Event

ROSEMARY'S BABY

(1968) dir Roman Polanski w/Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer [136 min; DCP]
Despite their fab new Upper West Side apartment in the venerable Dakota (doubling for the infamously storied "Bramford"), complete with eerily avuncular neighbors Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon (the latter in an Oscar-winning performance by turns hilarious and chilling), nice kid Mia Farrow's career-obsessed actor husband John Cassavetes is still looking for that big break. But then a Broadway lead looms when the star mysteriously goes blind, and Farrow gets in the family way after an evening of wild love-making but wait... was that hubby, or some sort of horned beast? Suddenly every harried mom-to-be's nightmare seems true, with Farrow getting no help even from her obstetricians. Horror-gimmick-meister William Castle (The Tingler) took his one shot at bigtime producing when he bought Ira Levin's bestseller, then only got to kibbitz when Paramount studio chief Robert (The Kid Stays in the Picture) Evans handed the directorial reins to Polish wunderkind Roman Polanski, who brought his penchant for no-exit situations and crumbling sanity amid banal settings (Knife in the Water, Cul-de-Sac, Repulsion) to mainstream, big-budget horror. Revitalizing and legitimizing a once-B-grade genre, ROSEMARY paved the way for future blockbusters like The Exorcist, Jaws, The Omen, and Alien. notes for the Film Forum, NYC

"! ROSEMARY'S BABY has lost none of its power to shock and awe!" Time Out New York