Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Written and directed by Roman Polanski

From what I could pick up from looking up at the screen every few minutes, the story centers on a young couple who move into a recently vacated Manhattan apartment, and then spooky things start to happen. As in many movies like this, the setup is genuinely intriguing and mysterious. For instance, the couple moves in to find a heavy armoire in front of a closet door, when the previous resident, an elderly lady, couldn't have possibly moved it there. Why was it there? We shall find out.

After seeming hours of exposition, things start to get evil as their relationship with their aged next-door neighbors intensifies. I wasn't exactly paying attention to what was happening but I think there was some chanting. In a bizarre 70s-esque demonic rape sequence, Rosemary becomes pregnant with Rosemary's Baby.

Then she starts to get suspicious and perceives there to be a conspiracy to take her baby from her, involving her husband Guy, her doctor, her neighbors, and more old people. Eventually she births the baby and the conspirators tell her that it died.

At the end she finally gets up out of bed, finds a secret passage in the closet, and emerges into the adjacent apartment to find some sort of satanic baby shower going on. They never show the baby, but I guess it's supposed to have horns or red eyes or something, and there is an upside-down cross hanging over the crib.

The train fully derails when the old guy stands up and shouts "praise Satan!" or something like that, while everyone else joins him in diabolic prayer. It might as well have been an episode of "Night Gallery."

I thought this was supposed to be one of the "scariest movies ever." This is not so. It is certainly good at the beginning, albeit slow. I really don't give a shit about a director's body of work, but Roman Polanski also directed The Ninth Gate, a far better, yet similar film. So if you only have three dollars and you must watch a Roman Polanski film or else they'll kill your daughter, rent the latter instead. Ah, what do you care, that little bitch is a whore anyway.

Review by Innocent Pope Innocent