Burnt Offerings (1976)

It's The Shining before there was The Shining: a star-studded movie released in 1976, one year earlier than Stephen King's brick, about a writer (Oliver Reed), his wife (Karen Black) and their young son (Lee Montgomery) - oh, and Bette Davis as an aunt - who move into a holiday retreat (a summer rental too good and cheap to be true, not a hotel) and fall victim to strange goings-on - weirdness that probably stems from upstairs where the mysterious octogenarian Mrs Allardyce resides behind a closed door - but in this movie, the effect of this paranormality upon the family is just a whole lot of family bickering - whose dad hasn't played too rough with them in a pool? - and it doesn't just affect dad but first dad, then dad and mum, and then, weirdly, just mum who becomes house-obsessed - dad for some reason gets a reprieve - and then poor Bette Davis' aunt becomes ill...and all this not very scintillating stuff - fights then remorse then fights then remorse -  never ends up making a word of sense, so in that respect too Burnt Offerings is very much like The Shining.

★★★☆☆

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Invaders From Mars (1986)

In filling his movie with wooden acting, stilted dialogue, several benign sideplots that add nothing except length to the runtime, and garish monster puppetry of a distinctly 80s horror variety, director Tobe Hooper pretty much nails the look and feel of a B-movie sci-fi classic of the 40s and 50s, and in fact this IS a remake of the 1953 movie of the same name, about a schoolkid who first witnesses a flash in the sky, then notices his parents acting strangely, then becomes alarmed as more and more people from town wander up and over the hill near his house and come back as monotone weirdos with welts on their necks.

★★★☆☆

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