Rosemary's Baby (1968) - By Brian Morton

Film Reviews: Rosemary's Baby (1968) - By Brian Morton
Posted on Wednesday, June 01, 2005 @ 00:00:00 Mountain Daylight Time by Duane

So, I've heard forever that this is one of the scariest and intense movies made before The Exorcist reset the bar. So, I decided that I'd take a look and see what all the talk was about. And what I saw, frankly, didn't impress me all that much. 1968's Rosemary's Baby is the story of a young couple that moves into a new apartment in New York. All the neighbors seem all right, if a little eccentric, and everything seems to be going pretty well. And we all know that when things are going well in the movies, that things are soon to go WAY wrong quickly.

One night when Rosemary is sleeping she dreams that she and her husband are having 'family relations', but, in the dream, her husband turns into the devil and suddenly she's having 'relations' with the devil! Well, as you might imagine, this kind of bothers her a little, because the dream seemed very real. And, to top things off, the people in the apartment house they're living in are getting stranger and stranger. This is one of those 70s movies that's very cerebral, you've got to do alot of reading between the lines when it comes to the neighbors and their motives.

But in the end it turns out that poor old Rosemary did, in fact, have a little fling with ol' Satan himself and her baby is going to be his son and all the weird people in the apartment house are witches who are there to help raise the charming little spawn of Satan. It's a lovely little arrangement that Beelzebub has going there, and it's in New York City so I'm sure that as long as he's been around it's a rent-controlled situation.

The problem I have with the movie is that it's called 'Rosemary's Baby' but you never get to actually see 'Rosemary's Baby'. You get to see everyone else looking at the baby and talking about the baby, even Rosemary gets to see the baby, but they never let us get a look! Now, I know that this is one of those 'your imagination is better than any special effect that they can do' kind of a moment, but DAMN IT, when you advertise the movie about a monster and you name the movie for the monster, you better let me see the monster or I'm gonna be a little peeved! It's like going to see Jaws and never actually seeing the shark. Or how about King Kong with no monkey in it? See what I mean, if you want to see a movie about a killer baby, try 'It's Alive' or 'Basketcase' but walk past 'Rosemary's Baby' classic or not, it's just not that scary.