Take a look: Rosemary's baby

Rosemary's Baby is a film based on a book by Ira Levin. Levin wrote a few suspense books that were turned into films, The Stepford Wives, A Kiss Before Dying, which I recall enjoying the first film of, The Boys From Brazil, which I enjoyed as an SF thriller, and Patriot Games, so he has done well.

Rosemary's Baby has become one of those films so imbued in the cultural consciousness that you don't have to have seen it in order to know about. It's a famous horror flick, one of those devil child coming to destroy the world stories.

What adds to the film's creepiness is the things only half seen, the voices through walls or around corners, things too small for Rosemary to piece together.

Actually, watching it recently in the biggest chunk of it I've ever seen in one sitting, it's not particularly clear why the villains want to create this child. There are a couple of suggestions that they may wish to eat the child, or use its blood for magic, but then you have to wonder what, from the devil's side, the point of that would be. The sense of threat, though, suggests that they are going to take over the world and this will not be good for anyone.

Of course, some of us may recall another story of the devil attempting to introduce his spawn into the world, but the child in that case turned prophet on his own account and then created Camelot.
It's not clear whether Rosemary will be able to get her baby similarly baptised and out of the devil's reach or whether she will always be trapped by her maternal instincts and the machinations of the witches around her.

What struck me during this viewing, though, was that with the supernatural element removed what remained was a fairly common story, a kind of feminist tale without the happy ending where the woman realises she can get along without a husband. Here in Rosemary's Baby we have an authoritarian husband who tells his wife who she can and can't see and what doctor she must have. When Rosemary's pregnacy has put her in continual agony and her friends tell her that this is not normal or right, that she must see another doctor for another opinion, he calls them bitches. He doesn't want interference.

In The Stepford Wives, made in 1975 we see husbands who are willing to murder their wives in order to have them replaced by robotically perfect housewives. Indeed, the robot replicas have to murder their originals themselves, destroy the true woman, in order to replace her. The men seem content with this.

In Rosemary's Baby the husband is similarly happy for his wife to suffer in order to advance his career. His baby, a fellow actor, anyone who gets in his way must be got rid of. That he has sold his soul to the devil's cult is never explicitly stated. We are shown, not told. This makes the film very creepy. The husband is given the chance to collude with his creepy neighbours. Rosemary is never consulted about anything. The baby is conceived in rape, a fact which her husband laughs off.

Rosemary's Baby stars Mia Farrow, with lots of yellow around her, and often in Peter Pan collars, all of which suits her and gives a look of ordinary life and innocence while the cult closes in around her.

Rosemary's Baby was made in 1968, and it's worn well. Worth a look.
.

Worth A Look: R.O.D.

Read Or Die. A title after my own heart.

This is an animated series about three sisters. Two of them love to read and can barely bring themselves to do anything else. Walking down a precint full of bookshops is almost fatal to do them: They have to keep buying books - and it's not as if they've got a lot of money. The third sister, who is younger and still a girl, professes to hate reading. It doesn't matter. The upside of their reading compulsion is that they are paper masters. They can turn paper into weapons and shields and monsters that can carry them high and far and even across the sea.

An author, who has been suffering from writers block for some years, meets them and does not seem terribly surprised at their powers. It turns out that this series is actually a sequel to a manga series about the author and her friend, who has since disappeared but who was also a paper master.

Although on the whole I liked this series, I have to mention some reservations. Although I liked much of it, especially the whole idea of the paper masters and their compulsion to read, some of the episodes were not so good. Indeed, one of the episodes is entirely exposition is one of the most boring things I've ever seen of anything. Plus, it turns out not to make any sense to the story that we see unfolding. Then, the final episodes continue long after there really seems to be anything worth saying.

The problem is this, and I felt it was brought about the writers possibly writing on the fly and not realy knowing what the story arc was going to be while they had to keep the episodes coming: The adventure part of it concerns an ancient British man, or being, or something not clarified, known as Mr Gentleman, who is now aging and must be saved. Why? We never know. Why he's so important to Britain we never learn. This causes a big hole in the story because the motivation of the bad guys just doesn't make sense. He is dying so someone else must be taken over and given his spirit, or knowledge, or personality - But why?

Eventually it seems that the bad guys are chasing the writer because the writer can use Mr Gentleman's knowlege to rewrite the world - or I may have misinterpreted that. It's hard to be sure.

So, there is a lot that I enjoyed about this story, enough that I kept wanting to know what would happen to the characters - and believe me there are other series out there that I can't warm to at all no matter how often I try to give them a second chance. So, R.O.D. is flawed, but worth a look even if you might have to fast forward through some bits. Oh, and sometimes the emphasis on the size of the women's breasts got irritating.

So, enjoy but expect some flaws.