Drive-In ’76: ‘Burnt Offerings,’ ‘One Chance to Win,’ ‘Slumber Party ’57’ and ‘The Pyramid’

Each month, from April through September, Drive-In ’76 revisits the drive-in fare of fifty years past, from big Hollywood releases to low-budget exploitation movies that played in the wee hours of the night. It’s September. It’s getting chilly out there so pop in the  got four movies lined up. So pop in the Bernz-O-Matic and snuggle up to whoever’s next to you as we pay the drive-in one last visit before it closes for the summer.

Feature One: Burnt Offerings (released August 26, 1976)

It feels apt for the end-of-summer fare to include a movie about a summer vacation gone terribly awry. Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis doesn’t stray far from the gothic spirit of his most famous creation for his first feature film not set within its universe. He does, however, take advantage of previously unknown luxuries like a name cast and sets that don’t appear to be made of cardboard. And what a name cast it is! Oliver Reed and Karen Black co-star as, respectively, Ben and Marian Rolf who, with their son Davey (Ben’s Lee H. Montgomery) and Ben’s eccentric Aunt Elizabeth (Bette Davis) rent a dilapidated Victorian-era estate for the summer.

The grown-up leads give the film three different varieties of over-the-top acting styles. Yet they’re somehow still upstaged by the pure camp offered by theater veteran Eileen Heckart and Burgess Meredith as a pair of weirdo siblings who rent the house to the Rolf’s for virtually nothing with one small catch: they have to tend to the care and feeding of the pair’s agéd mother, Mrs. Allardyce, who keeps to herself in an upstairs suite. As the summer progresses, and the house mysteriously grows brighter and less decrepit, the lodgers find themselves haunted by strange dreams and behaving in sometimes violent ways they don’t understand.