31 DAYS OF HORROR 2023 -Day 4: LOOK WHAT'S HAPPENED TO ROSEMARY'S BABY (1976)

"Arise, o mime of Satan... ARISE!!!"

 

1968's ROSEMARY'S BABY is about as close to perfection as a movie can get, and it's been hailed as a masterpiece of the horror genre for just shy of fifty years. Its open ending left the audience wanting more, but what we got was immensely satisfying, so it was best left where it was. But then came the 1970's and the era of cheap and sleazy made-for-TV movies that provided exploitation and horror thrills without the viewer having to leave their home and shell out the price of a movie ticket. There were a few memorable examples of the trend, but the majority of made-for-TV flicks were utter schlock, an estimation that is rather more kind than the wretched lot deserves. So who in their right mind would think it was a good idea to craft a sequel to a genuine classic as a product of a sausage factory of bad 1970's network TV fare? Surely, nothing good could come of that, and sure enough, nothing did.

The film is divided into three sections: 

The Book of Rosemary.  

Oscar-winner Patty Duke steps in for Mia Farrow (who had the good sense not to get involved with this).

 We open eight years after the climax of ROSEMARY'S BABY, and we find Rosemary (now played by Oscar-winner Patty Duke) and devil-spawn Adrian living within the smothering clutches of the original film's old fogey satanic coven. Ruth Gordon returns as Minnie Castevet, while Ray Milland replaces Sidney Blackmer as Roman Castevet, and the talents of both are utterly wasted as their coven leader characters are reduced to cartoonish caricatures who would have fit in well in any given installment of SCOOBY-DOO...WHERE ARE YOU? Anyway, a downtrodden Rosemary escapes from the coven's enclave, promising to take Adrian (whom she calls Andy) away to someplace nice, where it's always sunny and never dark. THe coven, however, ain't having that, so Roman calls up Guy Woodhouse (George Maharis, replacing John Cassavetes), the rat bastard who sold Rosemary out as Satan's broodmare in the first place, and tells him to expect his estranged wife to drop in with the child. Fleeing by charter bus, mother and son take the opportunity to call Guy during a roadside rest stop, and while Rosemary demands money from Guy (whose wealth and success is due to him pimping Rosemary out to the Devil), threatening to kill her son if she does not get the cash, the boy is bullied by a group of asshole kids, so he snaps and attacks them in a fit of red-eyed demonic fury. Rosemary and the boy are herded away from the mayhem by Marjean (Tina Louise), a hooker who plies her trade at the bus station, but Marjean is immediately taken over and controlled by the coven, and through her efforts Rosemary ends up on a one-way bus ride (in a bus with no driver) to what one can guess is Hell. Adrian is then dropped into Marjean's car and the pair make their way back to the coven. Roman decides that living in dark seclusion like a mushroom is no good for Adrian, so from then on he must live as part of the light as well.

The Book of Adrian.  

We skip ahead by over 20 years, and the now adult Adrian (Stephen McHattie) lives as Marjean's ward at a casino that she runs on some barren roadside. As he nears his 30th birthday, Roman and Minnie show up again to note that Jesus didn't get his powers until he turned 30, so now it's time for Adrian to be "blooded" — translation: he must kill an innocent — in order for his diabolical powers to manifest. Roman plans to make a big thing out of it, inviting Guy and the rest of the coven for the ritual, and on the big night, Minnie drugs Adrian and has him prepared with ritual face paint and jazz dance unitard that makes him look like he escaped from a roadshow production of GODSPELL, and soon makes his way onto the casino's dance floor, where a stereotypical '70's psychedelic band plays a hypnotic rhythm. All of this builds to what we think will be Adrian going full-on Devilman, but instead all he does is flail about among the dance floor revelers and eventually go outside to pass out in the dirt after Guy electrocutes Adrian's wholesome best friend. In other words, the ritual is a failure and fuck all happens.

The Book of Andrew.

Ride 'em, cowgirl!!!

We then skip forward by three years and find Adrian in a mental institution. After the failure of the ritual, he becomes comatose and is only just starting to come out of it. Plagued by dim memories of his mother and being called "Andrew" when he was little, he is befriended by one of the staff's doctors (Donna Mills), who helps him escape. Convinced the coven still has plans for him despite being a washout in the son of Satan department, Adrian and the doctor hole up in a motel, where she drugs him and reveals herself as a member of the cult. They do indeed have plans for him, specifically having the doctor impregnate herself with Adrian's seed, thus ensuring the birth of a girl child who will hopefully succeed where Adrian failed. Once the deed is done, Adrian staggers outside and is nearly run over by guy, who has been pressured by the coven to kill our protagonist. Instead, guy strikes the doctor, crashing his car and killing himself in the process. Adrian then runs off into the night along a highway, off to who knows what fate. The last thing we see is Roman and Minnie again, passing themselves off as the doctor's grandparents and being told by an ER physician that the doctor survived the car crash and she will have a perfectly healthy pregnancy. The credits roll over images of the baby being born, thus portending a sequel that thankfully never came.

Oooooh, scary... NOT.

LOOK WHAT'S HAPPENED TO ROSEMARY'S BABY is an utterly unmemorable dud that's not even so bad it's good. It's stupid, boring, not scary in the least, and it utterly squanders its potential. All the buildup of Adrian ultimately manifesting into a world-ending entity amounts to absolutely nothing, with him looking like any random '70's-era burnout who's staggering home along along a highway after eight tabs of acid at an Allman brothers festival show. Roman and Minnie are now mustache-twirling caricatures of themselves, possessing none of the extremely effective and subtle menace that they wielded in the original film. Plus, exactly how fucking old are they? They were at least in their seventies in the first film, so by the end of this sequel they would have to be around one-hundred years old, and they are still going strong at the end. Diabolically-granted delayed aging? Whatever the case, they just came off as ridiculous.

The script does none of the actors any favors, especially not Oscar-winners Patty Duke, Ray Milland, and Ruth Gordon, and the whole thing looks and feels like any one of the legion of cheapjack '70's teevee shows filled with fast cars, dusty Californian back roads, and point-and-shoot pedestrian direction. There is no artistry to be had here — admittedly, Roman Polanski is a hard act to follow — and all that we get is a colossal bore and a waste of time. ROSEMARY'S BABY was my favorite horror movie for a long time, and this film is a mockery of its excellence. I had not seen this since its original network airing in 1976, and man, what a stinker. It is to ROSEMARY'S BABY what EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC is to THE EXORCIST, only nowhere near as unintentionally hilarious or entertaining. It's a disappointment in every way that just lays there like a dead cat. Skip this one. Don't even watch it out of morbid curiosity. Stay home and mine your own buttcrack instead.

TV GUIDE ad from the original television airing.