Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

 

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

 

Between 1941 and 1949 Producer Val Lewton of RKO Pictures brought to the screen nine exceptional Horror Films that distinguished themselves from the already established Golden Age of Unive Monsters created by Universal Pictures, 1923-1941. The contrast between the two studios couldn’t be greater, Val Lewton emphasized Psychological Horror and suggestion over scary Creatures and physical demonstration of their threat. The two studios differing styles have been contrasted by Critics ever since, and great Psychological Horror are now almost inevitably referred to Lewton-esque.

 

A notable aspect of many of the most beloved Lewton-esque films are made by Directors who were not primarily later known for their work in the Horror genre. This even proved true for Producer Lewton himself, whose interest in the Uncanny Tale was life-long, but his professional out-put rarely reflected that prior to 1941 or after 1949.

 

Decades later, “Rosemary’s Baby,” based on the novel by the same name by Ira Levin (1967), is a Lewton-eque Masterpiece. It has not a drop of blood, effectively no violence, it never really shows a Monster, yet makes almost every list of Greatest Horror Films ever. Though this certainly wasn’t the only Horror film from its Director, Roman Polanski, few would refer to him as a “Horror Film Director” like we do John Carpenter or Terrance Fisher.

 

In this tale a Housewife, Rosemary Woodhouse, played by Mia Farrow, who is a lapsed Catholic, and her husband, Guy, played by John Cassavetes, who is a struggling Actor, who move into a landmark New York building, the fictional Bramford, which was played in the film by the famed Dakota, sitting on the corner of 72^nd Street and 5^th Ave in Manhattan, New York City.

 

I used the phrase “played in the film” for the building quite deliberately, because it is one of the film’s Characters even though most of the interior scenes were created in a studio. It is NYC’s best example of German Renaissance architecture, stately, utterly gorgeous, and sinister. Arrayed with gables and exotic sculptural details, including Mythical Beasts, it stands distinct among its neighbors on the crowded Upper West Side; it is the City’s oldest luxury apartment building and so it promises to be full of Ghosts. Most paperback editions of the novel don’t feature either Rosemary of the baby on the cover, but the building.

 

The Woodhouses make friends with their charmingly eccentric, though pushy, neighbors. They also suffer some martial strain as Guy struggles professionally, but as Guy finally starts being a bit more successful, the strain is relieved, and the two decide it’s time to start a family. This is all good of course, but this is also a Horror film, so we know bad things are coming.

 

For Director Polanski, born in Poland, this was his first USA film. He was already world–renowned; his very early short films and very first feature-length outing “A Knife in the Water” (1962), received Oscar recognition), his second feature, “Repulsion” (1965) was near-universally acclaimed, and there were a couple more between that and this. He was known for meticulous composition and bold stylistic indulgence, I’ve seen the phrase “his excess is contagious” used, but here he radically changed his mannerisms. The meticulousness remained obvious (he’d demanded up to 50 retakes for certain shots), but the style restrained for this tale of Supernatural Horror. This proved effective, but also surprising. Except for Rosemary’s Nightmares, both confusing but quite telling, and the very end of the film, there’s few indulgences, yet every single seemingly mundane shot holds your attention. Polanski was a Master of details and longish takes, so he brought to this tale of the Impossible a careful sense of Realism, perhaps more disorientating than the same year’s other Horror Masterpiece, “Night of the Living Dead,” full of expressionistic shadows, wild camera angles, and never-before-seen levels of gore.

 

Though indulgent style is purged from this film, it has more than enough subtle style to burn. Whether the shot is static or a fluid pan, there’s a sense that the camera was a lurking thing. Even though voyeurism (mostly) isn’t a subject here, the sense of it is palatable, perhaps because of the believability of the more mundane domestic scenes that we generally don’t see in Genre cinema. The smallest gestures reveal this the most powerfully, like when Rosemary and Guy are having a quiet, happy moment, and we watch them from a surprisingly far distance, then she spontaneously says, “Hey, let’s make love,” and turns off a lamp standing between them. The light going off reminds us we were watching private things.

 

Later, many more shots emphasize the growing distance between Rosemary from those around her, especially Guy. She’s often framed through doorways or by the walls of long hallways, she seems lost in the huge, grand, rooms. With essentially no violence, we are reminded of its constant threat by splashes of red throughout. This was only a few years before Director David Cronenberg created the extremely explicit sub-Genre of Body Horror, but this is a form of Body Horror as well, Rosemary is Raped by the Devil and suffers Physical Side-Effects, and though Polanski shows virtually none of it, he never lets you forget it either.

 

What we see in the foreground is by an exploration of the anxieties of first-time mothers: Rosemary recognizes that Guy as insensitive and always ducking out, she is under the pressure of her neighbor’s bossy opinions, and she suffers at the hands of a respected Doctor Sapirstein, played by Ralph Bellamy, with his weird prescriptions regarding diet and health.

 

This is a film wherein the audience knows what poor Rosemary does not, that the eccentric and pushy neighbors are actually a Satanic Cult, and her husband has been seduced into it. Rosemary is a pawn, and that her unborn child is the prize.

 

Val Lewton had dealt with Satanism in one film, “The Seventh Victim” (1943), also set on Manhattan, NYC. There, as here, the Satanists are affluent and socially acceptable, a parody of rot hidden beneath Bourgeoisie surfaces.

 

Val Lewton isn’t the only obvious influence; Director Alfred Hitchcock is also evident (apparently Hitchcock was offered the project but rejected it). In an interview, Hitchcock described the difference between Surprise and Suspense is about how much the audience knows. In order to fully capitalize upon Suspense, “the public must be informed.”

 

The script was Written by Polanski and he won an Oscar for it; it was mostly faithful to the novel, often using the same words in the dialogue, but diverged from the source material in a vital aspect, how early it lets the Audience in on what Rosemary doesn’t yet know. The full unveiling of the Horror at the very end remains Horrifying even without Surprise, or as Critic Roger Ebert put it, “we are wrenched because we knew what was going to happen--and couldn't help her.”

 

As much as Polanski loved the novel, "one aspect of ‘Rosemary's Baby’ bothered me. The book was an outstandingly well-constructed thriller ... Being an agnostic [he has also, often, referred to himself as an Atheist, his family mostly Murdered by the Nazis, because they were Jewish], however, I no more believed in Satan as evil incarnate than I believed in a personal god; the whole idea conflicted with my rational view of the world. For credibility's sake, I decided that there would have to be a loophole: the possibility that Rosemary's supernatural experiences were figments of her imagination. The entire story, as seen through her eyes, could have been a chain of only superficially sinister coincidences, a product of her feverish fancies ... That is why a thread of deliberate ambiguity runs throughout the film."

 

All film is collaborative, and Polanski did not achieve this Masterpiece on his own. The two strongest female roles, Actresses Farrow as Rosemary and Ruth Gordon as her neighbor Minnie Castevet, an old biddy not nearly as harmless as she looks, were among the finest performances in any film of its year. It made Farrow a Major Star and Gordon garnered an Oscar (a rare Academy Award for a Horror film).

 

Composer Krzysztof Komeda offered a chilling score, as restrained as Polanski’s style, all the darker because it’s often tender. There’re tinkling sounds and a wordless lullaby sung by Farrow that few will ever forget.

 

The production was plagued with professional and personal obstacles from the beginning. B-movie Producer/Director William Castle bought the film rights to the novel before publication, his goal was to make the film himself, but no major studio would finance it if he was at the helm. Castle was a pretty good Director with a long string of profitable films behind him, so that must have been deeply insulting, but his skills at Suspense were only somewhat better than average, his real gift was High-Camp, so clearly not up to this material. Castle was apparently not too bitter, because he was credited in assisting in the resolution of the next big, behind-the-scenes crisis.

 

Actress Farrow was an Ingenue, but one that had earned some respect because of the quality of her work on TV. She’d recently married Singer/Actor Frank Sinatra, who’d pressured her to quit Acting to become a Housewife. Then he more aggressively demanded drop out of “Rosemary’s Baby” when the filming was already two-thirds completed to co-Star with him in “The Detective” (Farrow was already slated for that film, the clash emerged because “Rosemary’s Baby” was behind schedule and “The Detective” was ahead, requiring her earlier than expected). Sinatra went as far as to have Divorce papers served to her on the set and in front of Cast and Crew. They’d been married only a year.

 

Obviously, this was insane, but Farrow almost folded to Sinatra. Castle and another Producer, Robert Evans (who also talked Polanski into casting Farrow in the first place, over Tuesday Weld and Polanski’s own wife, Sharon Tate), are credited for convincing Farrow to stay with the production. All seemed convinced Farrow would pick up an Oscar for this film; though she wasn’t even Nominated, she did earn extraordinary praise and a slew of Nominations and Wins for “Best Actress” from other Award Committees.

 

There were also clashes because Actor Cassavetes, chosen by Polanski, proved difficult. Cassavetes was one of the era’s champions of an improvisational style of Acting and a film Director himself, while Polanski was a perfectionist and a precisionist.

 

How all this negative energy was channeled into such a flawless product is beyond imagining.

 

But a notable part of this story is that Polanski, who’d earned a reputation for some Hitchcock-like abuses to his Cast members, was mostly praised for his on-set conduct. Actress Farrow gushed praise despite certain odd revelations, "When Roman wanted me to eat raw liver, I ate it, take after take, even though, at the time, I was a committed vegetarian. While we were shooting on Park Avenue, he had the idea that I should absentmindedly walk across the street into moving traffic, not looking right or left. 'Nobody will hit a pregnant woman,' he laughed, referring to my padded stomach. He had to operate the hand-held camera himself, since nobody else would. I took a deep breath - an almost giddy, euphoric feeling came over me. Together Roman and I marched right in front of the oncoming cars - with Roman on the far side, so I would have been hit first. 'There are 127 varieties of nuts,' he told a journalist. 'Mia's 116 of them.' I'll take a compliment any way it comes."

 

She also wrote, “Roman was so young and so full of ideas and enthusiasm that he was on fire with making this happen best possible way. His imagination was alight and all his artistic sensibilities were at the fore and it was fun to watch him.”

 

Producer Castle, who had reason to be resentful, went even farther. He published an Open Letter to thank Polanski, claiming it was his first time writing a fan letter but he felt the need to “go on record,” praising Polanski’s thoughtfulness, cooperation, and technical skills.

 

Throughout there’s wicked humor. Most comes from the pontifications of the silly old neighbors, jokes that camouflage menace, like when they were talking about the Pope visiting NYC. Actor Sidney Blackmer, playing Minnie’s husband Roman, says, "No Pope ever visits a city where the newspapers are on strike." He and Guy agree that "all the costume and rituals; all religions … [are] show biz."

 

That exchange begs an aside:

 

The Catholic Church used to have a silly exercise that wielded great power, but is now offered as evidence of its obsolescence, called the National Legion of Decency (NLD). Its sheer stupidity was obvious as early as 1947, when it threatened to give a “C,” or “Condemned” rating to the classic Holiday Family Movie, “Miracle on 34th Street,” because the female lead was divorced; after lobbying from the filmmakers, the reduced it to a “B,” or “Morally objectionable in part.” In 1962 it threatened another C against “To Kill a Mockingbird” finding it was unsuitable for teenagers because the ending justified the sin of lying; again, there was intense lobbying by the filmmakers and some alterations in the last scene got it toned down to another B.

 

Given that track record, it is no surprise that “Rosemary’s Baby” got a C because of "elements of kinky sex associated with black magic" and “mockery of religious persons and practices.” But I should note that the same year the NLD also gave “The Odd Couple” a C, solely because that Comedy concerned two divorced men moving on with their lives.

 

I was reminded of this by an on-line reviewer who went into an a fit of Righteous Indignation by contrasted this condemnation and the Church’s fawning support of Director Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of The Christ” (2004, so NLD was already, officially, defunct) which full of remarkably explicit tortures taking up a huge amount of screen-time, undisguised Jew-Hating, yet oddly devoid of Jesus’ actual teachings.

 

I bring this up because the film’s moral musings were not anti-Christian and only the Bad Guys mocked Faith. It was, arguably, and despite being written two Atheist Jews, more legitimately Christian than that other great A-list Horror classic of its era, “The Exorcist” (1973), based on a novel by William Peter Blatty (1971), a lapsed Catholic then returning to the fold. “The Exorcist” granted Satan such extra-ordinary Powers that his Victims didn’t have to commit any exceptional Sins to invite his power over them: The Possessed child Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) is blameless and the worst thing that mother-of-the-year Chris (Ellen Burstyn) is guilty of is getting divorced (but apparently not dating) and not attending mass. Though that method of Possession doesn’t contradict Catholic doctrine, per-say, it was at odds with much of the 20^th c. Catholic world-view. “The Exorcist” was more violent, gorier, sexually explicit, and loaded with profanity (“Rosemary’s Baby” had only one, apparently ground-breaking, four-letter word) yet the NLD gave “The Exorcist” a “A-IV” rating, “For adults” but with some reservations.

 

In “Rosemary’s Baby,” we have a Cult that Worships Evil for personal gain, and seduces Guy the same way. Rosemary is an Innocent; they don’t even try to corrupt her because they know she’s not the weakling Guy is. Building on this idea, the last scene is significant, and Morally Ambiguous, because the Cult casts Guy aside and starts fawning over Rosemary. Their stated reason is that Rosemary has just given birth to the anti-Christ, therefore must be honored; but the stated reason is an obvious lie, like everything else the Cult has ever said was a lie. The real reason is that they now have leverage over Rosemary, a mother’s love her child, and they believe they can use that to make her their Servant the same way they did the far weaker Guy. It is unclear where Rosemary will stand, and with that, some questions about the future of the anti-Christ.

 

After release, the great Horror/SF Author Ray Bradbury suggested an alternate ending, Rosemary snatching up the child and running to a Church for Sanctuary, which pissed of Polanski, insisting the Ambiguity must stand because it focused on what the film was actually about. “I’m an atheist and I’ll stick with my basic mother instinct for the end.”

 

The film received extra-ordinary praise, Critic Roger Ebert wrote Polanski “outdoes Hitchcock” and Liz Smith called it “sheer perfection.” It set a two-day box-office record in its first weekend.  

 

It also played a significant role (along with “The Night of …”) in the then on-going debate regarding a movie rating system, one that would be more instructive and not as silly and capricious as that of NLD. The Los Angelas Times argued that “‘Rosemary’s Baby’ … makes the case for some sort of classification system more compelling than ever.” And only three months later, Jack Valenti. President of the Motion Pictures Association of America, announced that a new rating system would be immediately forthcoming.

 

There were two sequels, a bad TV movie, “What Ever Happened to Rosemary’s Baby” (1976) and a novel by Levin, “Son of Rosemary” (1997) which I haven’t read but even though it ignored the TV movie and was still poorly received. In both, Rosemary’s love for her child leads her to try and protect the Half-Devil from the influences of the Cult. There was also TV remake (2014) which I haven’t seen, but no one seems to have much good to say about. I also have not seen the prequel, “Apartment 7A” (2024), but it isn’t getting much love either.

 

 

In a 1980 interview Novelist Levin admitted he had, “mixed feelings about ‘Rosemary’s Baby’… [it had] played a significant part in all this popularization of the occult and belief in witchcraft and Satanism … all these people who hear backward messages in song lyrics and stuff like that … I really feel a certain degree of guilt about having fostered that kind of irrationality … Here’s what I worry about now: If I hadn’t pursued an idea for a suspense novel almost 40 years ago, would there be quite as many religious fundamentalists around today?”

 

It’s a question worth pondering.

 

There a notable scene in the film that features the famous 1966 cover of TIME magazine, “Is God Dead?” advertising a long article that explored the problems facing modern Theologians, how do they make God relevant to an increasingly Secular Society? Late in the film, an exuberant Roman proclaims, “God is Dead! Satan Lives!” The message is unsubtle, to live without God as the center of your life is to empower Satan.

 

Both “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist” and soon after “The Omen” (1976) became what are now known as the “Devil Trilogy”; but it’s not a real trilogy, there’s no real connection between them except the subject of Satanism and that they were all A-list movies from big studios (three different studios) and huge successes having a huge ripple effect industry-wide. They domesticated the most extreme and Superstitious elements of Christian, specifically Catholic, Dogma, and with that effectively countered Secularism with the casual ease, making all of Secularism’s measurements of the world utterly supercilious – no, more than that, they made Secularism a conspiracy against a Higher Truth.

 

After “Rosemary’s Baby,” but before “The Exorcist” was the birth, or really expansion, of a cottage industry of Propagandist Tracts pushing unrestrained Medieval Irrationalism with a long-term Political Agenda. Though the film media that seem to have laid the foundation for this were almost all (allegedly) Catholic, the irrationality was the more embraced by the, frequently-Catholic-hating, Evangelical movement who took up the Battle-Flag and ran with it.

 

Evangelicals Carole C. Carlson and Hal Lindsey’s best-selling disgraces, “The Late Great Planet Earth” (1970) and “Satan is Alive and Well and Living on Planet Earth” (1972), were the first books pushing Christian End-of-the-World Prophesy to be published by a major, mainstream, house, Bantam. There is no doubt gigantic success of the novel “Rosemary’s Baby,” published by competitor Random House, paved the way for this move by that otherwise generally respectable publisher. The rise of the Christian Right as a National Political force followed quickly when the Reverand Jerry Falwell (a fan of the books) founding the hugely influential Moral Majority in 1979 and steered the already powerful Evangelical vote into an extremely narrow, hyper-Conservative, Agenda.

 

By 1983 the USA was in a full-blown Satanic Panic, with insane Felony Allegations which had no supporting evidence, and sometimes were actually Impossible, led to Persecutions, Arrests, Prosecutions and long Jail Terms for Crimes against Defendants not only Innocent, but in the context of Crimes that never took place at all.

 

Or maybe “Rosemary’s Baby” had only a little to do with it. This Nation has been buffered by waves of Mass-Hysteria before the book and movie, and even after the Satanic Panic collapsed. The most obvious was the Salem Witch Trails (1692-1693), but weren’t the more Secularly-mind post-Civil War Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws (1865-1964) much the same? And then there were the again the Secular McCarthy Witch Hunts (1950-1954, and it should be noted, Senator Joe McCarthy was not the biggest player, it was more the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee which wasn’t disbanded until 1975). Jumping forward in time there was Pizzagate (2016) which led directly to QAnon (2017), these two essentially merged the Salem and McCarthy Witch Hunts into a National Movement which then led directly to an incompetent but still deadly attempted Coup at this Nation’s Capital Building (2021) and this last hysteria is still substantially with us as I write these words. So, how much blame should the novel and movie be required to shoulder for the long-standing “Paranoid Style of American Politics” (from the title of an essay by Historian Richard Hofstadter (1964))?

 

In “Rosemary’s Baby” the Conspiracy seems small, mostly the people in that one building plus the respected Doctor Sapirstein. The goals might have been global, but their real power is that they were able to corrupt just one man and isolate just one woman, which is nothing like what pseudo-Journalist Geraldo Rivera was selling us in 1988 as he tried to prop-up the already collapsing Satanic Panic artifice. The Conspiracy of Satanists in “The Exorcist” was similarly small, only “The Omen” (the dumbest of the three) argued that there was a whole lot of those Crazies out there.

 

Levin and Polanski were not selling what was sold during the Salem or McCarthy Witch Hunts. They unnerved their audiences with the wholly believable insidiousness of a domestic situation gone wrong. The extreme Bourgeoisie-ness of the whole thing was the Cult’s best disguise. In one scene Rosemary finds the seemingly sympathetic Dr. Hill (Charles Grodin), not a Cult member, and briefly sees a chance of escape; but once she slanders the name of prestigious Sapirstein, a pillar of the Medical Community, the trap shuts around her even tighter.

 

Neither book nor movie beat their chests about an alleged Miscarriage of Justice which, and often in the Real-World, beating one’s chest often proves to be cowardice masked as indignation. Instead, they keep close to Rosemary, who does ultimately become harshly judgmental, but not at strangers, only those she knows and whom she knows hurt her.

 

But still the film’s power to unlock the irrational Collective Unconscious can’t really be denied. One demonstration of this is the popular tales of “Curses” surrounding all three of the Devil Trilogy films. All were large productions, had hundreds of people involved, had their share of mishaps, and then other bad things befell those involved after it was wrapped. “Rosemary’s Baby” and the others saw wild mythologies emerge out of coincidences, but more than the other two, “Rosemary’s Baby” intersected with outrageous real-world events, upon which more than a few highly dubious stories were added in to weave the tapestry tighter.

 

The year of the film’s release, Composer Komeda was the first “Curse” Victim when friendly rough-housing at a party led to a fall a head injury; he was left comatose and later died. This was linked to a similar death, inflicted by the Coven, on a friend of Character Rosemary, which is in the novel but not the movie.

 

Producer Castle, so long a marginal player in Hollywood, was finally getting some respect with Variety proclaiming he’d “crossed an artistic Rubicon.” But, at the same time, he became the target of hate mail and death threats. Then struck with severe kidney stones in 1969 which nearly killed him. Hospitalized and delirious he cried out while hallucinating, “Rosemary, for God’s sake, drop the knife!” He would recover but was involved with only a handful of more productions, no big hits, before his death in 1977. He was quoted as saying, "The story of Rosemary's Baby was happening in real life. Witches, all of them, were casting their spell, and I was becoming one of the principal players."

 

Producer Robert Evans continued to enjoy great success for some time but then his career faltered badly because of poor artistic choices and his own scandalous behaviors. In 1980 there was a particular vicious Contract Killing connected to the production of his film “The Cotton Club” (1984, also a financial bomb) for which his lover was convicted and he chose to Plead the Fifth. Somehow his career survived that, but not the string of unsuccessful films that followed, plus his string of stokes, first in 1998 at party celebrating Horror film Director Wes Craven, which left in completely incapacitated for some time and partially paralyzed for the rest of his life. He died in 2014. 

 

Then there’s Polanski. By 1969 he was living in California with his wife Actress Tate, who was pregnant and, as I said above, an early choice for the role of Character Rosemary. Some sources have written she’d just completed her first film wherein she had a major role, a Witch in “Eye of the Devil” (1966), which was not entirely true, that film followed four other large role including “Valley of the Dolls” (1967) for which she got a Golden Globe nomination. In 1969, while Polanski was out of town, she was hosting a party that was invaded by a Satanic Cult -- yes, a literal Satanic Cult, the Manson family -- and she, her unborn child, and three others were viciously Murdered.

 

Stories alleged that Tate had been becoming increasingly obsessed with the Occult, but these stories are poorly attributed and seem overly convenient, but there’s no denying Occult fascination was on the rise Nationally. There’s a particularly bizarre quote was attributed to Tate, but only many years after her death, “The devil is beautiful. Most people think he’s ugly, but he’s not.”

 

The Cult’s leader, Charles Manson, who was not present at the Killings, was obsessed with “The White Album” by the Beatles. His Minions scrawled on a wall “Healter Skelter,” a misspelling of the title of the song, “Helter Skelter.” Much of that album was written while the band attended a Religious Retreat with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, India, in 1968. Actress Farrow also attended the same retreat.

 

Fringe thinkers had long associated the Beatles with a number of nefarious plots, provoked by a thoughtless comment in 1966 by member John Lennon, claiming the band was then “More popular than Jesus.”

 

Musician Lennon would move into the Dakota in 1971 and be Assassinated in front of it in 1980 by an Obsessed Fan.

 

But then so many connections could easily be drawn because the then-called “Beautiful People,” the exalted celebrity in our Popular Culture, who were, in fact, a fairly small group among the billions of persons of this planet, and their lives over-lapped a great deal. 

 

Polanski further biography feeds into this. When he became publicly prominent, he was blessed with respect, riches, and beautiful women fawning over him in such a way that any and all would envy. But before that this he suffered Poverty and Persecutions few in the USA are familiar with. He was Jew in Poland under the Nazis, who wanted to kill him, and then the Communists, who had a lesser hatred of Jews and free-thinkers but still awful enough that he was only one of thousands who fled. The Butchering of his pregnant wife came while he was at the pinnacle of his success; though his creative output did not falter in the wake of it, the rest of his story is ugly and sordid.

 

In 1977 he was convicted of Child Rape, given an absurdly light sentence, but continued his Playboy lifestyle, which enraged the Judge. Rather than face resentencing, he fled new home in the USA, then his third nation. He’s been a Fugitive from Justice for decades now, but that didn’t hurt his career much, and he picked up three more Oscar Nominations since.

 

So, did anyone escape the curse? Well, I deny there was a Curse, but life does catch up to all of us.

 

Actress Farrow went on to greater success, but unfortunately her longest personal relationship was with Pederast/Director Woody Allen. He ended his relationship with Farrow to marry her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn (35 years his junior), was accused of Sexual Assault by her and Allen’s biological daughter, Dylan, which was challenged by her adopted son Moses, ripping the family apart, but soon the allegation was supported by others testimony. Allen, like Polanski, escaped significant professional backlash for his Perversions and received one Oscar Win and four Nominations since.

 

Author Levin also saw further success with more Best-Selling novels leading to more high-quality movie adaptations (okay, some of the novels were bad, and some of the movies were even worse, but still). But, as suggested above, the swirl around “Rosemary’s Baby” had an impact on him. In the above reference 1980 interview, where he sat beside Horror Author Stephen King on “The Dick Cavett Show,” he was asked about the Horror fiction he’d read as a child that influenced his later work:

 

“I don’t recall being scared at all [as a child] … Now I’m terrified.”

 

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsQctHszvTs