Trash Palace Dumpster-- Bobbie's Best of the Bad: Rosemary's Baby (2014)

Title:  Rosemary's Baby

Year of Release—Film:  (2014/ TV)

Reviewer:  Bobbie 

The Devil made them do it.  What else can explain NBC's decision to remake...or retell...the tale of Ira Levin's bestselling book of the same title that was turned into the classic 1968 movie Rosemary's Baby starring Mia Farrow as guileless housewife Rosemary and her conniving would-be actor husband, Guy, played by John Cassavetes.

The story:

Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse move into the once elegant but now aging Dakota, a Manhattan apartment building.  Rosemary sets about remaking the apartment into a stylish home while Guy tries out for an off-Broadway play.  An older couple Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) and Minnie (Ruth Gordon) have a tragedy in their lives when their "ward" Terry (Victoria Verte) commits suicide and they befriend Guy and Rosemary.

During a dinner party, Guy is enamored by Roman's tales of far-away places and they begin a friendship that leaves Rosemary feeling odd man out.  Guy, by way of an apology, promises Rosemary that she would get the one thing she has been dreaming of...pregnancy!  During the romantic dinner planned to make this occur, Minnie brings over dessert..."a chocolate mouse...her specialty.”  After eating it, Rosemary feels drugged and passes out.  She begins dreaming about boating with President Kennedy and the Pope.  Suddenly, the dream becomes a nightmare of Rosemary being raped by Satan as a coven of witches chant beside the bed.

The next morning Rosemary wakes up badly scratched, with Guy confessing he "didn't want to miss baby night" so he had gone ahead with sex even though Rosemary was unconscious.  Soon, Rosemary learns she's pregnant and they celebrate the good news with their new and increasingly intrusive friends, the Castevets.  More good news follows as Guy learns he's landed the lead role in the play that would certainly make him a star!  However, not all is well as Rosemary becomes sick and is in a great deal of pelvic pain.  Her OB/GYN, Dr. Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy) assures her that it is just stiff joints and has Minnie make Rosemary a daily vitamin drink.

However, as the months pass, Rosemary's pain increases until she is practically bed-ridden, now paranoid about Guy close connections with their next-door neighbors, the Castevets!  Was the nightmare really just a nightmare?  Moreover, why does Rosemary hear chanting and flute plying from the Castevet's apartment?  What did Rosemary's friend, Hutch (Maurice Evens), mean when he instructed from his deathbed that Rosemary be given a book titled All of Them Witches?  And what about her husband's sudden success on stage?  Was it a conspiracy against Rosemary?  Or is it about her baby?  For those who have been living under a rock or in a cave for the past 40 years and have never read Ira Levin's best-selling novel or seen the Oscar-winning and enormously successful movie or even the 2014 retelling of it, I'll not give spoilers.

What made the 1968 movie was the sense of creeping horror as the viewer is drawn along with Rosemary's dawning realization that something isn't right in her World.  However, it was Roman Polanski's riveting style as director that gives Rosemary's Baby it's spooky atmosphere and morbid humor as he slowly but surely ratchets up the tension and horror.  Film critic Roger Ebert wrote in his June 29, 1968 review “...the brilliance of the film comes more from Polanski's direction, and from a series of genuinely inspired performances...” and “the best thing that can be said about the film, I think, is that it works.  Polanski has taken a most difficult situation and made it believable, right up to the end.  In this sense, he even outdoes Hitchcock.  Both ‘Rosemary's Baby’ and Hitchcock's classic ‘Suspicion’ are about wives, deeply in love, who are gradually forced to suspect the most sinister and improbable things about their husbands.”  The original Rosemary's Baby sits comfortably at number 9 on the AFI 100 Years...100 Thrills list.

Now let's examine 2014 re-telling of this story...what worked ... and what didn't.  This new version, penned by Scott Abbot and James Wong, radically updates the Ira Levin novel.  This time around, Rosemary (Zoe Saldana) is a ballet dancer and sole breadwinner for herself and her husband Guy (Patrick J. Adams).  After a miscarriage, she and Guy move to Paris where he has been offered a position as a teacher at the Sorbonne.  After an apartment fire leaves them homeless, they are invited by their new elitist friends, Roman Castevet (Jason Isaacs) and his wife Marguax (Carol Bouquet) to live in the Castevet's exclusive private apartment complex.  In the Polanski film, the devils are an old couple in a dusty Manhattan building.  In the newer version, Roman and Marguax are younger, more glamorous, seductive and extremely wealthy.  One can see that they would think everything has it's price.  Guy has what they want.  A vessel for Satan's unborn child!  A child he is willing to sell, if the price is right!  While Saldana played her part very convincingly, Patrick Adams played Guy as blandly as vanilla ice cream.  Not very convincing and at one point actually acted guilty about his part in the conspiracy and offered to flee Paris with Rosemary.  That ruined the whole plot.  In addition, if you watched any of the commercials for the mini-series, you might have noticed that all of them were shots from the second part, and wondered, ‘why’?  The answer is that the first part was as stagnant as pond water.  I could almost hear Joel singing, “Slow the plot down, boys … Slow the plot down!”  Disappointing!

Polish-born director Agnieszka Holland explains in a May 8, 2014 interview for the New York Times “my Rosemary is much more willful and stronger.”  But she added that Rosemary remains a victim to the nature of motherhood, “dependent on the people who decide, instead of her, what to do with her body.  The notion of postnatal and prenatal depression, and the feeling that you don’t own yourself anymore, that you’re not yourself anymore, it’s a quite important subject of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’.” 

The 2014 version is far more gory than the original, replacing the chicken heart Mia chews on with a human heart.  In the 1968 version, Guy gets the lead in the play because the other candidate went blind.  In the 2014 version, Guy's competition for the teaching position goes crazy during the job interview and attacks the interviewer with a letter opener before slicing her own throat.

And while all that red might look interesting against the somber, almost blue and white film, it loses the psychological horror to replace it with rivers of gore.  Bad move.  The original pulled the audience along with Rosemary; we shared her increasing sense of dread, realizing that only when Rosemary knew, we'd know!  And to borrow a line from late-director Dave Friedman, the remake was all sizzle and no steak.  But, the worst part of this is that audience members might be put off watching the original Rosemary's Baby or reading Ira Levin's marvelous book.  And therein lays the real shame.

Bobbie

Junkyardfilm.com's Moldy Oldie Movie of the Month: I SAW WHAT YOU DID

Title:  I SAW WHAT YOU DID

Year of Release—Film:  1965

Teens Libby (Andy Garrett) and Kit (Sara Lane) are alone in a remote house, babysitting Libby's younger sister, when they decide to play phone pranks.  After several calls, they reach a Steve Marek (John Ireland); little knowing that he's just murdered his trampy wife in the shower ala PSYCHO.  When he hears the girls whisper, "I saw what you did and I know who you are,” he panics, quickly burying his dead wife's body in the woods.  Desperate to find out who'd seen his uxoricide (look it up!), little does he realize his amorous neighbor, Amy Nelson (Joan Crawford) did witness the murder.  And Amy is not above using that information to force Steve into marriage.

Libby decides to phone Steve again and he desperately begs to see her.  Amy, over-hearing the conversation, angrily confronts Steve, warning him against playing games with her.  Libby, deciding that Steve has a sexy voice, persuades Kit and her sister into going along for a quick peek at Steve.  Once there, Libby is attacked by Amy who angrily tears the car's registration off the steering column and warns Libby to stay away from her man.  Amy, entering the house, is confronted by Steve who knifes her to death before discovering the car's registration in her hand.  Steve now knows who saw what he did and, wanting to silence Libby forever, goes to the house where the frightened teens are hiding.  Will multiple-murderer Steve claim more victims?  Will the girls pay a heavy penalty for a silly prank?

I SAW WHAT YOU DID is a moody little low-budget gem with some effective scenes and appropriate spooky lighting and effects.  Joan, fresh from STRAIT-JACKET, another Castle film, has more a cameo role in this but plays her small part to the hilt.  A savvy William Castle allegedly paid Joan $50,000 for four days work so he could prominently display her name on the posters.  John Ireland is his typical wooden self.  The two teen girls are awful actresses which probably explains why this is their only credit.  The opening and closing beach-movie theme music didn't fit the mood of this at all but must have been a hit among teens.

William Castle made a name for himself featuring films that had over-the-top gimmicks and promotions.  He began working with Orson Wells in radio and directed his first stage play at age 18.  In the early 40's, he went to Hollywood where directed mostly low-budget pot-boilers and Westerns for Columbia Studios but it wasn't until 1959 that he directed his first gimmick-laden film, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL.  Filmed in "Emergo,” an inflated glow-in-the-dark skeleton would fly over the audience's heads.  While this didn't have the audience reaction Castle hoped it would (causing members to throw candy boxes and soft-drink cups at the skeleton rather than being frightened), it became a hit and, later that year Castle followed it up with TINGLER starring Vincent Price.  TINGLER was filmed in "Percepto" and during the final scene, the audience members were instructed to "Scream!  Scream for your lives!" as certain seats equipped with large joy-buzzers that would startle selected audience members.  (John Goodman used a similar gimmick in the movie MATINEE, a movie loosely based on Castle's life.)

13 GHOSTS, released in 1960, was filmed in "Illusion-O.”  Audience members were handed strips of red and blue cellophane and could look through the strips to see frightening images...or, if too cowardly, could refrain.  1961 saw HOMICIDAL in which Castle used a "Fright break" with a 45 second timer that enabled frightened audience members time to leave the theater with a full money-back guarantee.  In order to make sure no one would see the finish, then come back and demand their refund, Castle had different colored tickets printed for each show.  MR. SARDONICUS was Castle's next offering.  Near the end if this film, a short insert would be shown in which Castle would ask the audience to vote on whether or not the villain would die.  Each member was given a thumb card to hold up for life or down for death.  Then the ending was shown.  However, as no participant ever voted for mercy, he filmed only one ending.

ZOTZ was Castle's next film and audience members were given a gold "coin" which did absolutely nothing.  To publicize 13 FRIGHTENED GIRLS, he held a world-wide search for the 13 girls who appeared in the film.  Advised by his financial advisors to lose the gimmicks, he instead chose star Joan Crawford for STRAIT-JACKET (1964).  However, a showman to the bitter end, shortly before the film's release, Castle had cardboard axes made and handed out with each ticket sold.  I SAW WHAT YOU DID featured giant plastic telephones but the gimmick was quickly quashed when the telephone company complained about a rash of prank calls.  Instead, seat belts were attached to the theater seats to keep patrons from bolting in fear.  In his final gimmick movie, BUG, he had a million dollar life insurance policy written up for the movie's star, "Hercules" the cockroach.

But, showman William Castle shouldn't just be remembered for his gimmick movies.  PROJECT X made in 1968, is a sci-fi movie that predicts events such as China becoming a super-power on par with the USA and electronic cigarettes, which have become a reality.  SHANKS (1974), a fantasy film and Castle's final film, stars famous mime Marcel Marceau in a duel-role, one of which is a speaking part.  But, the film for which Castle will be best remembered is ROSEMARY'S BABY.  Filmed in 1968, it won a Best Supporting Oscar for Ruth Gordon as Minnie Castevet, a member of a Devil-worshipping cult whose members terrorize and victimize pregnant neighbor Rosemary.  William Castle owned the rights to Ira Levin's popular book of the same title and wanted to direct it.  However, Roman Polanski was ultimately handed the reins and Castle had to settle for Producer credits.  Castle also coveted the Dr. Sapirstein role but lost out to veteran actor Ralph Bellamy.  Castle was offered a small, non-speaking role as "man outside phone booth.”  Tony Curtis, who died Sept. 29, 2010, has an off-screen role as the voice of blinded actor Donald Baumgart.  If Mia Farrow seems confused during the scene where she phones Donald, that's not good acting!  She was trying to figure out why she recognized the voice.  She had not been let in on the gag!

William Castle died at age 63 in Los Angeles, CA, on May 31, 1977 after a long career spanning four decades.  We should all be thankful for and give thanks to America's "King of Gimmicks.”  Without his sense of gentle humor, horror movies just wouldn't be the same.

MSTJunkie