Rent Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Devil of a good movie - Rosemary's Baby review by AS

No hands coming through walls, no faces melting, no insects pouring out of ears, no hooded figures in the corner. But this is a very disturbing movie. Mia Farrow grows increasingly paranoid over the actions of her neighbours. Are they really just cosy elderly folk? Is she actually going nuts? This was the one that led the way, spawning a thousand rip-offs, send-ups and copies; some of them good, most of them rubbish. Polanski, as always, shows the art of subtle directing. Classic.

Arthouse Horror (spoiler). - Rosemary's Baby review by Steve

The film that spawned a decade of horrors about the birth of an antichrist. It draws on the classic premise of psychological terror, that you can never be sure whether the horrific events are actually happening or if they are the dubious fantasies of a vulnerable, disintegrating mind.

Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and her actor husband (John Cassavetes) move into an apartment intending to start a family. He falls in with the elderly kooks next door (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer) just as his career starts to turn around. When Rosemary conceives, she suspects that the neighbours are satanists and her husband has sold them her reproductive capacity.

This was Roman Polanski's American debut. He is faithful to Ira Levin's novel which is a problem as the set up is slow and there is a lot of exposition. But once baby is on board, is suspenseful and psychologically twisted. The coven is a support cast of old Hollywood faces. You know Rosemary is in trouble when even Ralph Bellamy is in league with the devil!

Cassavetes is terrifically oppressive as the ambitious, mercenary husband. Mia is well cast as the fragile, neurotic mum-to-be. In the end, we are persuaded that this is really happening and Rosemary has been raped by satan. Which makes it very dark indeed. Especially when she eventually shows interest in nurturing the demon baby.

Classic American Horror - Rosemary's Baby review by GI

Director Roman Polanski's seminal horror classic delves deep into the existential fears that one can have about trust and about whether the people around us are genuine or not. This slow building film of dread remains powerful and has hardly been diminished by the plethora of more visually shocking horror movies that followed. The fact that Polanski hints at events and shows just mere glimpses of what Rosemary goes through is where the power of the film lies. Rosemary (Mia Farrow), a naïve catholic girl, and her struggling actor husband, Guy (John Cassavetes) move into an old, dark New York apartment building and plan to start a family. They are soon befriended by the elderly eccentric neighbours (Ruth Gordon & Sidney Blackmer) who have a host of equally weird friends. After a night of very bad dreams Rosemary finds she is pregnant and soon under the control of the neighbours and a sinister doctor. It turns out of course she has been raped by the Devil conjured up by the coven of her fellow tenants and her husband has agreed in return for success as an actor. The themes of trust, isolation and the corruption of family are at the centre of this film and Farrow is first rate here and should have received an award for her performance. Polanski has taken a fairly pulpy novel and faithfully adapted it but added nuances and a growing sense of suspense that has made this film a key one on the horror genre. Some may find the film anti-climactic in the decisions to show very little of monstrous although the rape scene is still shocking today and very risqué for its time. This is certainly a film that you should check out if you've not seen it as it ranks as one of the best of American horror films.