Rosemary’s Baby is a 1968 film about a young woman whose husband trades her to Satan in exchange for fame.
7 out of 10 stars. Still scary after all these years.
Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse are newlyweds about to move into the famed Bramford Apartment Building. Their friend Hutch tells them the stories surrounding Bramford which has a reputation for cannibalism and holding Satanic witches rituals. They laugh it off and move right in. Two things are odd about their new apartment. 1. The woman who lived there before had moved a dresser in front of the linen closet. 2. The woman who lived there before died mysteriously.
Within a few days Rosemary meets Terry, who lives with the old couple next door on the same floor, Minnie and Roman Castevet. She wears an amulet that’s filled with something that smells terrible and is supposedly tanas root (a Satan anagram). Terry says the amulet was given to her by Minnie and Roman and has brought her good luck. The following day she is found dead, having jumped from the building. The following day Minnie gives Rosemary Terry’s amulet with the tanas root.
Guy is an actor but he’s only had two starring roles. He’s trying out for a a new role and mysteriously the lead actor suddenly goes blind. Guy steps into the lead role. For several weeks he ignores Rosemary although they’re supposed to be making a baby. Then suddenly he brings her roses one night and gives her two chocolate mousse desserts made by Minnie. Rosemary tastes something odd in her mousse so she throws half of it away without Guy seeing. She still passes out and has a terrible nightmare that a monster rapes her while several naked people are watching. It’s not a dream. It’s a real coven performing a ritual. In the morning she is covered with scratches.
Within days she is sick and goes to Dr. Hill only to discover she’s pregnant (an unusually fast pregnancy) and due June 28. Minnie and Roman immediately persuade her to change obstetricians to Dr. Sapirstein. Sapirstein tells her not to read any books, not to discuss her pregnancy with friends, not to take the prenatal vitamins Dr. Hill gave her, and to drink the homemade vitamin drinks Minnie will make for her. She starts wearing the amulet and hears chanting from the Castevet’s apartment next door.
Almost immediately she is in serious pain, becomes very pale, and craves raw meat. She loses weight, a lot of weight. When their friend Hutch comes to visit he is immediately suspicious of the drinks Minnie has been giving her and of Dr. Sapirstein because Rosemary is so ill. He calls that night and invites her to lunch the following day telling her he’s discovered something important. Immediately after he calls Guy goes next door to the Castevets’ apartment.
The following day when she goes to meet Hutch he doesn’t show. She calls his home and discovers he went into a coma the previous night and is in the hospital. Minnie finds her on the street and takes her home.
They have a New Year’s Eve party to welcome in the year 1966. She is now eating even more raw meat, but she stops drinking Minnie’s drinks which are causing her pain.
She eventually has a party for her old friends and they convince her to ditch Dr. Sapirstein and go back to Dr. Hill. She tells Guy and mysteriously the pain stops. The baby starts kicking and Guy won’t touch her. It’s as though he’s afraid of the baby.
The first week of June comes and Hutch dies. At his funeral, one of his coworkers gives Rosemary the book he had meant to give her that day at the Time Life Building. And she says the name is an anagram. Rosemary takes the book home and reads it. It’s called “All of Them Witches” and is about a coven of witches that lived in the Bramford Building led by a man named Adrian Marcato who was survived by a son Steven. That’s when she realizes that the name Roman Castevet is an anagram for Steven Marcato and his age is right.
Panicked she tells Dr. Sapirstein she thinks Roman and Minnie are witches who want her baby. Sapirstein tells her that Roman is dying and he and Minnie are leaving on a vacation. Meanwhile Guy throws her book from Hutch away and so she goes to a bookstore and gets another one. In that book she discovers that the witches take an item from a person, a personal item, and use that to cast spells. She suspects they did that with Hutch because Guy stole his gloves. She also suspects they did that with the actor who went blind because Guy took his tie.
She goes to tell Sapirstein and finds out he wears the same amulet that Minnie gave her that has tanas root inside. She panics, leaves, and runs to Dr. Hill, telling him the whole story. He tells her to rest and he’ll arrange for her to deliver at the hospital. She falls asleep and when she wakes Dr. Hill has called Guy and Sapirstein. They forcibly take her home and inject her with a sedative. She goes into labor and wakes up to no baby. They tell her that her son died and give her drugs to keep her sleeping.
She becomes very suspicious because she hears a baby crying next door and they are pumping her breast milk. What for? So while they are gone, she sneaks into the linen closet and finds the hidden door to Minnie and Roman’s apartment. She gets a butcher’s knife and breaks into their apartment. There’s a party going on and her baby is there in a bassinet with a cross hanging upside down over it. When she looks in the bassinet she sees something horrific, Satan’s child. As everyone gathers around they say, “Hail Satan. Hail Adrian. and encourage her to take care of her son.
7 out of 10 stars. Very creepy. If you can get a copy of the uncut version you see more of the baby at the end. This version only had the image above which was superimposed over Rosemary’s face. Creepy.
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