Ten Statements About....ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)

One of the greatest reaction shots in movie history...

"He has his father's eyes."

"What do you mean? Guy's eyes are normal!"

　

1) This film is right smack dab in the middle of Polanski's suspense/horror period--and much like similar films like Repulsion, What? and The Tenant, Polanski starts building the sense of unease with tiny, near-subliminal touches during Guy and Rosemary's initial visit to the Bramford. After all the strange glimpses of workmen seemingly working on nothing, the cracks in the hall and the likesuch, I'm surprised they're willing to take it...especially after Maurice Evans' Hutch gives them that gruesome catalog of stuff that happened within. But then, you all know what my friend Derrick says about white people and haunted/evil houses...

(and incidentally, after this and The House On Haunted Hill, I'm convinced that if Elisha Cook is showing you a house...run.)

2) You know, I always knew that Farrow would give good paranoid with the best of them...but I never realized how well she did the before of Rosemary, how she was able to convey how engaging the character is at the beginning of the ordeal. This just emphasizes how truly far she falls once everything goes off the rails--an emphasis given sharper relief by the hints we see in her dreams that there was always something of a desire to keep everything in order in her from an early age.

You know, if you meet a couple over the body of their
just-suicided boarder...they're prolly not good best
friend material.

3) I love how Rosemary and the Casevets are, at their core, doing the same thing when they interact with Guy--namely, reflecting back his own desires and thoughts, feeding him a continual line of what they think he needs to hear. It makes the deal Guy makes--or that Rosemary thinks he makes--all the more plausible.

4) The genius of the dream sequence is how Polanski spends so much time with stuff that is obviously a dream--the whole thing with the ship and Hutch and the like--that when we get to the stuff that might not be, like creepy naked old folks preparing Rosemary for her date with The Devil, we don't question it. Hell, even when a wide-eyed Farrow tells us flat out that this is not a dream, we don't accept it as fact.

5) I really like how the only person who behaves in a creepy and suspicious manner is Guy--which is why I think John Cassavetes was perfect in the role. I think that if they had cast someone more, well, movie star handsome we wouldn't buy him being so squirrely...which means that Guy wouldn't serve to throw suspicion off of the true monsters of this film.

6) I know there has to be some form of make-up involved...but My God, does Farrow sell her physical changes through her body language and even the way the timbre of her voice subtlely alters every time she improves or worsens.

7) Reason why this film could never be remade #1: the fact that, crazy dream sequence nonwithstanding, we never see anything overtly supernatural happening. This keeps open something that Polanski wanted open (and something that seems to have been an obsession with him during this period)...that it's all in Rosemary's head, and this conspiracy of witches is something she creates to justify her condition. If it was remade, you know we'd have lots of scary shit going on and CGI spooks a'bounding. And speaking of which...

The worst thing about these satanists is how...
reasonable they are.

8) Reason why this film could never be remade #2: Every one of the members of the conspiracy in it behaves so damn normally. This creates an ambiguity that modern Hollywood would just not let stand.

9) Because this film is so claustrophobic, confined for the lion's share to just that one apartment building, it actually serves to make the few outside shots seem alien and strange, even the ones of landmarks we recognize.

10) What makes the final sequence so unnerving is how Polanski gives us a variety of reactions to Rosemary discovering Adrian's existence. The fact that Roman and Minnie treats her with such reverence and respect allows us to come to our own decision about what our heroine ultimately decides...and no matter what she does decide, it's not good.

Overall...a masterful, excellent film that can be looked upon either a paranoid thriller or a creepy, subtle horror story that is made even more amazing by the uniformly great performances from everyone--especially Farrow.

Ten Statements About....BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970)

"What the?  He got a cool jacket!  Why
can't I have a cool jacket?"

"Mr. Taylor, Mr. Brent, we are a peaceful people. We don't kill our enemies. We get our enemies to kill each other."

1) sigh...Another example of a sequel that was made without understanding why the original kicked so much ass. This film takes a similar tack the original does, but without the subtlety, grace or wit of that original...resulting in a mess.

2) One of the major reasons why this simply doesn't work is because James Franciscus' Brent has no personality, no character arc, no purpose in the film other than to stumble from one set-piece to another with Nova in tow until he finds Taylor. Once Brent finds Taylor, Heston takes over by dint of charisma only long enough to get his ass shot.

3) Wow...there's a character in this movie actually called Negro, and called so unironically. It's still a shock when you realize how far perceptions have come.

4) I do appreciate how Maurice Evans continues to keep Dr. Zaius true to his conception in the original film. His motivations are still thoroughly understandable if not exactly virtuous, and there are moments where he is honestly in the right. It's a rare moment of grace from the previous film....

I find it amusing that The Forbidden Zone...is my hometown..

5) That is drowned in acid by the one-sided villainy of General Ursus, who is the engine that so hamfistedly drives the film's Vietnam metaphor. Granted, James Gregory is wonderfully vigorous in playing the General, but the character is so unbalancing it's not even funny.

6) It also doesn't help that the mutants, well, are dicks. I know that Paul Dehn's screenplay must've been in love with the idea of them being the sort of 'Military Industrial Complex' side of Ape World, but they're just so loathsome in the way they'd rather torture Brent than learn about his culture.

7) You know, for all the awfulness of this movie, that one sequence with Brent and Nova walking their way around the Matte Paintings Of New York is really cool. The fact that these sequences are done with the alternating blasts of total silence and noise make them a fascinating tableau.

"I want you to go in there...and OVERACT as if your SAG
Card depended on it!"

8) That 'ping' noise we get before the mutants deign to talk normally reaaaaally gets on my nerves.

9) So, ummmm, apparently the mutants are masters of vulcanizing rubber...I mean, what was the whole point of hiding their multi-colored veiny-faces when they usually don't see anyone besides other vieny-faces? And they're not as scary as I remembered them being back in the days.

10) I wonder if the film would have been affected at all if the script just forewent that lil' sidetrip to visit Zira and Cornelius entirely. It's not like anything gets advanced save for a couple of laugh lines..

Overall...this is one of the first films I saw as a child--my parents took me to see it at the old Sunrise Drive-In during its first run--and man, does this suffer. This film's heavy-handedness and clumsy script writing obliterates the entertainment factor of what is, at its core, two groups of pricks taking aim at our astronauts (oh, and Nova The Dopey-Faced Tribal Gal)

Ten Statements About....PLANET OF THE APES (1968)

Even though the two male figures here behave badly, neither
is the bad guy...which is the beauty of this film.

"My dreams aren't like yours. I can't help thinking that somewhere in the universe there must be something better than man. There has to be."

1) I had forgotten how many long stretches of this film go on without any of Jerry Goldsmith's exceptional score--and that's for the better. By using it only sparingly, at key moments, the score itself becomes something of a character, a greek chorus commenting on Taylor's plight.

2) Boy...is Taylor a dickhead through most of this film...but then, I suspect he needed to be an extreme dickhead to make the signs that he does transform due to his experiences all the more obvious.

3) Maybe it's the strength of the actors involved, the expressiveness of the make-up effects or a combination of both, but after a while the ape make-up becomes more-or-less invisible after a little bit, and you accept the apes as characters and not people in suits.

There is a way to make someone put on a monkey
mask and make them real characters...

4) Perhaps the movie's best performance is given by Maurice Evans' Zaius. Unlike Tim Roth's Thade in Tim Burton's 2001 remake, you never get the sense that Zaius is an enemy. He shows something akin to respect toward Taylor after a bit even as he resists him, and you certainly get the sense that even if he finds some of the things he does or has done distasteful, he believes he is doing it for the good of his society.

5) Boy, do I love how director Franklin J. Schaffner gets around budgetary constraints--the way he depicts the space ship crash without the use of miniatures or opticals is masterful and amazing.

6) The only character who gets on my nerves is Lou Wagner's Lucius, who is obviously intended to be an character for 'the young kids' to identify with...and his counterculture spouting is cliched and heavy handed.

7) I guess because it's been quoted--and misquoted--so many times, I forgot how subtle the ending was, especially given that Schaffner has the courage to let the scene and the credits that follow play out only with ambient sound. The only thing that bugs me now about it is Heston's over-the-top punching of the final lines.

"We'll see how you like it when I throw poop at you!"

8) I know there are people who consider this funny and satirical...but, truth be told, I don't see it. I can certainly see its value as a political simile about prejudice, civil rights and the suppression of information, but--whether because of the way the script is written, or because of my viewing it some forty years out of time--I don't see the humor in much of it. Except when, like with the see-no-evil-etc. shot, the humor is over-the-top.

9) I do like the fact that ape society is certainly primitive and has echoes of other primitive societies--there are glimmers of the wild west and middle eastern cultures in there--but it's not one that reflects a certain era in human society one hundred percent.

10) For a film that's two hours long, and one I had an impression was slow going, it's actually very well paced. Even the longish sequences toward the end have purposes.

Overall...I'm surprised at how well I liked this (I have not watched this film for roughly three decades). It's much smarter than I remember; very well acted save for Heston, who never met a line he couldn't chew up and spit out; and does a really cool bit of world building. It makes me feel better about visiting the other four films in the original cycle in the coming days.