Offerings (1989)
Directed by Christopher Reynolds
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times. Halloween was a groundbreaking and trendsetting film. The 1980s took Halloween’s formula and duplicated it a million times. Some films had subtle nods, like Friday the 13th while others completely ripped the idea off, like Offerings. Slasher films rose so quickly to popularity that all of the films began to parody or copy others, it happens in all art forms. Is Offerings worth a watch though? Let’s check it out.
Offerings tells the story about an awkward/mute boy named John. His childhood wasn’t the best, his father abandoned him and his mother was abusive. Children picked on John all except for Gretchen the neighbor girl. One day the kids challenged John to walk around the top of the well. John finished the circle around the well and one boy lunged at him causing John to fall down the dried well and severely injure himself. Fast forward the magical 10 years later that every slasher uses, John is comatose in a Mental Hospital (naturally). How many times have I said this? Every small town in the 80s had a mental hospital with inept security! Anyways John of course escapes and begins hunting down the kids that injured him.
The acting is pretty bad, I mean I expected it that way so I can’t really complain or be surprised. The dialogue is laughable at times and kept me entertained. The children at the beginning were all wooden and awkward. The young boy playing John at the beginning is suppose isn’t too bad, I did feel a little sorry for him, but I mean he’s no Tom Hanks haha. The grown-up kids aren’t much better. Gretchen (which has to be on of the worst names ever, might as well be called retched) is played by Loretta Leigh Bowman, whom is cute? Hot? Average? I really don’t know. Sometimes I think she might be pretty, other times I’m like eh she’s ok. I think the worst aspect of the movie and its characters is how I can’t remember anyone’s name or put the name with a face. I remember John because he’s the killer and Gretchen because she’s the main character, other than that I can’t remember. I suppose one I remember is Gretchen’s friend Kacy only because I thought she looked like Steve Perry, she was also the slutty friend, which is creepy. Kacy says something along the lines of “hey sheriff…” which I started saying “our loooove hoooolds on, hoooolds on” and my wife just looked at me like I’m a moron. I do this shit to amuse myself.
Offerings was shot in Oklahoma, and its obvious by the accents everyone seems to have. Kacy (Steve Perry) especially has an odd accent that I can only describe as Valley Girl meets Oklahoman. It threw me off for quite a while actually. Gretchen is straight Oklahoman and makes sense but Kacy, my lord she sounds odd, its one of those things where you just have to hear her to get what I’m saying
As for the special effects, there isn’t much to really talk about. A lot of the kills happen off screen, which was typical for late 80s slashers due to censorship. A few that stand out to me are the beheading of Kacy, the vice crushing of the spindly guy’s head, and the hanging of I believe David? Like I said they didn’t do a great job of building characters outside of Gretchen and John. The Sheriff was a decent character as well, but didn’t come off as a sheriff maybe because he’s younger and in slasher movies the sheriff always seems to be around 50. Most of the gore you see is aftermath, a random ear, a finger etc.
One scene that had me laughing is when they order pizza and its taking forever to get there. Suddenly they hear the door bell and Gretchen answers. There are two pizzas randomly sitting on the front porch so she grabs them and brings them in. They open up the box and notice an odd meat on the pizza, but decide to just eat it anyway. They think the meat is sausage but remark about how it tastes a little funny. The sheriff later on grabs the pizza and said he’s going to run some tests on it. I honestly had to read online what the pizza topping ending up being and apparently its just pieces of human flesh, yummy! Maybe it’s the delivery guy? Since they never showed his remains or even what happened haha.
A few things taken from Halloween in this film:
- Hulking killer that escapes from a mental hospital
- Killer returns to home town to murder teenagers
- POV shots with heavy breathing
- Killer kills a dog
- Killer seems to have superhuman strength
- Killer takes numerous gun shots without effect
- Doctor goes after the killer, trying to reason with him and stop the killings
There are many more, feel free to add some! The music is very similar to Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, once you hear it, you’ll know haha.
The ending isn’t anything to write home about (theres that saying again). Its your typical run of the mill slasher ending. Killer goes after girl, cop shows up, cop shoots killer. John takes numerous shot gun blasts and still stands, which is IMPOSSIBLE, I’m sorry. John finally collapses to the ground looks up and reaches for Gretchen and says “Looooove”. So we waited the whole movie for him to speak and that’s what he says haha. Wow that’s all I can say.
In conclusion it isn’t horrible. Is it good? Not really. I have seen plenty worse and man there are a lot better slashers that haven’t had a bluray release but this movie did. Why? Who was wanting this so bad? I had fun watching it, making fun of the dialogue and singing Oh Sherrie numerous times any time Kacy talked. All in all not a waste of a night, but I can’t see myself watching this a bunch of times. I give Offerings a C-, it tried and I can commend it for that, but in the end it still kinda blew.
