Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2936 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-11-05
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Turkish
• Dubbed in: German
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 131 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
For Rosemary’s Baby, his modern horror tale about Satanic worship and a pregnant woman’s decline into madness, Roman Polanski moves from the traditional monolithic mansions of Gothic flicks to an apartment building in New York City. Based on Ira Levin’s novel, the story concerns Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse who find the apartment of their dreams in a luxurious complex in Manhattan. Soon after moving in and making friends with a group of elderly neighbours, Guy’s career takes off and Rosemary discovers she is pregnant. Their happiness seems complete. But gradually Rosemary begins to sense that something is wrong with this baby, and slowly and surely her life begins to unravel.

Polanski uses such subtle means to build up the sense of preternatural disquiet that initially you suspect Rosemary’s prenatal paranoia to be a figment of her imagination. But the guilty parties and their demonic plan to make Rosemary the receptacle of their master’s child are eventually revealed and, as Rosemary looses her grip on reality, she realises that no one can be trusted. The performances are excellent throughout; Farrow as the young wife is so fragile that you wonder how she made it unscathed to adulthood and John Cassavetes is horrifyingly duplicitous as her husband Guy. But the real star is Polanski’s masterful direction. The mood is at the same time oppressive and hysterical with the mounting terror coming from the situation and gradually unravelling plot rather than any schlock horror moments.

On the DVD: the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack shows off Christopher Komeda’s eerie "lullaby" score to it’s haunting best. The film is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and is relatively free of speckle and dust, some scenes filmed in low light are slightly grainier but this adds to the oppressive tension that Polanski is building up in the film. In terms of extras there is a 20-minute "making of" feature from 1968 and retrospective interviews with Polanski, production designer Richard Sylbert and producer Robert Evans. --Kristen Bowditch

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:

Retrospective Interview
"Making Of" Featurette
Languages: English, German
Dolby Digital Mono
Subtitles: English, English for the hearing impaired, Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Turkish
1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen

Synopsis
In Roman Polanski's stylish occult thriller--possibly the director's most famous film and a big box-office success--a young, happily married couple, the waiflike Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and struggling actor Guy (John Cassavetes), move into a spacious apartment in a venerable old building off Central Park. They are befriended by the elderly couple next door, Roman (Sidney Blackmer) and Minnie Castavet (Ruth Gordon in an Oscar-winning performance), who seem to take a special interest in Rosemary's well-being. Shortly after another young woman in the building commits suicide by jumping out a window, Rosemary begins to be plagued by disturbing dreams, including a hallucinogenic black mass sequence in which she is raped by something "inhuman" while surrounded by a host of unlikely spectators. Rosemary discovers she is pregnant and soon falls violently ill. The Castavets offer advice and home remedies and even go so far as to talk her into seeing a new doctor of their choosing. But when the young couple's friend Hutch (Maurice Evans) exposes her eccentric but seemingly well-meaning neighbors as members of a witches' coven, Rosemary realizes that she is the victim of a Satanic conspiracy and that no one can be trusted--not even her own husband.

Customer Reviews

Creepy, especially as it has a ring of truth
I discovered that this film is loosely part of a Roman Polanski trilogy about the horrors of appartment/city living. Oh how true. I lived in an enormous flat in Westbourne Terrace in London and this film reminded me of it. I also stayed in the Chelsea Hotel in New York recently, and that had a bit of the same feel as the Dakota. Se7en was another film which picked up on the emotional disturbances of city life.

When there are lots of other lives going on around you, you can't help but feel lonely and a little scared. Rosemary is in a very vulnerable position when she gets pregnant. The film builds her sense of paranoia very gradually, which gives you the chill.

I was thinking that witchcraft and paranoia are related. If you are in an interpersonal situation where you feel misunderstood, the 'group' you're fighting against can use very subtle ways to undermine your sense of what's right and what's wrong. Those people who should be on your side, turn out not to be. This film explores those feelings.

Ruth Gordon is delightfully spooky. Mia Farrow is beautiful and brilliant. Having watched Chinatown recently, I never realized that Polanski was such a giant in the cinema. I loved this film and I've signed up to get the others in the trilogy.

One of my favorites
I always loved this film. It was almost perfect in every way. My Grandma used to remind me of Ruth Gordon, so I just adored Ruth Gordon. Here she was her New York yenta-ish self, but a Satanist, too. This is exactly why the film works so well. We all get scared of monsters and psychopaths running around with knives. In this movie, though, the villians are are New York yenta and her intellectual husband.

This does follow Ira Levin's excellent novel. Mia Farrow is perfect as gentle, almost timid Rosemary. The entire cast is wonderful.

I remember watching this movie as a child, and I'm almost certain that the ending here is changed. When Rosemary enters the neighbor's apartment with her knife, and goes over to the bassinet, then gasps in horror, there used to be a superimposed image of cat-like eyes while Rosemary screams, "What have you done to his eyes?" That really worked well, but it's gone here, or at least on the dvd I watched recently.

All in all, an excellent movie.

By the way, several years ago I was in the bookstore and came upon Ira Levin's sequel to this, "The Son of Rosemary". UGH! This is the most horrible novel EVER. Well, probably not ever, but definitely up there. What a disappointment that was!

Great 1960s horror classic!
'Rosemary's Baby' is an absorbing film with great performances from all its cast.

Whilst never a fan of Mia Farow, one cannot take away from her the utter convincing role she plays in this. This was one of two films where Farrow made a lasting impression; the other being just three years later in the British thriller from 1971: 'Blind Terror' where she starred alongside Paul Nicholas and Norman Eshley.

Ruth Gordon was to co-star in this, an actress who also starred in a subsequent masterpiece just a year later in 1969: 'What Ever Happened To Aunt Alice' alongside Geraldine Page.

The most clever part of this movie is that most of what could be going on is left to the imagination - even to the look of the baby that the viewer never get to see! There's something to be said for not revealing all which most movies these days tend to do. Very similar to the theme to 'Fright' from 1971 starring Susan George; this has a very haunting theme score-type lullaby which lingers on, long after the movie has ended.

Definitely a 1960s classic!