don't trust anyone over 30

Rating: 10/10 (6 January 2007)

"Rosemary's Baby" is the first generation gap horror movie. 60s "It" girl Mia Farrow plays a sweet young thing who moves into an exclusive Manhattan apartment building with her struggling actor husband John Cassavetes, who brings his usual edgy neurosis to the part. All their neighbors are elderly, and it turns out that they are also a coven of witches whose mission is to find the perfect mother for the devil's child. Rosemary, whose name is oddly reminiscent of the Virgin Mary, is the perfect choice, and her actor hubby is quite happy to sell his soul to Satan in return for help with his career. Like "The Manchurian Candidate" and "The Killers," "Rosemary's Baby" is one of those movies that captures a vivid snapshot of the paranoia and unrest of the 60s, a decade that began so promisingly but that ended in assassination, riot, and social unrest. Holocaust survivor Roman Polanski, who was soon to lose his pregnant wife Sharon Tate to the murderous Manson "family," directed, closely following Ira Levin's brilliant novel and in the process creating "Catholic horror." Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer are excellent as the nosy neighbors who turn out to be the devil's henchmen, as is Ralph Bellamy as the sinister doctor who's part of the conspiracy. Shakespearean veteran Sir Maurice Evans (Maurice on "Bewitched") plays the one sympathetic old person in the movie. "Rosemary's Baby" set a standard for Hollywood horror that has seldom been equalled and never excelled. Only "The Exorcist," "Jaws," and "The Shining" come close. Of films made during the last decade only "The Blair Witch Project" approaches the same standard.