Before the NBC miniseries remake premieres on Sunday, here’s a reminder that some of the creepiest moments in the original 1968 horror classic had nothing to do with witches.
Criterion Collection
Satanic offerings and secret urban covens aside, the most disturbing thing about Roman Polanski's 1968 horror classic Rosemary's Baby is how much bullshit Mia Farrow's isolated, fragile Rosemary accepts before finally insisting that, despite what the people around her are saying, something's not right.
The Omaha-born, convent school-educated Rosemary is naive, biddable, and trusting — i.e., the perfect housewife. She's frequently treated more like a girl than a grown woman, even when she's on her way to becoming a mother herself. Her story is that of someone who's been taught to obey and accommodate, and the occult conspiracy in which she becomes ensnared is insidious because it's not unrelated to the treatment she's clearly used to getting from the many figures who claim to know better, including her actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes) and intrusive neighbors Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer).
More than 45 years later, Rosemary's Baby is still a potent fable about someone battling to take back control of her life and her body.
Here's a look at some of the more disturbing moments from the movie that have nothing to do with the supernatural. WARNING: Nearly half-century-old spoilers ahead!
"You'll get used to the smell before you know it."
Criterion Collection
It's not just that the "good luck" necklace Minnie gives Rosemary reeks of the ominous tannis root. It belonged to Terry (Angela Dorian), the former junkie the Castevets took in, who jumped or was made to jump to her death from their very apartment building (suggesting, in the least, that it's really not working). But Rosemary is just too polite not to accept the ghoulish bauble, as uncomfortable as it makes her, just as she's too polite not to let Minnie and fellow neighbor Laura-Louise (Patsy Kelly) nudge their way into her apartment. And when Guy piles on to suggest it's rude of her not to wear the pendant, since she accepted it, she doesn't object to his point, though it takes her some time to come around to putting it on.
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