Rosemary's Baby (1968)

So many have seen this gem from so long ago that its themes are ingrained into the cultural mass consciousness. It came just a bit before films such as The Exorcist or The Omen made the idea of the birth of the Antichrist, that wee little tot of evil, a sort of cross-pollination between Christian Millinealism and Hollywood big-time cheese factory horror movie tripe. One wonders that one fed so much into the other--but it makes sense. The years of the middle-Sixties saw the rebirth of rebellion amongst agitated, anti-war, and psychedelic youth: Yippies, Weatherman, Timothy Leary and Abbie Hoffman, Vietnam, Watergate--could the Son of Perdition be far behind? Most believers were convinced he'd out-Hitler Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. Hollywood was there to provide the Dream Factory impetus behind the psychological undercurrent of spiritual anxiety. Regan MacNeil is puking pea soup in the mind's eye, in some celluloid hell that lasts forever. And then there's that The Omen thing, which I've never seen all the way through.

Rosemary's Baby, based on a novel by Ira Levin, is a haunted film in which I believe all of the cast except Mia Farrow is now dead. The exterior of the "Black Bramford", the posh if antiquated nexus of the Satanic doings, was the Dakota Arms where John Lennon was gunned down by Mark David Chapman. Lennon, the guy that wrote that song "Helter Skelter," off of the Beatles' double White Album. (That particular song which supposedly, according to the late prosecutor Vince Bugliosi, inspired Charles Manson to command his half-baked followers to go on a killing spree--one of the victims of which was the famous model/actress wife of Roman Polanski, the disgraced director of ...Rosemary's Baby. Methinks there was bad karma floating around here, like an undertaker whistling in the wind.)

Well, let's talk about the picture.

Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse (Mia Farrow and the late John Cassavetes) are a handsome, chic couple moving into the "Black Bramford" apartments, which has a long, Overlook Hotel-type history of murder and weird, Aleister Crowley-type guys getting lynched in the lobby. They move into the apartment while being shown around the place by character horror actor Elsiha Cook Jr. and decide to snap the place up even though it is dark, brooding, and even to the viewer seems curiously uninviting. They do a real fixer-up, make love on the floor, and have a picnic. Guy's a struggling actor, and Rosemary is a naive young waif of a thing that seems mousy, and awkward--both are friends with an old English mystery writer she calls 'Hutch" (Maurice Evans, who was also in Planet of the Apes).

(Or, no it was actually "boy's adventure" stories Hutch wrote.)

Hutch informs them over some cooked lamb about the Trent Sisters and their history of cannibalism in the eighteen hundreds, and of lynched warlock or Satanist Adrian Marcato. And all of this happened at the grand old residence they've just moved into. While making nookie, they hear what sounds like chanting coming from across the walls. Weird.

They meet their next-door neighbors, Minnie and Roman Castevet (silent film veterans Sydney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon) who invite them to dinner. They're a dignified old couple, with a house full of books. Blackmer is intelligent and charming; Minnie is more of a caricature of a fussy, nosey, old woman whose heavy Brooklyn dialect and personable, charming (if somewhat intrusive) manners, belie a quick intelligent subtext to her characterization, buried beneath and exposed at key points.

Although Guy is reticent to get "involved" with an old couple across the hall, they go to dinner at the Castevets (who formerly were caring for a street girl, a former junkie (Victoria Vetri) who jumped unaccountably to her death from an upstairs window to lie in bloody repose on the pavement below), and Rosemary follows Minnie into the kitchen while Roman and Guy...discuss something. And Guy has a curious expression on his face upon leaving. He's "going back over there tomorrow night," he informs his puzzled wife. "To hear some more," of, presumably, Roman (who is a much-traveled man) telling his great stories.

Rosemary wants to get pregnant. Guy wants to get rich and famous. His competition for an important role is unaccountably struck blind. Rosemary begins to have weird dreams about her Catholic upbringing. One night she dreams she is raped by some weird, reptilian creature (fans of David Icke and believers in his theories take note). It's a surreal scene aboard a boat that goes in and out of dream and reality with a bunch of old people (the Castevets are there) chanting, nude. "As long as she ate the mouse (mousse she means) she can't hear nor see, she's like dead, now sing!" Minnie commands a worried Guy.

Anyway, they're all devil worshippers.

Rosemary gets pregnant and sick. Hutch tries to warn her. He gets dead. The final pathway of the film is paranoia, with Rosemary reaching out to a doctor named Hill (the late Charles Grodin). It seems futile. There's a cameo with bad movie gimmick auteur William Castle, who provided much more low-quality goods in the form of films like Thirteen Ghosts and The Tingler (the latter starring Vincent Price), but, to tell you anymore would tip off the potential viewer to the ending. And this isn't so much an essay.

Suffice it to say, in the world of the witch cult, "God is dead! Hail SATAN! The year is ONE!" That last reference is to that so-Satanic year of 1966. (Which, incidentally, was when America's Church of Satan was legally incorporated.)

Mia Farrow is lovely and delicate like a condemned woman who is accused herself of witchcraft; like a medieval victim of the Inquisition locked away on bread and water in a cell, awaiting the hour of her burning. (Or dunking. Or hanging.) Cassavetes is a hip, sleazily charming hepcat from 1966, who occasionally gets loud with his meek little wifey, but seems likable and smart. And deceptive. Minnie and Roman are both memorable and perfect each in their own way, for the parts they're playing. The world spins on. Christopher Komeda's lullaby theme offers an eerie, haunting counterpoint to the wrangling, weird, jazzy, and experimental soundtrack, to the damnable doings and infernal goings-on that are heralding the coming of the Man of Sin. Or in this case, Baby of Sin.

The film marks an era, a time that may bring a sense of nostalgia to many who might still be clinging to memories of a different world than the one we suffer through presently. It has a surface of bourgeois naivety with a lurking subtext of occult horror and evil. In the end, we have to decide if it's satire, or if it's as serious as Satanic panic. As for me and My house, we will "serve the Lord..."

...A vodka blush, maybe.

(We didn't specify, either, which Lord, now did we?)