Editorials
50 Years Later, ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ Still Terrifies and Inspires Modern Horror Hits
“This is no dream! This is really happening!”
First released in theaters 50 years ago, on June 12, 1968, Rosemary’s Baby changed horror as we know it today, effectively inspiring a new wave of horror that forever altered the genre and paving the way for major hits like The Exorcist. Based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Ira Levin, released just the year before, Rosemary’s Baby won over audiences and critics, earning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Ruth Gordon, and was eventually selected for preservation in the National Film Registry for being historically and culturally significant. Rosemary’s Baby remains an all-time great horror film, but like most trailblazers, the path to forge new territory came with blood, sweat, and tears behind the scenes.
Rosemary’s Baby nearly became an entirely different film before production even began. Hoping to segue into a more prestigious career with Oscar-winning potential, B-movie gimmick horror director William Castle immediately knew Ira Levin’s novel had major potential to give him what he was looking for and mortgaged his home to purchase movie rights. Having a contract with Paramount, he went to them with the pitch to direct. They, however, wanted young up and comer Roman Polanski and offered Castle a producer’s role instead. Backed into a corner, and not wanting to tie up the project financially for years to come, Castle begrudgingly accepted. Castle’s inputs on the film were minor, at least from an artistic standpoint, and his dreams of mainstream respectability were never realized as he suffered from kidney failure soon after the film’s release. Even still, without Castle’s recognition of Levin’s novel about a housewife pregnant with the Antichrist, Rosemary’s Baby wouldn’t exist as we know it.
For his part, Polanski immediately keyed in on the story element that would make Rosemary’s Baby so effective and chilling; deception. Polanski wanted to focus on the story from Rosemary’s perspective only, relying on ambiguity of the supernatural and using it to create an anxiety in the audience. Rosemary, played effectively by Mia Farrow, is the epitome of a ‘50s housewife. Eager to please her husband and eager to have a baby, Rosemary puts the needs of everyone else before hers, especially when her health is at stake. Even when she wakes after that fateful night thinking her husband has raped her, she’s quick to forgive. All the while, ominous signs are around her that things may or may not be all in her head. That Rosemary’s fate is almost never in her own control lends to the overall feeling of anxious helplessness that pervades the narrative; the only two decisions in the film that are entirely her own is her choice to move into the Bramford apartment and to give in to her maternal instincts in the closing moments. Any time Rosemary dares to stand up for herself she’s consistently manipulated by those around her. Those she’s meant to trust. Anyone who does genuinely seek to help Rosemary is quickly eliminated.
Polanski further played with deception in terms of what Satanists look like. These weren’t the Gothic characters, ominous and robed, seen before. These were welcoming neighbors in New York City. Roman and Minnie Castavet were nosy, elderly neighbors who dress their age and bring home-baked goods (albeit drugged). Dr. Sapirstein, her appointed doctor by the Castavets, is renounced in his field; no one would ever suspect that he too is a member of the coven planning to usher in the Antichrist. The opening credits are conveyed via pink cursive over a panning cityscape, a style choice that gives the opposite impression of a horror film. Polanski’s final decision would solidify the film’s greatness; he never showed us the Devil. By refusing to show the audience the Devil, it forever remains etched in the nightmares of imagination.
Despite the ambiguity that would deeply root Rosemary’s journey in psychological terror, it’s no surprise that the film stirred up controversy after release. The Catholic League protested, The National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures gave it a condemned rating, and some theaters even banned it from playing. It didn’t stop the film from becoming a money maker at the box office. Rosemary’s Baby-inspired a slew of Satanic horror soon after, but its effects on the genre are much more profound than that. It took the ultimate battle between good versus evil and put it in the seemingly mundane home of a vulnerable housewife. Sweet, eager-to-please Rosemary whose internal struggle with her faith is only barely hinted at became the mother to the Antichrist without her consent. Even 50 years later, that’s still terrifying.
Despite what the higher-ups at Marvel would have you believe, Stan Lee’s original vision for Spider-Man was very different from the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler that fans ultimately got.
It was comics maestro Steve Ditko that turned him into the lovable web-head that we all know and love, though even that first draft of the character wasn’t exactly meant to be a child-friendly mascot. Ditko envisioned an uncanny arachnid-human hybrid whose freakish poses and dark costume would strike terror into the hearts of criminals, with the inclusion of web-shooters possibly having been a suggestion by Ditko’s roommate at the time, renowned fetish artist and bondage enthusiast Eric Stanton.
These more adult-oriented origins may have changed over the years, but one could argue that Spidey never completely lost his darker side. In fact, we’d eventually see several grim storylines that explored the horrific consequences of Spider-Man’s radioactive blood. While having his irradiated body fluids give Mary Jane cancer is likely the most terrifying of these yarns (track down Spider-Man: Reign if you’re up for a depressing read that was at one point set to be adapted to film by Michael Jackson), one of the most memorable horror-adjacent moments in these comics has to be the acceleration of Peter Parker’s mutation and the eventual introduction of Man-Spider – a storyline that appears to have been one of the main inspirations behind the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
I sincerely doubt that Marvel Studios is really going to give their toy-selling juggernaut a Cronenbergian rebrand, but the most recent trailer for Brand New Day suggests that the creative team is pulling from some surprisingly spooky source material in this latest superhero sequel. Specifically, the trailer makes it seem like the film is set to be a loose adaptation of the Neogenic Nightmare arc from Spider-Man: The Animated Series, commonly known as the best exploration of Spidey’s radioactive dark side that also features the most iconic version of Man-Spider.
If you’re wondering what these influences could mean for the upcoming film, I’d like to invite you to join me as we look back on some of the animated series’ most horror-tinged episodes.
A fourteen-episode story arc that made up the show’s second season, Neogenic Nightmare began airing in September of 1995. At this point, the series had already earned a reputation as the definitive version of Spider-Man despite dealing with absurd levels of censorship and executive meddling. It’s widely known at this point that this incarnation of Spidey was prohibited from ever punching his villains, and the studio even insisted that realistic guns should be replaced with futuristic laser weapons in order to avoid enraging concerned parents.
And that’s not even mentioning bizarre demands like setting up Hobgoblin as the original Goblin villain simply because the folks responsible for the toy-line had already prepared the character’s merchandise before scripts were even written.
At the end of the day. the show’s success mostly came down to John Semper’s excellent writing, with the (mostly) faithful recreation of the Spider-Man’s core principals and a handful of iconic storylines (coupled with an excellent cast behind the scenes) elevating a what was intended to be a kid’s show promoting ToyBiz products.
Naturally, the rampant cartoon censorship of the 90s couldn’t keep Semper from wanting to explore darker themes from his own favorite Spider-Man comics, and that’s how his team came up with a season-long re-imagining of iconic arcs like the Six-Arm Saga, The Mutant Agenda and even the first appearance of the Sinister Six. These stories would be enhanced with additional “dark” characters like Blade, The Punisher and even Morbius (though the latter had to exchange his vampiric blood-drinking for bizarre plasma-absorbing powers in order to conform to network guidelines).
If you haven’t yet seen it, the complete Neogenic Nightmare arc follows Spider-Man as he discovers that his mutation is progressing beyond his initial superpowers and threatening to turn him into a more monstrous hybrid. After developing extra arms, Spidey goes so far as to request help from both the X-Men and several other super-heroes as he becomes embroiled in a criminal conspiracy involving a team-up between some of his most iconic villains. The arc eventually introduces us to the show’s version of Man-Spider, which is depicted here as the monstrous final stage of the process which began when Peter was first bitten by that radioactive spider.
Personally, I think this werewolf-like addition to Spidey’s genetic curse is the best incarnation of Man-Spider that we’ve ever seen. This is because the six-armed body horror of it all adds even more weight to Peter’s decision to keep helping others regardless of what his powers may cost him, with the creature’s final rampage even giving the supporting cast a chance to help Spider-Man for a change. While I don’t hate the Morbius movie as much as some other comic fans, it’s a shame that Sony relegated that story to a solo film instead of later incorporating it into the Man-Spider saga like Neogenic Nightmare did.
Season two of the animated series ended up being an even bigger hit than the first, with fans loving the show’s take on an expanded Marvel Universe (which even included the ’90s X-Men cast) as well as the darker take on a more monstrous Spider-Man. That’s why it makes sense that the MCU’s return to street-level comic adventures would harken back to this particular storyline – especially since it appears that the Disney wishes to use the upcoming film as an opportunity to shine a light on other Marvel characters just like Semper did back in the day.
From what we can see in the trailer, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man appears to be going through his own additional transformations, including creepy fully black eyes and organic web-shooter, as well as the cocoon-building behavior previously seen in Marvel’s The Other arc in the comics. As I mentioned before, I doubt that the MCU will allow this particular cash cow to fully transform into a nightmarish spider freak that can scare away children, but there’s always a chance that the studio could surprise us with more horror elements. I’d also love to see the story explore Spidey’s mutation and use that as an excuse to formally introduce X-Men’s mutants into the MCU, especially since Sadie Sink is rumored to be playing Jean Grey in the flick.
However, even if Brand New Day doesn’t adapt as much of the Neogenic Nightmare as the promotional material has suggested, I’d argue that this particular season of Spider-Man: The Animated Series is still worth revisiting simply because it’s a great example of artists being able to work past network limitations in order to tell complex stories that approach full-on body-horror.
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