Posted on 03/07/2018 11:12:12 AM PST by simpson96
Right to its bitter end, there is no escaping “Rosemary’s Baby.” On film Ira Levin’s best selling novel is as horribly frightening as it was on paper. Few people could put Levin’s book down. By the same token, viewers of the movie at the Criterion and Loew’s Tower East Theatres will find themselves compelled to see it through. It is that tantalizing a shocker.
The subject matter is peculiarly repugnant. It is witchcraft, not as practiced in Salem or the like, but as taken seriously in our very own city.
The setting is an apartment house modeled after those venerable Gothic caverns on the West Side. The building’s blackened, menacing hallways with their incredibly high ceilings set-off the innocent glow of the young heroine who lives in this gloomy setting with her bridegroom.
Knowing the story from the book killed a little of the suspense for me since director Roman Polanski follows it relentlessly. Therefore, I will tell nothing of the plot. What makes this film worthy of attention, no matter how one reacts to Polanski’s exacting inclusion of Rosemary’s erotic dreams and the sickening triumph of evil in the end, is, surprisingly, Mia Farrow.
Miss Farrow’s special magic is her fragility. She reminds one of a fawn in captivity. What she does so remarkably well is draw sympathy to Rosemary who is herself a captive fawn, a totally helpless heroine surrounded by evil on all sides with now way out. Everyone in the audience will want desperately to help her.
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“Rosemary’s Baby” is a great, and terrifying, film.
It was creepy but relatively tame compared to the Exorcist.
And caused some poor guy to go blind. (Voice of Tony Curtis over the phone talking to Rosemary later in the movie.)
I have the DVD and watch it every Halloween. That and Jeepers Creepers and the Shining. If I have time, I also watch Poltergeist.
The coven likely caused Rosemary’s friend Hutch who knew too much about this history of the building and its dark past to die. Rosemary’s predecessor (Terry) killed herself by jumping out of the Castavet’s apartment.
The baby was delivered from an evil spirit that entered him/her via a mother who opened herself up to the occult.
Have never seen this film, and I never intend to.
I was about 12 or 13 when I read that book. While babysitting. Definitely scared the cr@p out of me.
No, that was just Phil Leeds.
How does an evil-spirit infection manifest itself in a baby? Is it like gas?
Tony Curtis!
I didn’t know that!
Thanks!
Clay Tanner was the head of the church of Satan?
I smell "BS" Anton LaVey was the head of the church of Satan
Actually NONE of them were. That was a time frame in Hollywood when they loved starting weird rumors about their horror movies, and every one of those rumors was more fictitious than the movies.
OK, I guess it was just Anton LeVey and the rest I heard about were just rumors.
Bkmk
The omen scares me to death.
“He has his father’s eyes” was one of the best gotcha lines, ever.
Yes, Hutch was killed by the coven. Guy, Rosemary’s husband, came home unexpectedly from rehearsal when Hutch was visiting with Rosemary and Hutch seemed to be catching on to what was going on. When Hutch was leaving he was missing a glove, which Guy had taken to give to the coven to cause Hutch’s demise just as Guy had taken the tie of the man whose part he wanted to get that caused the man to go blind.
The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, and Fallen, a movie with Denzel Washington, all show the premise that evil wins.
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