Thursday Movie Picks #432: New Home

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. We've got two more Thursdays in October, today and Oct. 27, which means there's two more Halloween/horror-themed editions of the blogathon. This time, that theme is "A New Home", and I have to admit that I'm cheating a bit in that one of my choices is, I think, technically not a permanent home. But it fits into the theme fairly well, so I'm using it anyway. And I think I might have used one of these movies last year, but I'm using it again anyway.

The Stepford Wives (1975). Katharine Ross and her family move into the seemingly idyllic town of Stepford, CT. But as she and her new best friend Paula Prentiss pal around town, they find that something isn't quite right, and all the wives wind up like some sort of subservient stereotype. Will she figure out what's going on before it's too late? And why don't these women know the meaning of the word "archaic"?

Burnt Offerings (1976). Oliver Reed is a writer working on a new book, so to get some peace and quiet for the summer he takes his wife (Karen Black), kid, and aunt (Bette Davis) to a big old house that's got a surprisingly good rental price. The only thing is, they have to deal with the owners' old lady relative who supposedly lives up on the top floor and who they seem to be abandoning for the summer because reasons. It all begins to have a strange effect on the renters, especially Mom.

The Amityville Horror (1979). Supposedly based on a true story, although there's controversy over how much of what appears in the original book is true, this one stars James Brolin and Margot Kidder as parents who find a nice house out on Long Island to buy, except that the house has a past in that a family was murdered in the house in a fairly notorious crime. Still they buy the place, only to find out that it might possibly be haunted.