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Man, people sure are obsessed with the idea of things tempting people to worship Satan, aren’t they? Rock music makes you worship Satan, Metal music makes you worship Satan, Jazz, marijuana, alcohol, video games, comic books, movies, dancing, sex, not voting Republican, Harry Potter, Pokemon, Dungeons & Dragons, vaccinating your child from deadly infectious diseases, being an African-American president, it seems like the only way not to supposedly spend an eternity in hell is to spend your entire life in fearful prayer while living in a thatched-roof hut. And since no one has being doing that since the 16th century I guess we all better hope that Christianity isn’t real, just so we all don’t end up burning in a lake of fire. Because if you follow a belief system when an omnipotent deity gives you all free will only to punish you for-fucking-ever when you don’t follow his arbitrary set of rules, you can’t expect him to consider society’s value shifts over time.
Sorry. I’m a little peeved about this one.
From the late 60s to the mid 70s, three movies about Ol’ Scratch were released in theaters, and all three were enormous commercial and critical successes. Those movies were, of course, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (Academy Award winner for Best Writing Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound Mixing, Golden Globe Award winner for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress and Best Screenplay), Richard Donner’s The Omen (Academy Award winner for Best Original Score, BAFTA Award winner for Best Supporting Actress, Golden Globe Award Winner for Best Acting Debut) and of course Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress, Golden Globe Award winner for Best Supporting Actress), which came first in 1968. Each one featured a child, baby or older, who by some otherworldly shenanigans is connected with the Devil, a single character who knows what’s up and who none of the other characters believe, and a couple people dying due to demonic magical stuff. I guess thousands of people dying in the South Pacific made people really hungry for supernatural bullshit in their movies.
I wish I had the time to really dig into an analysis for Rosemary’s Baby, but I’m pressed for time, so I’ll try to keep it brief: This movie pissed me off. Roman Polanski is a great director, the movie looks good, the cast does excellently, you get to see Mia Farrow’s tits, it’s a great experience at first. Once that ending came around though, and Polanski built it up a snail’s pace, I couldn’t help but feel that I sat in front of a screen for two hours for fucking nothing. Anything I could have said about the themes of the movie, of Polanski’s more avant-garde filmmaking style as compared to Friedkin and Donner, it all gets washed away because I can’t stop thinking about that fucking ending and the feeling that I wasted my time watching this when I could have been reviewing some other film for the Marathon that I might have enjoyed, like Nightcrawler or M. It’s the same kind of feeling I got from The Seduction of Dr. Fugazzi, but while that movie was pure uncut shit, Rosemary’s Baby leaves me with an overwhelming sense of frustration and disappointment that you only really get from a movie that you expected great things from. We all know what that’s like.
Of course I’m just one guy, and Rosemary’s Baby is one of the most well-regarded films in movie history, so you should probably judge for yourself. I guess I can recommend it on a historical basis, since it’s one of the few times that a horror movie has been met with mainstream critical approval. I don’t know how many people watch movies on Halloween for their historical context though, and I don’t know how many people would sit down and watch a movie about a woman’s pregnancy anxiety with their friends. Maybe that’s what the kids do nowadays instead of buying Furby’s.
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