Product: Rosemary's Baby (El Bebe de Rosemary) [ NON-USA FORMAT, NTSC, Reg.4 Import - Latin America ] (1968)
Rating: 5.0
His name shall be Adrian! � It�s the Year One!
Without question the best movie ever made about witchcraft and devil worship, Rosemary's Baby still stands tall among horror movies a quarter century after its first release. Suspense author Ira Levin's chilling tale of a naive and trusting young wife impregnated by Satan is elevated to the realm of the classic by director Roman Polanski's measured, intelligent and ultimately chilling screen version (in much the same way that Coppola made The Godfather a classic film of an average gangster novel - although, in this instance, Levin's source novel is hardly pulp). Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes are perfect as Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse - a struggling young New York couple on the verge of upward mobility - who take an apartment in an old brownstone that may be a seedbed of Satanic evil. Guy is a struggling actor making a living through adverts and second stringing until, courtesy of his nosy neighbours, he discovers a novel way of getting ahead. Unfortunately the cost is high, although - in a twist on the Faustian scheme - not to him, but rather to his fellow actors, his friends and - in the most evil of sacrifices - his wife. Saying any more would be to play the spoiler though. Rosemary's Baby is best watched with less rather than more information on what it's about. Suffice to say it involves Rosemary in the most unholy of trysts with a group of Satan freaks, including all manner of beastly violations, including sex with the Beast himself. Whether however what is happening is real or simply the product of Rosemary's growing guilt-tinged Catholic paranoia about sex is the source of the movie's slow-burning tension until a truly nail-biting last half-hour of stunning revelation. Cassavetes and Farrow are superbly cast, both delivering career-best work, partly by incorporating their public personas at the time into their character portrayals. The cast is universally excellent, with a notable early role for Charles Grodin as a wimpy gynaecologist. This is the movie that - after a decade and a half of stupid Atomic age creature features - reinvented the horror genre (along with Psycho, The Haunting and Peeping Tom), commandeering it into the realm of the almost anthropologically serious. That it paved the way for The Exorcist, The Omen, The Changeling etc can hardly be disputed. That it still towers over the genre as one its best, most intelligent entries makes it a non-negotiable must-have not just for any decent horror collection but any movie collection period.