The central theme of ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968) is right there in the title. It’s about someone having a baby, so it’s about fears surrounding a healthy pregnancy and beginning a new life as a parent. That’s part of what makes the movie so powerful, but one way I know it’s good is how effective it is even for someone like me, a non-parent, a childless cat lady. I’m sure it kicks your ass harder if you’re an expecting or aspiring parent, but it has other things going for it too.
My main association with ROSEMARY’S BABY is that it was my mom’s favorite horror movie. That might just mean it was one of the few she’d seen. But I remember when I was a teen obsessed with Freddy Krueger and Clive Barker she said “Do you want to see a real scary movie?” and we rented it. As far as I remember I thought it was pretty good, but not enough that I thought of as a favorite. It didn’t make it into the rotation.
That was more than three decades ago. For years now I’ve been wanting to revisit it and review it for the day before Halloween, my mom’s birthday. But I always get behind on all my other plans and get bogged down. I decided to make it happen this year even before I realized there was a new prequel on Paramount+, but I’ll review that soon. (read the rest of this shit…)
In SATANIC PANIC – a new Fangoria Films release that came out on disc this week after film festival and VOD runs – Sam (Hayley Griffith) is working her first shift delivering pizzas. She’s completely broke and low on gas, and her skeevy co-workers stick her with deliveries to a notoriously stingy neighborhood. This would be shitty, but not disastrous, if only she didn’t get desperate and storm into a mansion to demand a tip… during a satanic sacrifice ritual to raise the demon Baphomet. See, it’s a time sensitive full moon thing, they’re short one virgin, and through contrived but humorous dialogue they figure out that Sam fits the bill. So she’s gonna have bigger problems than lack of gas money.
