Sunday 23 October 2011

Rosemary's Baby

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Year:1968
Country of origin:USA
Director:Roman Polanski
Genre:Squeeze him out
Starring:Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer
Rating:4/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063522/
Tagline:Pray for Rosemary's Baby
Favourite line:"I dreamed someone was raping me. I think it was someone inhuman."

Creepy and intense, vaguely Ssssatanic cult offering from that most notorious of tabloid baiting perverts, Roman Polanski, this is effectively chilling, though mystifying in its presence in the top 200 movies of all time, at least if those God Fearing Cretins over at IMDB are to be believed.

The plottage:
TV and movie star Lothario Guy Woodhouse and his nymph like wife Rosemary move into a new dwelling in New Yoik, planning to embark on a life of unabashed married bliss. All goes well until Guy befriends the odd old neighbours from next door, a deliciously deviant elderly couple who couldn't be more Jewish if you stuck a Menorah up each of their arseholes and called them 'those Goldberg schmucks', soon after which Rosemary experiences a lucid dream involving much chanting, nudity, and beast like apparitions apparently impregnating her before, back in the real world, falling unexpectedly pregnant.
Well, nosy neighbour Minnie insists on supplying her with vitamin drinks, and her doctor seems alarmingly unconcerned about the blistering pains she is suffering during her carriage.
Could it be the neighbours are a hideous coven of witches and warlocks and, horror of horror, could it be The AntiChrist himself (bend ye on worthless knee, puny mortals) she carries in her Earthly womb?
Well, could it?
Eh?

Polanksi delivers a supercharged miasma of twitchy, maternal nerves interwoven with some genuinely eerie atmospherics, as well as the occasional line of dialogue to freeze the blood:
"I dreamed someone was raping me. I think it was someone inhuman."
Fantastically unsettling, whether it deserves its repute as one of the best films ever made was a question I still could not answer even as the credits rolled.
Nevertheless, this is pretty damn riveting, so I'm puzzled as to why I find it odd that it's rated so highly.
Heh, maybe I'm a raging Anti-Semite and am yet to figure it out......

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