house will still exist long after they are gone and that it is practically immortal. Roz and Brother then tell them that the only catch is that Roz and Brother's mother will stay in the house and they will need to make three meals for her a day. Walker comes into the main room holding a dead plant and Brother asks him where he is going with it. When Walker tells him it is dead, Brother tells him to look again, and some of the dead leaves have turned green. Ben, Marian and David go home to think about it and Ben has reservations about renting the house. Ben calls Roz and tells her they would like to rent the house and on July 1st, Ben, Marian, Aunt Elizabeth and David drive to the house. When they arrive, Roz and Brother have already left. Marian goes to look on the mother when she finds a locked door and a room upstairs filled with photos of people from different time periods. She knocks at the door, but no one answers it. Marian tells Ben and Elizabeth that the stairs up to the mother's room is out of bounds. Elizabeth comments that none of the clocks are working as they follow David into the kitchen. They find the kitchen and pantry filled with food and beverages, but the light doesn't work in the pantry. Ben cuts his thumb opening the champagne bottle and David goes into the pantry and the light turns on as he flips the switch. Marian goes upstairs and finds the food she left uneaten. Ben and David return to the house from town and find Marian has done an amazing job of cleaning and fixing the house. Ben and David fix the pool and later find the Allardyce family graveyard and Ben notices there aren't any new gravestone since the 1890's while David finds a kid's bike. Marian notices that the food again hasn't been eaten. Marian later goes back to the room outside of mother's room and smiles at the half eaten food. Marian sits and listens to the music box in the room outside of mother's room and becomes entranced. Ben and David go swimming in the pool and Ben notices his glasses are suddenly broken. Ben and David start rough housing in the pool and Ben starts to hold David in the water until he starts to drown and struggle. David finally hits Ben in the face with his swimming goggle and gets out of the pool. That night, Ben has a dream of his mother's funeral and The Chauffeur who took him and his father to the funeral and later, Ben saw grinning. Marian wakes up to find Ben out of bed and comforts him about what he did to David in the pool. Marian goes outside the next day and finds the fountain restored along with the pool. Elizabeth tells Marian and Ben that David has decide to take up painting and Ben and David awkwardly shake hands and hug. Later at night Marian finds Ben sitting outside of the pool. They jump into the pool and when Ben tries to have sex with Marian she resists after looking up at the house. The next morning, Ben notices Marian is wearing new clothes and she tells him she found them in a closet and when he asks where she was last night, she tells him she slept in a chair outside of the mother's room. Elizabeth comes downstairs and tells Marian she feels exhausted. Elizabeth notices her hair is turning gray again and sees that Marian's is starting to show gray too. When Elizabeth hears that David wants to go on a hike with her she says she just wants to take a nap, and Marian tells her she should. Elizabeth brings one of her paintings up to the room outside of mother's room and finds Marian in mother's room. Marian tells her the Allardyce mother is sleeping and hurries Elizabeth away. After cutting away brush, Ben imagines seeing The Chauffeur drive up and smile at him. During the night all of the clocks suddenly start to work. Ben hears them working and as he is staring at a clock he hears the sound of gas escaping in David's room. He tries to open the door and finds it locked and has to break it down in order to pull David out, who is already suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. An older looking Elizabeth walks into the room where David is getting air and Ben tells her the gas heater was left on with the door closed and window closed. The next day Elizabeth tells Marian she had checked on David that night, but didn't turn the gas heater on. Marian starts to accuse Elizabeth of not remembering what she did, which upsets Elizabeth. Ben goes to visit Elizabeth and she tells him she wouldn't do anything to hurt David and she wants to leave the house. Ben goes to find Marian and confronts her about accusing Elizabeth about lying. Ben sees the photos of various people and Marian calls it the mother's collection. Later, David is holding a large glass bowl and accidentally drops it when Marian walks into the room. Marian yells at David and then cries and holds pieces of the bowl against her cheek. Elizabeth is lying in bed when her back snaps. Ben asks Marian if the house is more important than her family and mentions leaving the house early. David yells for Ben and Marian and tells them something is wrong with Elizabeth. Ben goes to make a call for a doctor and then returns to the room and tells Marian all of the numbers are busy including the operator. Marian goes to try the numbers and comes back and says she was able to make a call. Before anyone arrives, Elizabeth dies as she and Ben have a vision of The Cha