BA_Harrison As a youngster, mute animal-torturing weirdo John Radley (Josh Coffman) is bullied by most of the other neighbourhood children, his only friend being pretty blonde girl Gretchen (Kerri Bechthold). After the local bullies cause him to fall down a well, disfiguring his face and damaging his brain in the process, John kills and eats his mother, resulting in his incarceration in a high security hospital, where he is heavily sedated. Ten years later, John (now played by Richard A. Buswell) escapes, intent on wreaking revenge on those responsible for his accident, making grisly offerings to the girl who was once his friend.Over a decade after the success of seminal slasher Halloween, most aspiring horror film-makers had stopped looking to the seasonal classic for inspiration. Not so with director Christopher Reynolds: for Offerings (1989), his first movie, Reynolds does very little to disguise the fact that he is blatantly ripping off John Carpenter's '78 box office smash, the story, the characters, the events, and the music closely mimicking Halloween. The only (big) difference is that, where Carpenter's film is a flawless exercise in nerve-jangling terror, Offerings is a total mess, with uninspired direction, lousy performances and terrible dialogue.Reynold's doesn't even do the decent thing and try to compensate for the lack of originality with an excess of gore or gratuitous nudity, his kill scenes being frustratingly free of splatter, and the actresses remaining full clothed throughout (a shame, because Loretta Leigh Bowman as the grown up Gretchen is a hottie, and her friend Kacy, played by Elizabeth Greene, ain't too bad either!). All in all, this is a largely forgettable Halloween clone, the only elements likely to stick in the mind being the morbidly obese town sheriff (G. Michael Smith), who struggles to squeeze behind the wheel of his police car, and the fact that the girls and their boyfriends unwittingly eat a pizza topped with human flesh instead of sausage (although quite how the killer managed to prepare such a dish is never adequately explained).

Michael_Elliott Offerings (1989)* 1/2 (out of 4) Ten years after being pushed down a well and cracking his skull open, a psychopath escapes from a mental asylum and returns home where he plans on killing those who pushed him. The psycho murders one person after another but saves his female friend at the time for last while the Sheriff and his therapist try to locate and stop him. OFFERINGS is a very, very bad movies. There's simply no way around that but at the same time it's a must-see simply because of how much of a rip-off of John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN it is. You might be saying to yourself what's the big deal because countless movies ripped HALLOWEEN. The big deal is that this film rips off just about everything in that film. We have the heavy breathing. We have a couple of the same type of murders. We have the opening piece to set up the film and then flash to the mental hospital. We visit the killer's house which of course is now a mess. The killer messes up a tomb at the cemetery. We have our main female picking up a mysterious phone call only to hang up and then a call back. The same female lead in class when the teacher asks her a question. I could name at least fifteen more scenes that are pretty much identical to the Carpenter flick but the most glaring rip is the music score, which is pretty much the very same score except that the one here is in a different tempo!! I'm really not sure how in the hell this thing was able to be released without the director or producer getting sued. There are a few movies here and there that aren't able to get released in this country because of them ripping off other films (ABBY and THE LAST SHARK come to mind) but this thing here is just downright crazy in how open it is in terms of ripping off. As you'd expect, the performances are all rather bad but I must admit that I loved G. Michael Smith as the overweight, redneck Sheriff. I thought the actor was a lot of fun in the part and he also gets some of the best dialogue in one of the most head-scratching scenes. The two females find a severed ear on their porch so they call up the Sheriff who puts the ear in a bag and then asks them if they've noticed anything strange going on. Do what?!?!?!? Is finding ears a common thing in this town? Another highlight is a scene where the killer (off screen) kills the pizza guy and later delivers the pizzas to the house where our lead and her friends are. The kids eat the pizza but don't remember ordering sausage but it turns out that it's the pizza man they're eating! There are so many amazing things going on in this thing that it's impossible not to recommend it to every horror fan out there. No one is going to find it to be a "good" movie but the thing is so incredibly weird that you can't help but be entertained by it.

Cristopher_Jeorge I hope John Carpenter saw this and has his lawyer on speed dial. Not only is his score lifted note for note in this groan fest but so is the basic premises of Halloween. The story has a troubled little mute boy with an egg ashing mommy having only one true friend in his neighborhood. In the early goings he's harassed by some kids on really cheap BMX bikes and bullied into walking around the edge of a well, to prove what I'm not sure. Well he falls in and upon his rescue is committed to a sanitarium that he (surprise, surprise) escapes from ten years later. Emerging with a head that looks like a canned ham, an odd immunity to electrified fences, and a vengeance for those who bullied him it's not long before John Radley is eating duck guts, putting heads in vices, and delivering pizza with mystery sausage on it to his old friend from the neighborhood. This movie contains some truly annoying performances and some of the best bad dialogue ever. Sample: "This is Gretchen Peters and I called like a looong time ago for some pizza." Oh my goodness. There's a Sam Loomis character of course who confronts murderous John Radley and in true bonehead fashion hands him his flashlight so he can be bludgeoned to death with it. Way to go doc. There's also a great sheriff who looks more than a little like Tool Times Al Borland. Sheriff Borland (I forget his name) likes busting little kids reading porn in abandoned houses and asking for leftovers at crime scenes. Ultimately John Radley has a final showdown with his lost friend Gretchen and goes out in a slo-mo fizzle of glory. "Love!" It's painful to watch folks. Not poor Johns demise..the whole freaking movie!!

BloodTheTelepathicDog Movie viewers who like to watch low-budget horrors with a talentless unknown cast, this is right up your alley.The only thing I liked about this film, was that redheaded kid the fat sheriff caught looking at girly-mags, who teased the obese officer saying his name was Ben Dover, which the sheriff never got.The plot centers around a shy child, with a terrible home life(his mother happily incorporates cigarette ashes in his breakfast) who is tormented and later pushed down a well by kids his age. Years pass and our shy kid is now a disfigured freakshow determined to get revenge.The title Offerings was used because of the killer leaving body parts on his only friends doorstep, much in the way a cat does when devouring a mouse.