Review – Rosemary’s Baby

This is one of the oddest combinations ever to produce an effective horror movie. Start with Ira Levin’s novel about poor, clueless Rosemary Woodhouse, duped by her simpering husband and the coven of old folks next door into bearing Satan’s baby. Cast Mia Farrow as Rosemary, and add the normally quaint and charming Ruth Gordon as one of the witches. Let outré Eastern European director Roman Polanski apply his own unique visual touches. Then to top it all off, let William Castle – who has a brief cameo outside a phone booth – produce. Maybe Percepto (first introduced by Castle’s The Tingler) would have been the perfect additional touch to the famous Farrow/Devil rape sequence. Seriously though, the film is a little dated, but it nonetheless retains much of its power to chill, particularly if watched in the right conditions (late at night, lights off and all those clichés). Mildly amusing