Product: Rosemary's Baby (El Bebe de Rosemary) [ NON-USA FORMAT, NTSC, Reg.4 Import - Latin America ] (1968)
Rating: 5.0
The best in the genre...
Twelve years before John Lennon got shot there, The Dakotas are the setting for evil, as whiny waif Rosemary (played to perfection by Mia Farrow) gives birth to the son of Satan. Lunkheaded teens whose concept of horror means countless Freddy Krueger and Scream sequels need not apply here... This is horror of the scarier kind: subtle. Roman Polanski is at his best (Chinatown excepted) here, smothering the screen with neo-Baroque motifs that, in the Mod New York of 1968, comprise a sort of Post-Modernistic version of hell. The acting is also subtle, the film's only excess in the delightfully noxious presence of Oscar-winner Ruth Gordon as Rosemary's neighbor, on which I suspect Larry David based his Estelle Costanza character for "Seinfeld". Farrow is keen throughout, making her despair in the birth scene all the more screeching and jarring. John Cassavetes is pure joy to watch -and hate- as the Faustian "Guy" who descends into Hell for the sake of his career. The supporting cast is perfectly balanced and construed to weave a quilt of paranoia and claustrophobia... only Polanski could have made a viewer feel trapped inside New York's expansiveness...