Cast:
Mia Farrow (Rosemary Woodhouse), John Cassavetes (Guy Woodhouse), Ruth Gordon (Minnie Castevet), Sidney Blackmer (Roman Castevet), Maurice Evans (Hutch), Ralph Bellamy (Dr. Abraham Sapirstein), Angela Dorian (Terry Gionoffrio), Patsy Kelly (Laura-Louise McBirney), Elisha Cook Jr (Mr. Nicklas), Emmaline Henry (Elise Dunstan), and Charles Grodin (Dr. Hill) Written for the Screen and Directed by Roman Polanski (#631 - Chinatown)
Review:
Ira Levin was a prolific writer in his day before and after Rosemary's Baby. He had written the 1953 novel A Kiss Before Dying and the play adaptation of No Time for Sergeants. By the 1960s, he had come up with the reasoning that the most suspenseful part of a horror story was "before, not after, the horror appears" and came up with a fetus as the idea for said target. Dealing with a flop in the mid 1960s on Broadway, Levin returned to the idea and reasoned that between making a fetus with impregnation by aliens or the Devil, one basically was stuck with the latter because The Midwich Cuckoos already had dealt with aliens and children. The resulting book (worked over starting in 1965) ended up being so interesting that director William Castle mortgaged his house to buy the rights for the book before it was even published (which occurred in March 1967), as Castle was that confident in a book even in gallery proof form was the one that would make a fine film, and the book ended up as one of the most noted horror novels of its decade. While Paramount Pictures was interested in doing the film, studio head Robert Evans insisted that Castle serve only as producer while having Roman Polanski as director. The French-born director had grown up in Poland and survived the brunt of the Holocaust to study at the National Film School in Łódź before he became a feature director with Knife in the Water (1962). His next three films, made in Britain, involved either horror or thriller aspects with Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-Sac (1966), and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). This was the first Hollywood feature for the director, which he also wrote the screenplay that hewed fairly close to the book in several respects. The film was a hit, but Castle dealt with kidney problems after the release that ailed him for a time when he should have basked in the moment of being right. Famously, the ending of the novel/film got William Peter Blatty in a twist that saw him get onto the road to doing his own book about demons in people with The Exorcist (1971). A television film that served as a "sequel" came with Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976). Levin saw a variety of his books and plays turned into films over the years, such as The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil, and Deathtrap. In 1997, he wrote a follow-up book with Son of Rosemary. A TV miniseries adaptation of the original novel alongside the sequel book happened in 2014.
Do you ever watch a movie and have that feeling in your stomach that a film with a high reputation really is "just good, not great"? Oh, it happens sometimes (such as the overrated Hereditary or The Invisible Man [2020]), where a film seems to ride really hard on being disturbing in the realm of overt possibilities and so and so on (that, and relying on a short haircut that inspires a chuckle each time I see it). It is amusing that Paramount Pictures distributed this film and Targets in the same year when it comes to horror films hinging in plausibility and the cheaper production (and the one screwed over in marketing) outclasses the former when it comes to flat out getting to the damn point (I find it strangely amusing that the coven is left to blinding actors and being 98% effective in making a man go into a coma in their plans of the whatever). Plus, it doesn't seem to drag its runtime unlike the 137 minutes present here. Sometimes I wondered what would have been if Castle (you know, the guy behind productions such as The Night Walker [1964]) was allowed to have made the film within his own ideas rather than just be the producer. Don't get me wrong, the movie is good and all of the things that come with trying to build suspense with something that you have a good grasp is going wrong earlier than the film believes the viewer thinks they will figure that out. But hey, the film itself, particularly with its one key sequence of lady in bed seeing what she sees and hears in the dark, does make a quality impression in the terror of life under siege to others barging into their lives and their homes. The mental and physical pain that comes out in the film makes for an experience that requires a presence to make it more than words, and it is Farrow (best known previously for her two years on the soap opera Peyton Place in the mid-1960s) that lifts the film as well as one can do with making an involving lead that we can feel for in the realm of reacting to ever-shifting terror (it might seem interesting that a horror film got Academy Award nominations for acting, until you realize Gordon received one and won while Farrow didn't even get a nomination). Gordon of course is effective in that shroud of uneasy weirdness that could only inspire the best type of paranoia and curiosity to go with Blackberry. Cassavetes makes an assuring accomplice, one who is assured even in the face of pathetic qualities that only could come from this (complete with an apt reaction at the end). Evans and Bellamy are on opposite sides of the coin in veteran presences that work out well against Farrow in the shades of doubt and query. In general, the film does work out pretty well in the idea of terror lurking around and possibly inside one's own self, complete with worthy staging to make it feel real. Of course, the ending is a bit on the offbeat side (or for others, perhaps sacrilegious), but as a moment of total acceptance of the scenario that arises from ambition in the face of people that call themselves human, it works. As a whole, it isn't nearly the classic that others might wish to bestow when compared to various others in the 1960s for horror, but it is watchable all the way through with a carefully crafted story that is undoubtedly on there for any horror person to watch at least once.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
Next: Anthology horror, double-packed.
