Product: Rosemary's Baby (El Bebe de Rosemary) [ NON-USA FORMAT, NTSC, Reg.4 Import - Latin America ] (1968)
Rating: 4.0
The Horror Movie We All Remember
Actually, the only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of five was that it perpetuates the myth that witches are Satan worshipers. There are Satanic witches, but they are a pretty small sub-set of all witches, and from what I can tell, don't have a great deal of authenticity.But if you can take the story as is, the same way you did with The Exorcist, it's a fascinating drama. You may well wonder how skinny little rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) could even support the weight of a child, but I'm told such scrawny things tend to be stronger than the matchsticks they look like. (Is my fat lady bias showing?)Anyway, Rosemary and her husband move into an old apartment building in New York City, apparently one of those that has as much history as the Dakota, which I think is where it was filmed, and where John and Yoko Lennon used to live. Their apartment was divided from what was originally one very large one, and the neighbors who live in the other half (played by Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon) are gregarious and, as Rosemary puts it, nosy. They love doing things for the young couple, including some things that make Rosemary rather suspicious.Just in case there are one or two people in the world who have never seen this story before, I won't spoil it for you. I've already mentioned that there are witches involved, and that's as much as I'm going to say. Let's just say that my suspicions were first aroused (when I saw it in the theater all those years ago) at the New Year's Party given by the elderly neighbors, where the toast was to "The Year One." (The rest of us called it 1966.)