‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ ‘The Mummy’ and other Spooky Season treats

Playing some catch-up.

I was going to write a long piece on one of these movies for last Friday, but last week was pretty jam-packed and on Thursday night, which is often a writing night, I ended up at a screening for Killers of the Flower Moon (you can read the review later this week on CinemaNerdz). So, I’m playing a bit of catch-up. 

October is the best and worst time to be a film writer. On one hand, it’s the rare month that provides an excuse to focus on one genre and immerse yourself in the many flavors of horror cinema. On the other, there’s simply so much that it can be daunting. In my case, my reach often exceeds my grasp. There’s so much I want to write about – from new releases to my annual Stephen King watches to the great horror movies – that I plan out an obsessive amount of content that I just cannot keep up with. What I’m learning is to just roll with it and get out what I can, when I can. And there’s a lot of stuff I’m working on that I can’t wait to get out here. 

So today, we’re just going to start with a catch-up of some Halloween season viewing and reading that I’ve been doing. I’ll have another Stephen King piece up later this week, and then we’ll take it from there (look for a new podcast episode about Scorsese’s latest to hit either Friday or early next week). And there are some new horror-centric releases I’m also hoping to catch up on. So, let’s get into it. 

The original baby from Hell 

I thought I had seen Rosemary’s Baby. 

I knew for sure I had read Ira Levin’s novel. I picked up a paperback from a used book store one summer about 20 years ago and have a vivid memory of getting to an iconic passage – concerning a baby’s eyes – and throwing it across the room. It’s the only time a book has managed to jump scare me. 

For some reason, I thought I’d seen Roman Polanski’s 1968 adaptation, but shortly into watching it recently, I realized I actually hadn’t. It’s likely one of those things I absorbed through cultural osmosis and from seeing clips elsewhere. And so, as I watched it, I wondered: will this movie scare me as much as the book did? 

The short answer is, no. Unlike The Exorcist, which dug itself under my skin and kept me awake at night after a recent revisit, Rosemary’s Baby didn’t unnerve me. I slept like a baby (no pun intended). I didn’t jump out of my seat. Aside from one sequence – you know the one – nothing unsettled or shocked me. When the neighbors matter-of-factly chanted “God is dead; hail Satan,” it played as comedy. 

And I think that’s intentional. Less a visceral ride or a knuckle-whitening bit of suspense, Rosemary’s Baby goes just as much for satire and dark humor as it does for spooky thrills. Polanski knows that Levin’s concept – in which a young, pregnant woman unwittingly finds herself carrying the devil’s spawn – is ludicrous, and uses it instead to examine gaslighting, manipulation, domestic conformity and trust issues. The genre elements never truly frighten, but they’re a sugary coating that make this psychological drama so watchable. I wasn’t frightened, but I was fascinated. Rosemary’s Baby might not be overtly scary, but it is great. 

I could be misremembering the book, but I don’t recall it being as open about how much Rosemary (Mia Farrow) is being tricked until the end. The book is more of a straightforward suspense piece – Rosemary and Guy (John Cassavetes) are newlyweds who get a great deal on a New York apartment and she quickly gets pregnant but begins to have suspicions that something is off; we don’t learn until the end that their neighbors are all part of a coven and hoping to use Rosemary to give birth to Satan’s child. 

The movie doesn’t explicitly reveal the plot until the final act, but it also doesn’t hide how nefarious the people surrounding Rosemary are. There’s chanting in the next apartment, and the old couple next door are overly insistent that Rosemary stick to their regimen of strange herbs. And Guy disappears at such convenient moments that it’s impossible not to notice that he’s in on some scheme. In a more traditional thriller, it would be clumsy. Here, Polanski uses it to help us understand the mental trap in which Rosemary is caught and the terror of being controlled and manipulated. What I’d always assumed was a parable about the terrors of motherhood is instead something smarter and more wicked; it’s about how control comes with a smiling face, behind declarations of love, and how evil can cloak itself the banality of knitting clubs and gossip circles. 

Polanski is a director I don’t like to think much of because of his personal failings and crimes, but you can’t deny his skill behind the camera. Here, he turns the lush apartment into a prison, and his camerawork is impeccable (there’s the famous story about how he framed a phone call sequence to get audiences trying to peek around the corner, and it’s just as effective as you’ve heard). The demon rape sequence – the one bit of overt horror in the film – is a surreal and terrifying bit of nightmare fuel, but mostly the scares come from atmosphere. But there’s also black humor in his depiction of ultimate evil appearing in the guise of otherwise dull old folks (near the end, someone delivers the line “I’ll kill you, milk or no milk” with such matter-of-fact exasperation that I cackled). 

And, of course, there are the performances, particularly Farrow as Rosemary and Ruth Gordon as next door neighbor Minnie Castevet. In the early sequences, Farrow embodies Rosemary with a vivacious energy that radiates off the screen; it makes our sympathy go out to her in the later stretches, when she’s gaunt, scared and on the verge of a breakdown. Gordon plays Minnie as an over-the-top gossipy neighbor, but we can pick up the steely control under her faux-friendly attempts to help. Cassevetes feels a bit unnatural as Guy, but that becomes an asset the more we realize what an act he’s putting on; his body language the night after the rape clues us in on his complicity before the plot makes it overt. 

Rosemary’s Baby doesn’t seem to have stuck around in public consciousness the way that, say, The Exorcist or Halloween have. Part of that might be that it’s a slower burn without the startles or scares of those movies. Part of it might be that its tensions about domesticity don’t feel as relevant (although, if you’ve come from evangelical circles, they definitely aren’t irrelevant). It’s a shame; this is a masterpiece of creeping dread, subtle horror and jet-black satire, and I’m glad I finally got around to it. 

‘The Mummy’ is not a masterpiece – but it’s fun 

My wife was out of town for a few days last weekend, so I had an evening home with the kids. Given the time of year, they wanted to see a scary movie. Because my son and daughter are 11 and 8, respectively, I have to put some thought into what is just scary enough for them to have fun but not so terrifying that they’re going to be in my bed all night. It’s a tough negotiation; Gremlins was fine for both of them, but my daughter was bothered by Arachnophobia. 

I decided to go with the 1999 Stephen Sommers’ movie The Mummy,because it’s scarier moments are leavened by the humor and the adventure vibe. The kids really liked Brendan Fraser when we gave George of the Jungle a go a while back, and we’re going to be taking a family trip to Universal Studios in the spring, where they have a Mummy roller coaster. Plus, ever since Fraser won the Oscar earlier this year, I’ve heard people trying to reclaim this as a late-90s masterpiece, and adventure on par with the best of Indiana Jones. 

And, let’s get this straight: the people who feel that way are wrong. It’s definitely a better adventure movie than the last two Indiana Jones movies (neither of which existed at the time), but anyone who would place it alongside the first three needs to stop giving their opinions on movies. It’s a dumb bit of blockbuster filmmaking that is just as ludicrous as the Tom Cruise reboot, although it benefits from not having Russell Crowe lumber around as horror’s own Nick Fury. Then again, the Tom Cruise movie didn’t consistently portray one of its lead Arab characters as cheap and smelly, which this movie does a lot. 

However, I come not to bury The Mummy but to praise it. Yes, it’s insipid and nonsensical. But there’s enough that works well enough for it to rise to the level of forgettable enjoyment. Fraser’s a fun lead; there was a period where no one was better at roasting their movie star looks than he was, and he delivers several solid gags. I like Rachel Weisz as the female lead; she’s smart and just as eager to get into the action as Fraser’s Rick O’ Connell. And Arnold Vosloo has way too much joy as the titular villain; he lays it on thick as the cocky and pure evil Imhotep, and it’s easy to see why Universal resurrected the character for the sequel and for its ride. 

I heard a conversation recently about how every blockbuster from the ‘90s now looks like a cinematic masterpiece simply because no current blockbuster seems to care about blocking set pieces, making things visually interesting or giving characters moments to breathe. And The Mummy definitely made me think of that; Sommers knows his way around a sprawling landscape, and the film’s actions sequences are easy to follow and punctuated with sight gags and grace notes (the finale is a swashbuckling bit of action and slapstick that feels like a precursor for the best Pirates of the Caribbean movies). Yes, it’s stupid. Yes, it’s corny. But it’s a roller coaster. Who cares if the CGI hasn’t aged the greatest? There’s a sense of energy and joy to this that helps paper over its flaws. 

As for the kids? My son loved it, particularly Fraser as the wiseass hero and the film’s grosser PG-13 sequences. My daughter wasn’t a fan of the bugs or of the decomposed Imhotep that lurched across the screen, and she’s sworn she won’t ride the roller coaster this summer (we’ll see about that). But her protests were delivered in such a way that I think she’s had a bit more fun than she let on. 

So, let’s chill on proclaiming any greatness for The Mummy. It’s okay for things to be silly fun. I don’t know that I’ll ever revisit it, but I had a good enough time that I might just see whether The Mummy Returns holds up better than I remember. 

The King Read 2023 – Nightmares and Dreamscapes, continued 

As part of my Stephen King obsession, not only am I watching several movies based on his works (and reading one of his novels to prepare for a special Franchise Friday later in October), I’m also continuing my habit of reading one of his short story collections through the month. Last year, I started the 900-page Nightmares and Dreamscapes and only got about a third of the way through. So, I’m continuing this year (and likely will next year, too), and here are my thoughts on some of the stories: 

“The Moving Finger” – This is one of King’s weirder short stories. A CPA finds a finger poking out of his bathroom drain and, while his wife’s away, goes to great lengths to do battle with it. What I enjoy about King’s short stories is that there is no obligation to explain the terrors at play (something he discusses in his notes about this story). We don’t need to know why there is a giant, moving human finger snaking through this man’s pipes – it’s surreal and gross enough to send chills without the implication that it might be attached to a giant hand in the sewer system. The relationship between the lead and his wife is funny, and this one builds to a gnarly finale.

“Sneakers” – A more classic ghost story about a music producer who happens upon a ghostly pair of sneakers under a bathroom stall. It’s a slow build and I don’t know that it totally works – King seems to want to say things about closeted homosexuality but doesn’t quite know how to engage the material yet, and the film’s resolution is standard ghost story fare, but feels a bit too abrupt. King’s best short stories end on a nasty little punchline, but “Sneakers” just kind of ends. 

“You Know They Got a Hell of a Band” – This one’s got a great idea, and King mostly manages to weave it without venturing into the campiness that could easily have been a pitfall. A couple out for a scenic drive gets lost and finds themselves in the town of Rock and Roll Heaven, where all the citizens seem to be music icons. Janice Joplin waits at the local diner, Roy Orbison is a patron, and Elvis is the mayor. There’s as steady, mounting dread to it that keeps it from feeling silly – which could have really been a problem with this story. It’s one that wouldn’t work as a visual adaptation; the attempts to recreate all the superstars would probably be distracting. But as a story, it mostly works, even if it doesn’t seem like King knows what he wants to say about the idea until the story’s final passages. 

“Home Delivery” – It’s not King’s first time tackling zombies, and it wouldn’t be his last. But it’s a nice tip of the cap to Romero, written for a collection in which several writers wove short stories taking place in his “Living Dead” universe. This one centers the action on a small island off the coast of Maine and concerns a single mother coping with the idea that, around the nation, the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living. There’s some solid suspense as they hear stories on the news about the undead invading cities and even taking down the president. But when the terror hits the local cemetery, King delivers a truly wrenching, violent and gripping climax and ends the story on a note of dis-ease. Its visceral horrors, small-town setting and note of cautious optimism in its finale make it a classic King story. 

And that’s where we’ll end this today. But there’s more to come this week!