Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Grade: A
Cast: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Charles Grodin, and Ralph Bellamy
Director: Roman Polanski
Rated R for violence, language, nudity, and strong adult themes


"Rosemary's Baby" is probably the scariest movie ever made--or at least the most likely to induce paranoia. I wouldn’t show it to women, either. Or children. Or the squeamish. Yep, "Rosemary's Baby," even coming from the fairly tame age of 1968, is a film of intense psychological discomfort, and it features a disorienting rape scene that is all the more terrifying because one of the major players in it is Satan.

Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and her new husband, struggling actor Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) have just moved into a new apartment. One night, they are invited to dinner by an extremely nosy couple, Minnie (Ruth Gordon, who won an Oscar for this role) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer, also excellent). Reluctant to go at first, they arrive, pretend to enjoy the food they have been served, and engage in awkward conversation. When the two get home, and Rosemary starts to put down the couple, Guy subtly stands up for them, claiming that Roman had some very interesting stories to tell, and that he’s going back the next day to hear more. This goes on for quite a while, and finally Guy tells Rosemary that he would like to have a baby. She is ecstatic, and they choose a night when they want to…create the baby. After dinner, though, she seems to be drugged, and her husband takes her to bed, telling her they’ll do it another night.

She then has a terrifying and graphic dream (?) in which someone, an unworldly creature, is raping her. She wakes up the next day, reluctantly tries to shake it off, and soon realizes she was pregnant. Her husband gives an excuse (he says he had sex with her after he put her to bed), but she doesn’t exactly buy it, and odd things start happening. Roman and Minnie basically force her to change from the reliable Dr. Hill (Charles Grodin) to the strange Dr. Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy), whose methods are more than a little out of the ordinary. A friend, who wants to help her, suddenly dies of unknown causes. Rosemary starts to experience pains. As the neighbor’s nosy characteristics get more and more in the way, Rosemary starts to fear for the health of her baby. The payoff is brilliant, shock inducing, and dreadfully, in its own messed up way, spiritual. To see the film is to see a perfect horror movie: nothing scary is happening, but you are still scared out of your pants.

When, in the film’s aforementioned climax, it is revealed that, in exchange for a good acting career, Guy has given Satan permission to use Rosemary as the mother of his baby, it’s a terrifying twist of events. We have been led to believe throughout the whole movie that the group of people that have been acting oddly since Rosemary’s pregnancy became public are out to get Rosemary and her baby. We are led to think that because that’s what Rosemary thinks, and it kind of makes sense in a way, from her perspective.

Is the film, with its group of devil worshipers, sacrilegious? No. It merely imagines a complete reversal of the story of Mary, with Rosemary in her place, and Lucifer in God’s. If you are Catholic, and have been brought up to believe the story of Mary, this turn of events is all the more terrifying.

Speaking of terrifying, it would make sense if I stopped with my notions about the plot and spoke about why the film is so darn scary. As I have said before, nothing scary happens, yet everything in the film’s paranoid atmosphere hints at an unknown, uneasy dread that is genuinely nightmare inducing. Mia Farrow’s wide awake, pitch perfect performance, with its quiet sense of slowly building fear, automatically sets us up into the position where it would be hard *not* to sympathize with her character. All the other performances are worth mentioning, but since the huge ensemble cast is so strong, I’ll choose the only other great one: Ruth Gordon. Her Oscar was deserved.

Movies like this are what should be called the scariest of all time. This one in particular is currently near the top of my list, if I have one. The Exorcist usually gets that honor. It’s nearly as well made as this, but it lacks some of "Rosemary's Baby"’s tension. What is so great about the movie is that it doesn’t rely on special effects (coughExorcistcough); when the big moment comes (Rosemary, upon first seeing her baby, cries, “What did you do to its eyes?” to which Roman, in the film’s best line, replies “He’s got his father’s eyes…”), we don’t see anything, whereas psychological films like "Rear Window," "The Birds," and even "The Exorcist" screwed up by doing the exact opposite. This movie’s a keeper, if you can muster the bravery to survive a repeat viewing.


-Alex, June 2002