(This is an old one I ran across while looking for something else, but it amused me so here you go)
Things are fairly quiet here. Again, TV was pretty much a wasteland, so yesterday after KITH the best that was offered was Rosemary's Baby. As it's widely acclaimed as a classic horror film, and I'm a horror buff from way back, I figured I'd give it a try.
Classic, my ass. It was lame. Really, really lame. It was 'Boy am I glad it's over now' lame. Calling it 'The Evil Elderly' would probably been more accurate, considering that it was pretty much a youth against age kind of thing. Oh yeah, and there was a baby. And Mia Farrow, who spent half the film looking like a teenage David Bowie and the whole film without a jot of brains in her pretty little skull. And there was about two hours of padding. Maybe they should have called it 'The Creeping Plot' instead.
To give it credit, the production values were obviously high. The acting, for the most part, was done well enough and believable. It just wasn't a horror film. It qualifies as suspense, but the scariest thing about it was the late 60's furniture. The lead actress (the aforementioned Mia Farrow) could have just as easily been replaced with a mannequin and tape recorder for the first three-quarters of the movie. More on that later.
Basically, if you haven't seen it, Arrogant Actor Husband and Spineless Wife move into Awesome Apartment Building that was once the home to a few random evil people, which they make sure to mention repeatedly. They redecorate and ruin the lovely place they're renting (ancient wood flooring and walls, and they paint over it #wince#) and their irritating and nosy next door neighbors meddle with their lives in a supposedly kindly way. Off-camera, Arrogant Actor Husband makes a deal with the Evil Next Door Neighbors that if he has a successful career, he'll let the devil father his wife's child. For the first three-quarters of the movie Spineless Wife has no dialogue that has not already been uttered by someone else and does basically whatever people tell her to. She is eventually drugged and is impregnated by the Devil (in a scene that was disturbing, but not in the way the filmmakers intended- from what you see of the scene, it looks like she's getting it on with Chewbacca) and spends the rest of the film (to the 3/4 mark) blindly obedient to anyone who drops by, even when they're obviously acting suspicious.
Mrs. Dark Path: Who's your obstetrician, dear?
Spineless Wife: Doctor Hill.
Mrs. Dark Path: Well, we're friends with Doctor Frankenpfeffer, and he's the best there is. We'll put in a word for you.
Spineless Wife: I like Doctor Hill.
Mrs. Dark Path: But Doctor Frankenpfeffer is wonderful. You'll go to him instead.
Spineless Wife: Okay.
Two scenes later...
Dr Frankenpfeffer: Right, I don't want you reading any books. Pregnancies don't happen the way they do in books. And don't talk to your friends, either. No two pregnancies are alike. If you have any questions, talk to me. That's what I'm here for.
Spineless Wife: Okay.
Spineless Wife: Doctor, I'm having horrible pain in my abdomen, all the time. It's like a wire tightening. I'm suffering so much.
Dr Frankenpfeffer: It'll go away in a few days. It happens to some women. Take some aspirin.
Spineless Wife: I'm so relieved! I thought it might be an ectopic pregnancy.
Dr Frankenpfeffer: Ectopic? You've been reading a book, haven't you!
Spineless Wife: Well, yes, I saw it at the drugstore.
Dr Frankenpfeffer: Go home and throw it away.
Spineless Wife: Okay.
Makes you wonder why they bothered drugging her to get her pregnant. Just telling her directly would have taken an hour off the movie.
Arrogant Actor Husband: Dear, I want you to go next door. A bunch of old people will be standing around playing the recorder and chanting something that sounds suspiciously like 'hairball' over and over. Meanwhile, you'll be having sex with a Wookie.
Spineless Wife: Okay.
Spineless Wife does absolutely nothing for most of the film, and even her semi-suspenseful escape attempt lasts about ten minutes, and at this point while they've established that everyone she knows who's over fifty is involved in the conspiracy, we're not willing to buy that random people on the street are too, so that attempt at suspense is wasted. She also runs away to the only other character in the movie that hasn't been used much, even when she barely knows him and actually has a lot of close friends who are worried about her that would probably drive across town to get her instead of snapping at her over the phone and grudgingly allowing her to turn up. He betrays her, no big surprise. The Evil Elderly take her back to her apartment and give her sedatives in a completely unnecessarily graphic needle scene, one of a few in the film. This is when watching movies alone sucks, as there was no one to give me the all clear, and since the scenes were long and drawn out I saw a lot more of the needle stuff than I needed to. That may have been the only part that gave me the shivers.
Right. Anyway, she actually has the baby, things hit the obligatory 60's Acid Trip and she ends up in next door's apartment with practically every other character in the movie paying homage to her child, who has been placed in a black velvet draped bassinet with an upside down cross for a mobile. Very subtle. She is shocked by its appearance (which we never see, amusingly enough- I wonder if they didn't have the budget for any kind of decent effect) but is persuaded to drop her weapon (a knife; picking it up was the first sensible thing she'd done in the whole movie) and take a cup of tea while everyone hails the devil in what I'm guessing is supposed to be the crowning horror. It's actually pretty silly, though. I dunno, elderly Satanists just didn't pack the punch they'd hoped for, especially when they're all sitting around drinking wine and cooing over a baby. Also jarring is the attendance of a cheerful looking Asian man with a camera who looks as though he's wandered into the movie by mistake. I could buy that all sorts of evil people had shown up to say hello to Satan Junior, except that everyone else in the room had already appeared somewhere else in the movie. This guy is completely new, and when he's grinning and snapping pictures left and right and showing of his camera it comes off as unpleasantly stereotypical. It seems like a cheap shot against Asian people, and why it got included in the movie I have no idea.
Anyway, Spineless Wife is convinced by Mr. Dark Path to rock her baby in his bassinet, signifying, I don't know, maybe that even devil babies need love too, or perhaps just to remind us that she has absolutely no backbone and does anything she's told. Then the movie ends. Finally. We're left with a feeling of relief and two morals, one being 'Never marry an actor, especially if you have no spine or brains' and 'Don't trust the elderly. They're eeeeevil.' Feh. Most everyone on IMDB seems to love it, which is somewhat amusing- I suppose that if you're told something's a classic, you're likely to give it more of a chance. I still think it's highly overrated. If you want subtle horror, watch the original Haunting. End of story.
Labels: movie review
