We watched Rosemary’s Baby last night on the MeTV channel and this was the first time we’ve seen this 1968 film directed by Roman Polanski and starring Mia Farrow as Rosemary Woodhouse and John Cassavetes as Guy Woodhouse. I’m not sure what the business was with Flip Wilson playing Geraldine Jones who jumped into several scenes exclaiming “The devil made me do it!” every single time Rosemary drank that awful milkshake with green stuff in it.
Anyway, Ruth Gordon played Minnie Castavet, Sidney Blackmer played her husband Roman Castavet, Maurice Evans as Hutch, and Ralph Bellamy as Dr. Sapirstein. Gordon won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Flip Wilson did not win an award.
I didn’t know there was a sequel to the original novel of the same name written by Ira Levin in 1967. He published “Yo, Adrian” in the late 1990s, and that was made into a movie starring Sylvester Stallone who beat the living crap out of Satan in the 3rd round in Madison Square Garden.
The hotel where the Woodhouses lived was called the Bramford, which is fictional. The outside picture of it is the historic Dakota where John Lennon was murdered. Interior shots were in Paramount studio. Levin’s book places the action at the Wyoming Apartments, which is probably haunted, and after I checked the list of places Zak Bagans and his crew of Ghost Adventures went, it was not on the list, so I guess they were too scared to investigate it.
As for the show, Guy, at first a marginally employed actor and Rosemary, a more or less devout Catholic, settle into this apartment after they remove junk like the horse’s head in the master bedroom. Pretty soon, they get bugged by their kooky neighbors, the Castavets, who artfully hide the horns on their heads by wearing tin foil hats. Minnie gives Rosemary a necklace with a hollow bauble containing something that definitely does not smell like patchouli. Despite the fact that it stinks to high heaven (which doesn’t wake up any archangels for some reason), Rosemary wears this everywhere.
Guy starts to get job offers to play major roles in soap operas like Dark Shadows, which at first seems pretty innocent until Guy says to Rosemary “Let’s get pregnant!” revealing his poor grasp of basic human anatomy. When Rosemay gets pregnant, and Guy recovers from a temporary episode of Couvade Syndrome (sympathetic pregnancy), things start looking more nightmarish.
Soon, Minnie and her friends start barging into the apartment where Rosemary and Guy live and just plop down on the sofa and start knitting what look like little devil diapers. And then Dr. Sapirstein starts managing Rosemary’s pregnancy, prescribing evil-smelling potions while Minnie feeds her herbs and spices that don’t belong in fried chicken, let alone in a pregnant lady. Hutch meets with a sudden illness ending in dire consequences when he starts researching what might be Rosemary’s real problem.
This leads to a nightmarish string of events which is inappropriate for young and sensitive people to view. People have strong feelings about it for various reasons. Although Roger Ebert gave it a favorable review, Sena would rate it abysmally low on any scale, including mine which is absolutely meaningless because I don’t review movies—I just horse around.
One thing I will say about this film is that I didn’t get the ending. Anyhow, I give it a 3/5 Shrilling Chicken Rating.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 