This evening it’s an episode of “Spazhouse Presents,” with Rox taking on the role of host. Although I would give good money to see Rox play full-on “horror host” for a feature film on some cable access channel or something. Anyway, I’ll just say this about tonight’s film–Burnt Offerings: it has one of my favorite horror movie titles. It is one of the most no-nonsense straight up titles ever. It’s sinister before you even get done saying or reading it. Love it muchly. I now hand the mic to Rox.
Back in 1997 or 1999, Karen Black was at DragonCon. I was excited to see that she was attending and had gotten her to sign the photo of her with Oliver Reed in the movie Burnt Offerings. I found it interesting that no one was really lined up to chat with Karen. This may be of course because it was way before her resurgence into horror fame with Rob Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses. So even though Karen Black won several Golden Globe awards and was nominated for an Academy award I am not sure how many people sought Karen out at the convention. So I made to most of the time she was at her table.
[ad#longpost]I told her I loved Burnt Offerings and Capricorn One and her non-genre films, such as The Day of the Locust and Five Easy Pieces. I mentioned to her that first time I saw Burnt Offerings was over at a friend’s house and the movie gave my friend’s mom nightmares. Her mom was worried that the trees around their home would (swipe for Spoilers) change their house.
I asked about if she had any favorites in the horror realm. Some actors approach their craft as work and may not take in account what horror films offer to the audience. She said she did: she was a fan of DC Comics‘ House of Mystery and House of Secrets titles. This was mentioned in a DragonCon documentary that came out some time later. It turned out that in the DragonCon documentary she was also a fan of Tintin.
I was very much interested in Karen Black’s time spent on set with Bette Davis. Karen was very nice in talking about her. Karen spoke about how even at the time of the production of the film, Bette was a consummate professional who worried about her performance. Karen talked about how she herself would come on set just to watch such an acting legend at work.
I thanked her for my time and she wished me well and to have a great convention, which I did.
Burnt Offerings is available from Amazon Instant Video. It appears to be out of print on DVD and pricey.
