In the summer of 1968, our mother, recently widowed, treated my sister and me to a week at the beach. After a few days, needing some time to herself, she asked a woman she had struck up a friendship with at the hotel if she would watch us so she could see the new hit horror movie playing at the little cinema on the boardwalk. When she got back, she could hardly contain her excitement and delight; it was “one of the best movies,” she said. She went to bed and tossed and turned all night long. “What kind of a movie,” I thought, “does THAT to you?!”
The answer, of course, is Roman Polanski’s twisted masterpiece, “Rosemary’s Baby,” a movie that, for almost 50 years, has been scaring the daylights out of people. Based on the Ira Levin bestseller of the same name, “Rosemary’s Baby” hit theaters like a tidal wave. A surefire “blockbuster” back before that term ever existed, it had moviegoers lined up for blocks, dying to see what they had heard was the most terrifying movie since “Psycho.” And they did not come out disappointed. Like all well-crafted movies, “Rosemary’s Baby” survives the test of time and is as scary now as it was in 1968. Scarier, even, maybe because its spiritually shattering story stands in such sharp contrast to our present day pragmatism and shock-resistant, “who gives a damn? ” nonchalant society. The movie shakes people on every level and still sends shivers up the spine.