Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby

Sam O’Steen – 1976 – USA

Mediocre TV movie is not quite as awful as its reputation, but it’s nothing special either. What’s unfortunate about it is not that it fails to live up to Polanski’s original classic – (what film could?) – but that it bothers being a sequel at all.  The elements are interesting enough, and removed from the Polanski film enough, to warrant a whole separate film.  But the prospect of a sequel is always preferable in Hollywood to an original work.  No one from the original, save a highly distracted Ruth Gordon, is back in their various roles; which makes it all the sillier that the characters return at all.  Little Andrew (aka Adrian), played by Stephen McHattie, is all grown up and at approximately 30 is some sort of rock star. Inexplicably, the evil coven leaders Minnie and Roman Castavet (Gordon and Ray Milland) don’t appear to have aged much at all. The power of witchcraft, or mere lazy writing?  You'd imagine that if they could keep themselves from aging they might’ve started doing so sometime before their 80s… like maybe their 20s?  Except for veterans Milland and Gordon and star McHattie, the cast is pretty lousy, especially Patty Duke as a perpetually hysterical Rosemary Woodhouse.  Directed by Sam O'Steen for no apparent reason than because he was (get this) the editor of Polanski's Rosemary's Baby.

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