Attack of the Final Girls is a podcast about the horror genre, so listener discretion is advised. Please check the show notes for specific content warnings for this episode. And of course, beware of spoilers. Welcome to Attack of the Final Girls. I'm Juliet. And I'm Teresa. And as we said last episode, we are here switching up the schedule a little bit more. We had this one scheduled for...
A couple weeks later, but now here we are in the present, in the moment, covering Rosemary's Baby, because what is more relevant than Rosemary's Baby, truly? Yeah. Yeah, it was an easy choice. We have some other stuff coming up for the inevitable inauguration in January, because this one I think was actually supposed to come out in January, but we decided to kind of wreak or jigger our schedule to...
address this one a little bit more closely to when the election happened. Yep. And it's also our anniversary. Oh, yeah, that's right. It's our three year anniversary. Yeah. Yay. I mean, and truly. What encapsulates this podcast more? Yeah, than a movie that I think I've probably taken the most notes ever for any movie on my phone while we were watching it. That's...
It's pretty par for the course. Yeah, exactly. If I didn't say it already, I hope that you enjoyed your imminent holidays. Yeah. Your imminent November holiday. I hope everybody enjoyed their tryptophan coma. After consuming all the turkey and watching football or whatever people do on Thanksgiving. Yeah, I don't... Who knows? I eat catered Cracker Barrel. You do you. I mean, we do make some dishes, but most of the time it's catered because...
Your girl loves to cook and hates to clean. I mean, fair. And it is so stressful to make an entire dinner and then have a bunch of dirty dishes and like know about impending dirty dishes. So yeah, yeah, I just do.
the Cracker Barrel thing yeah I like to cook but also we have a huge benefit concert the night before Thanksgiving so I'm usually just like struggling to be awake and present because coffee shops are closed on thanksgiving so i'm like i'm really running on you know minus zero at this point the coffee shop i go to will serve coffee in the morning oh good to know they close at noon that's the struggle of the holidays right like i mean
I am not advocating for denying folks a day off because, yes, everyone should get days off to spend with their family. But having to deal... with your family, uncaffeinated. Very dangerous. Dangerous, yes. I used to, my holiday ritual was that I would go to our airport because there was a coffee shop that was open there. before the gates and so you could go at any time yeah um and get coffee and now since the remodel they don't have any coffee shops before the gates right
And I think that they may have actually taken that particular coffee shop out in favor of a Starbucks that is behind the gates now. They did. Yes. Because I was in that airport this summer. Yeah. So. Now I can't get my Christmas Day coffee anymore. Yeah. Thanks. I hate it. Big sad. Yeah. I mean, because I would go and like...
Granted, yes, I absolutely think that they should have had the day off, but I would go in, you know, wish them happy holidays and then drop a big fat tip. Exactly. Yes. Because.
Yeah. That is the way. Speaking of dealing with family uncaffeinated, there are many situations where dealing with family is dangerous. Yeah. One of them is, of course, the Thanksgiving after an election year. Uncaffeinated will take... that up to a 9.5 you know especially if you and your family ideologically do not have the same voting record I guess you could say I think this year especially there's going to be some hurt feelings there's probably going to be some
turkey yeah um so beware of that and also into christmas i think that it's funny that we have like these two holidays that are almost a month apart because i feel like Thanksgiving sows the seeds of discord and then Christmas is just like the icing on that shitty cake. It's the gauntlet, really. It really is. So...
To those folks who have to take the holidays with your chosen family rather than your blood family, like, I feel you there. I do the exact same thing. I don't really think I've ever had like a... quote-unquote family thanksgiving or christmas my family all hates each other so there's never been a situation when we've been like you know what's a good idea put all these shitty people in the same room and then you know they'll bring up like
issues from 14 years ago that have not yet been resolved for some reason so we just don't do that yeah it's always been like separate watch the macy day thanksgiving parade watch football or whatever prepare thyself for the At the time, I can't remember if it was TNT or TBS, but they're going to show A Christmas Story about 8,000 times in the next month. So we just never really did the family Thanksgiving thing. Yeah, we...
We do it every year with my dad's family, but our numbers, they are dwindling. So we went from, I mean, my family's not very big anyway, but we went from like...
I think at our largest, maybe, especially when my mom's parents were alive and were living up here, maybe 12 of us. And there's like... five of us now so that's kind of changed the dynamics a little bit and we'll we'll see what this year brings because last year was kind of the first year after a lot of losses so it was kind of like everyone was just you know Like, okay, are we doing this? This is weird. So we'll see how we persevere this time around. Well, many hopes for a painless and...
maybe short Thanksgiving situation. And then you can go home and just relax from having exactly one specific day off. Anyways, chosen families, I think is a theme of Rosemary's baby. I mean, It's easy to see why we picked this movie post-election because one of the big things that's on the docket now with a Republican-led House, Senate, and now also presidency is access to abortion care, access to trans health care, access to health care. in general of any...
shape or form in this movie is a movie that has to do a lot with choice. So it was a really easy pick for us to do. We wanted to do sort of like a cupcake movie right after the election because we're all still kind of reeling like friends are crying. and people are upset and, you know, people who are pacifists are like, holy shit, do I need a gun now, you know? So it was kind of a terrifying couple weeks there. And now we're sort of like, okay.
We barely survived the first four years of a Trump presidency. But we know more now than we did then. So let's get into a movie that really has like a lot of meat and potatoes to consume when it comes to choice, patriarchy, capitalistic society. And like I said, I think I've written more notes about this movie than I've written about any other movie that we've covered. So this might be a longer episode. Yeah, definitely. Well, and I think we should.
start or set out from the beginning and say they're definitely kind of two things at play when we're talking about Rosemary's Baby. There is the content of the movie itself, and then there is the director, Roman Polanski, and his behavior. Those things are both separate and related. think we'll talk about both but i also want to give this movie a fair shot in conversation as a movie before we get into polanski because i think it's it can be very easy to
you know, either fully dismiss a movie or wrap up a movie in the behavior of the director or a cast member or whomever. And this movie... Certainly, it deserves our attention as a movie. Roman Polanski's behavior also deserves to be addressed. And we will do both of those things. But if we're not straight up from the get, like, talking about all of the...
shitty shitty things polanski did it we'll get there yeah do not worry not only is there a lot of stuff to talk about polanski but there's a lot of stuff like in real life that is interesting about this movie that is funny because it parallels the events that happen in this movie and also like
is sometimes the total opposite of what happens in the movie, which I think is really cool. I love that one of the very, very, very first things that you ever see in this movie is when Rosemary and Guy are getting ready to see this apartment.
And the guy that's showing them the apartment, not really an important character, but he goes in and he's like, this lady was kind of eccentric. And she grew all of her own herbs. Everybody's still calling it herbs at that point, which I love. And actually, have you ever watched it? any of those videos with maddie matheson the bigger dude who cooks right yeah
He's got a bunch of face tats. He calls them herbs, too. And I just recently finished Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I was listening to the audiobook, and he also calls them herbs. So I'm like, maybe we're just all chumps. Maybe we're all wrong.
So I'm going to start saying it Herb and I'll just wait to see who corrects me. And I'm like, if you're not higher on the cooking ladder than Anthony Bourdain or Maddie Matheson, then I'm not going to listen to your ass. But anyways, one of the very, very first things that we see. is they get shown into this apartment. All the stuff is still in this apartment, like furniture, plant, dead plants, you know, pictures, wild stuff. And then...
Rosemary looks down at the writing desk. And one of the last things that the woman wrote was, I can no longer associate myself. And that was it. That's the last thing that she wrote. And then she stopped writing.
And Rosemary kind of looks at it like, oh, but I love that that's one of the very first things that you see. Yes. Is that, you know, we can assume that she's writing this letter, you know, like I can no longer associate myself with the Church of Satan or with your group or whatever. Yeah. But I love just that phrase.
in absence of whatever it was she was not going to associate herself with because she very shortly died after that. Yes. I can no longer associate myself. So I really, really love that. I think it sets a really good tone. I love a movie that... of drips these little breadcrumbs all the way throughout.
about what you're going to be seeing and that's one of the things i think that really sets the tone absolutely yeah i think the filmmaking also sets the tone like my first note is this film is such a vibe Because it is. The way it's filmed is just beautiful and brilliant. There are so many long shots with very few cuts in between. And it just creates this sense of like...
simultaneous beauty and discomfort. People argue, is this a horror film? Or some people have said, it's the best horror film without any actual horror in it. This is... before the era of jump scares. In fact, I was kind of clocking when we were watching this time, like, oh, if this were a modern movie, here's where all the jump scares would be. But it does such an amazing job of just throughout, like, you start off...
not knowing what's wrong, but you just know something is not right or something is just a little off. And that... builds this dread that increases throughout the movie. We as the audience kind of know before Rosemary even knows like something's not good here. And I just think the filmmaking does so much of that work.
There's a lot of things that I feel like were kind of Roman Polanski hallmarks and then some stuff that is very divergent from his typical filmmaking. And one of those things is like this sort of freewheeling camera work that we have in certain shots.
the specific scenes that I'm thinking of is when Rosemary asks Guy to make love to her when the first night in their apartment when there's literally nothing in there. We have this sort of like frantic camera work, which is, you know, in a movie that was made. in the late 60s, it's very different than the...
kind of depictions of love that you would see in other 60s movies, the ones that are coming off the top of my head right now are the James Bond movies. Those scenes are very structured, very slow pan, focusing on the pleasure.
what have you. In this one, it's very frenetic. There's a lot of energy there. And the other scene I'm thinking of is when Rosemary walks across the street in traffic. Now, Roman Polanski did specifically film that one, but it's not because he was... in favor of it it's because nobody else was brave enough to walk with her in traffic right because she literally walked into traffic like those taxis city yeah those taxis are not like
they're not staged. This is like a true situation and nobody wanted to do it. So Roman Polanski is like, okay, I'll do it. But yeah, those two scenes specifically are the ones that came to mind. There are a lot of other scenes where it's very steady or we have these wide
shots or interesting placement of characters which is deliberate but in those specific scenes we have this like true departure from polanski's like normal style he also doesn't do it very often but when he does it it's really effective where
It's a very tight shot of somebody's face, but it's not framed in a traditional way. It's not framed to be beautiful or dramatic. It's framed to feel very... claustrophobic yeah and i think those are very very effective shots as well it's definitely an interesting movie in that i feel like a movie like this could have been filmed by somebody who would have made it really boring
Absolutely. Yes. I always think about this with House of Cards, which is the remake of the TV show that Kevin What's-His-Face was in. Oh, yeah, him. Yeah, the bad guy. Another bad man. And Robin Wright was in it. And she's amazing in that television show.
it's such a slow burn that it very easily could have been like really boring and it ended up being very very interesting specifically because the cinematography was so good and i think this is a movie like that because this movie is two hours and 20 minutes long it's pretty long for a movie that is so dramatic and you know
terror driven, I guess you could say. But if it had been filmed by like pretty much anybody else, I think that it would have been really boring or it would have felt very much like a longer movie. Yeah, I've seen this movie countless. amount of times and I never find myself getting bored during it. I always am seeing new things. I'm, you know, following the pacing really well. Yeah. And I completely agree with its length. It could very well be a. quite boring film, but it's not.
You know, it's funny. I've only seen this movie two times. This was my second watch. Oh, wow. I watched it during the pandemic for the first time. And this is my second time watching it. I really enjoyed it the first time I watched it. It was just something where like, I didn't see it when I was younger. So I just never. really watched it, but I had this list of must-see horror movies I was trying to get through. I made it about six movies in, and then I was like, you know what?
I'm going to rewatch Buffy. Not that the movies were bad. I mean, it's a right and good choice, especially during a global pandemic. I just am terrible at doing lists. I'll make the list and be like, oh, this is nice. And then I'll be like, I have no reason to keep.
doing this I don't care yeah lists like that those like essential lists or like when people do the I know a lot of people do in october they'll do like 31 days of blah blah blah and i'm just like but why also what if you're like not feeling any of the movies you're like you know what i really just want to watch some garbage and maybe i watched it three weeks ago but exactly i really want to watch it again
I hate being bound by lists. Yeah, I don't like to be beholden to an arbitrary list just because it's Tuesday the 12th, you know. Yeah. I don't need to watch. I was going to say Friday the 13th and I'm like, well, that's silly. Why would you watch Friday the 13th?
13th on tuesday the 12th because that's where it comes on the list yeah i do think that this movie so it came out in 1968 the book was written in 67 the book that came out was about events that happened in 1965 through 66 so i'm just prefacing this by saying it but this movie coming out in 1968 the gore is pretty intense for a big budget movie that's coming out in 1968 Specifically, Terry's body after she's jumped out.
or fallen or whatever happened to Terry, her head is smashed on the New York pavement and the gore effects in that and then also in the dream sequence where Rosemary sees her again on the night of her rape is pretty intense. months.
For a prestige film like this, absolutely. You know, certainly in, you know, Grindhouse films and in the films that producer William Castle was accustomed to making, gore like that would be a little more at home for that era. But yeah, I think... this movie is so interesting because it was such a departure to have a big beautiful a capital f film by an
then emerging auteur like Polanski, and to have it be a horror film, you know, that was pretty unusual. It's still fairly unusual. I mean, it's a little more common now with the rise of companies like A24, but... It was not common then. It is an interesting parallel. 1968 was a very important year for horror. And these are on two opposite ends of the budget spectrum.
You have Night of the Living Dead in 1968, kickstarting the zombie subgenre to infinity. And we've acknowledged this before. Yes, there were movies that could technically be called zombie movies prior to... Night of the Living Dead. But really, George Romero and Night of the Living Dead created this whole new subgenre. Same thing with this movie. Yes, there were certainly horror films going back to the silent era.
dealing with demons and the devil and possession. And yet Rosemary's Baby really is seen by many, many horror fans as kickstarting the sort of demon possession, especially when it comes to... you know, the possessed child or, you know, the spawn of Satan subgenre of horror, again, to infinity, the exorcist, the omen, and on and on and on. you know, Rosemary's Baby had to exist for those to then iterate on that idea.
And really just social commentary movies in general. Yeah. Like we like to say that, you know, Night of the Living Dead is a social commentary movie and it totally is. And some of Romero's later works were even more social commentary. Yeah. But Ira Levin's book. that this movie is based on, also called Rosemary's Baby, is specific, hard-hitting, direct social commentary on what was happening in the 60s, where, you know, we're post-World War II, we've had a couple years since, like, you know...
Oh, these men have come home and they're like, OK, we're going to take back our spots in American society. And all of the women who were there to fill in for them while they were gone were like, hang on a second. like what we're doing. We want to keep doing it. We enjoy making money for the household. Also, we think that we should have our own autonomy. We're no longer second-class citizens. We've had to keep this country running while you've been gone.
We've had some big Supreme Court decisions in the meantime. We had...
states that we're not allowing women access to birth control. We're not even talking abortion at this point, although we would be very shortly after this movie came out, but we weren't even allowing women to have the choice of when they were going to have babies. I mean... marital rape was still legal up until 1984 at the earliest of it being outlawed so we're talking about a time when so many things were in tumult you know it was wild this is also coming right after Vatican II.
which really saw the Catholic Church in a changing world, trying to grapple with and figure out what is our place in this evolving society, in the new world? How do we evolve?
dig our heels in on a lot of social issues to either capture what was then only the hints of an emerging youth culture that would come later in the 60s or to refute that. And that is something... that I think we would not have seen the string of movies that followed Rosemary's Baby, all of these very Catholic-centric possession movies.
if Vatican II hadn't happened when it did. Maybe, but I feel like the fact that they all came immediately in the decades shortly after, I think that really says something about the ethos and about... This idea of religion trying to figure out, like... How are we still relevant to people in an increasingly modern world? I mean, I'm going to reference this movie like a thousand times because there are huge parallels. I love that the first omen got into that too and used that as a plot device.
see it subtly in Rosemary's Baby, especially with all of the references to the Pope and the Pope coming to America and all of that. But I think that that's an important historical backdrop. Yeah, and it's interesting to me that we're still talking about this split and like Catholicism in America and its influence on social topics as well as, you know, the power of choice and how people are voting in the United States.
Because the first I'm going to set in, you know, it's in Italy. So much closer to kind of that source. But it has to do with a lot of the same topics as Rosemary's Baby does. Although with a decidedly, you know, more religious kind of purview. However, in this particular movie, you know, we know that Rosemary's character was Catholic, and she still finds it important.
Those choices and the way that the Catholic Church views her as a person and as a woman within her household, those things are still important, although not obvious, I would say. Yeah. Yeah, I think that... It's interesting that in a movie made in the 60s that they could have made her way more Catholic. Oh, sure. Quite honestly. You get little hints here and there. Like, you know, she went to Catholic school. We see that in one of her sort of...
hallucinations slash dreams slash flashbacks. We get her referring to God off and on. You know, she says she wants three kids. She comes from a big family. But we don't. Other than a few choice moments where she says, like, you know, like, God protect me or something. We don't. She's not toting around a rosary. She's not – we never see her going to church or talking about going to church or getting involved in a church community. So I think that that is –
then emblematic of what was happening at that time. She is a Catholic woman, but she's also a very modern woman. This is also a book that is written by a Jewish man who is specifically not Catholic. And lots of people thought that this was written by a woman, which is interesting because his name is Ira Levin. I read an article while we were watching this.
written by an Irish woman. And specifically in Ireland, they think that this is a... book that's written by a woman like specifically because Ira is not a typical men's name there and also I should say Roman Polanski was specifically extremely faithful to the book yes like he did not take a lot of So I think maybe like.
Rosemary being Catholic, while not a primary theme of this movie, I would say, I would say it's probably like secondary or tertiary theme of it. Perhaps the reason why it is not a primary theme is because this is written by a Jewish man. So his interaction. with religion and how it affects his life is going to be much different than a Catholic woman in 1966. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. So I think that's an interesting bit because she is definitely, you know.
a christian i don't know if i would say she is your typical practicing catholic but considering how often they show the pope on television like we know yeah you know it's a thing yeah even outside of guy being like Can't wait for my Yamaha commercial to be on there, you know, because that was really why he was watching that. Right. He didn't really care. He was like the Pope's in Yankee Stadium. This would be a great place for my Yankee commercial or Yamaha commercial. It's like, OK.
All right. Priorities. Yeah. I did think it was weird. This is something that like you don't really see in real life. We're in movies depicted anymore. But like adult women being adopted by old people. like the whole terry thing and like oh yeah i thought they wanted me for some sex thing but then i was just staying with them and it's like no that's not a thing that really happens anymore yeah yeah like glad that she was there but also like what
Yeah, that was, I think that is very emblematic of the time. And we see that, you know, we see period pieces trying to do that still. I think it probably... happens in modern times, but I don't, I think there's probably a lot more stigma associated with it. I mean, I talk a lot about this in life. I don't know how much I've talked about it on the podcast, but you know. The 60s were a little closer, I think.
think to still like that concept of families, blood families staying closer together and sort of like more intergenerational interaction. We have moved so far from that in American culture. Now, I will say in other cultures.
like intergenerational households or family pods or living in the same neighborhood as your parents is like way more common. And so I think that although... stuff like that probably still happens now it is probably like stigmatized a lot more like oh well like what's wrong with you and we get a little of that with carrie where she's saying like You know, when they found me, I was starving and I was addicted to substance, this, that and the other. But I feel like now.
It would just be automatically assumed like, oh, like these older folks took you in. How'd you fuck up? You know? So I think that's just a like modern society thing. Also, it does seem like in the movie itself, Rosemary's a little bit like, oh, okay. And when she mentions it to Guy, Guy's like, oh, okay. I think it sticks out to them too as being like, hmm, interesting. Yeah.
It's really hard to talk about this movie and not just immediately launch into some of the deeper themes of this film. It's a lot. But I'm going to try and do it in the most sensible way possible. I mean... If the spirit moves you. Yeah. So I talked a little bit about Ira Levin. So he wrote this book. It was obviously a fiction book. His wife was pregnant at the time when he was writing this novel. And he was kind of like...
observing her and how she was. He refused to let her read the manuscript. He was worried that it was going to put ideas in her head, which like... on a meta level it's kind of messed up like yeah exactly you know he's writing about a woman who's you know she's had this terrible thing happen to her but she also is like very much influenced by you know
the media that she's reading and and the the women that she's talking to and surrounding herself with so ira is kind of like well i have to protect my wife from doing from you know reading this thing and getting ideas put into her head which He was definitely a feminist, but also like, it's kind of weird. Yeah. Anyways, so I read this article by Miranda Corcoran, who is a Irish teacher. I'm going to quote her a couple of times or borrow from her.
knowledge. But one of the things that she said about this, because Ira Levin wrote this and also the Stepford Wives. Right. Which was... a movie later. Actually, the book came out, you know, in I think 1974. So several years after this, and by the time that the Stepford Wives came out, he had divorced his wife. So there was that.
What Miranda Corcoran said is, quote, one aspect of his work that has consistently horrified my students is how so many of Levin's male characters start out as loving, supportive husbands, ostensibly respectful of their wives and committed to gender equality. before ultimately transforming into callous, oppressive abusers. Obviously, one of the big themes of this book is that
Rosemary is raped. She is impregnated with the spawn of Satan, forced to carry Satan's spawn to term, and then forced to be a mother to the spawn of Satan. all the while doing this for her husband's success because he's an actor. Guy is an actor. But one of those things that rang so true to me is that in this book, Ira Levin's character, Guy seems to be supportive. He wants to have a child with his wife. He wants to be successful, but he also wants to take care of his family.
And he's supportive of her in coming into this apartment because he's kind of like, I don't know at first, but he says, you know, ultimately, yes, let's do this. And then he agrees to have a child with her. Seemingly supportive. respectful, not like... you have to do this thing. You have to make sure you clean this apartment or whatever. He seems to be very interested in the both of them being equal within the household. Same within the separate wives, at least at first, it seems like that.
And then slowly in pieces through the movie, her autonomy is kind of taken away. He sort of like structures himself as the head of the household and her opinions or desires are sort of second rate to his own. So it's very interesting. me that this movie displays this sort of decline from being supportive partner to lording husband when It so often happens that way in real life. Yeah. And there are so many men right now who would say, oh, I support gender equality. I support feminism. I want.
to be a partner in my own household. And then with the introduction of a child, you know, which always the person having the baby is going to be the one put upon for child rearing because they are the ones that bore the child. This like... patriarchal idea that the man, quote unquote, has to be the head of the household is something that we eventually slide into.
And it's insidious. It's not like there's a moment when guys like, well, I'm the boss and you got to get behind me. And Rosemary's like, OK, it's not like that. It's like in pieces, you know. The night when they decide that they're going to. try for a baby the first time which is very specific two days yeah which we know why later but you know they have this like quote-unquote date and they're having a good time it seems like they're listening to music they have a fire there
eating steak or whatever. And then Mrs. Cassafette brings over this moose. that rosemary tries to eat and then she's like oh it tastes like shit and guy's like oh always something and then it's like a switch has flipped in him you know he's not saying i'm the boss but he's
undermining her choice to be like, oh, I don't like this, you know? And then he's like, oh, it's always something. And so finally, she's like, well, I'm not going to get into an argument with you about it. I'll just eat this stupid moose because even though I don't like it. And then from that point, it's a series of small things that snowball into large things. And I just really love the portrayal of that in this movie.
To take that a step further, I think it's really, really interesting when you take Minnie Cassavette and put her into this equation, too, because we and Rosemary are kind of... tricked into believing at first that Minnie is this very independent woman. She has a very big personality. She wears bright, loud clothes. She's bossing her husband around. But when you really look at Minnie, her world is so very narrow and everything she is doing is in service of
Romans family's satanic plot. And I think that that really speaks to kind of what you were saying about Guy and... You know, a lot of modern men who will say, oh, I believe in feminism. Women should have equal rights. To a point, though, you know, it's like I think that it's very easy to point to Minnie and see like, hey, here's this brash, sassy woman. She's feminism, you know, personified when it's like.
take a closer look there. Minnie is allowed to be feminism personified in certain regards, but ultimately everything Minnie does is in service to her husband and in service to subjugating other women. And Rosemary... is one of those women who is subjugated, like not only as many, which that's an obvious thing, but she also does that to the other members of the coven. Yeah. She's very bossy of them. She sort of is directing, she's the one pulling the strings, like Roman is the Satan.
But she's pulling the strings to make sure that everything is going to plan. She's the one making the phone calls to the doctors. And she's the one making the shake for Rosemary. And she's the one preparing the herbs for Rosemary. And also... you know, giving her pregnancy advice and stuff. Although Minnie has never had a baby before. She and Roman don't have any children.
In every way, when Rosemary gets pregnant, as soon as she gets pregnant, like immediately before and as soon as she gets pregnant and afterwards. All of her autonomy is just like piecemeal stripped away about the chocolate mousse. Her decision about that is undermined. Her hair, her haircut, which, you know, in real life, that inspired so many women to go and get their hair cut. And that's this like.
like pixie style. Vidal Sassoon was like the guy to get your hair cut by at that time. And in real life, she actually did get her hair cut by Vidal Sassoon. So interesting there. Her medical care, you know, where she's going to get her. medical care she wants to go to dr hill and then minnie's like no you gotta go to dr saperstein he's the best so she has to go to dr saperstein her friends like her husband specifically deliberately tries to keep her friends and they're
advice away from her, although they all have lived experience of being pregnant. And she wants to try to listen to them. And then her husband's like, well, they're not doctors. They're idiots. They're no good bitches, he says. It's like insidious in the way that they peel away all of her autonomy.
in little bits. And I think as pregnant women, that happens so often. And right now, I'm not even thinking like your husband or your partner, but like medically. Yeah, absolutely. If you say like, oh, I want to do it this way. And then your doctor's like, no, no, no, we're not going to do it like that. Or like, hey, this might be wrong. And then your doctor's like, meh, it's probably not a big deal. Or the nurses are wild to you, like...
I know several people right now, not pregnant people, but people who are dealing with the medical industry right now, where the doctor or the nurse think that they know better than you. Not to undermine, like I... highly respect doctors and nurses and i don't think that this is a function of them being bad people more that they are pressured under a capitalist society with for-profit health care to like
get people in and out fast as fast as they possibly can and the way to do that is to think like oh well the the simplest explanation is probably the one that it is and so I think they also think that because they are in school, you know, for a certain amount of time and they've had this experience that they're always going to be the one with more knowledge.
And therefore maybe listen a little bit less. Yeah. Or not take into account people's lived experience. Exactly. And we see that with Dr. Hill late in the film as well. Rosemary goes through extreme. pains to get in touch with Dr. Hill when she's realized all of the shit that's going on between the cast of vets and Dr. Saperstein and her own husband. She knows the plot. She knows what's going on. She tries extremely hard to get in touch with Dr. Hill.
she does he brings her into the office she tells him all of this stuff he writes it all down she thinks that she's speaking to him in confidence that he's going to champion for her and make her safe and get her into mount sinai so she can have the baby and then he betrays her confidence calls dr saperstein and her husband to bring her home yeah and he thinks oh i'm doing what's best for her because she's you know
going through it because she's pregnant. And sometimes that does happen where women... are flooded with hormones. They're super stressed out. There's an incredible amount of stress on their bodies. So things might not be going well psychologically for them. He thinks, oh, well, these men will know better than what she's told me. Oh, so frustrating. It's such a frustrating film. Yeah, it is. I do love that they did not make.
Minnie and Roman Rosemary's in-laws because that is a really common trope and the choice to make them neighbors I think makes the film in this case more effective like certainly I can think of A dozen films, you know, the most recent one that comes to mind is The Front Room with Brandy in it, where it is, you know, a mother-in-law or, you know.
in-laws in general that are exerting that control and sort of pulling those strings with a spouse, especially to help exert control. But I think that in this case, especially because this movie was... really the first of its kind, I think it works well and feels more sinister to have them just be these random neighbors that we don't know a lot about. Yeah, and the power of flattery there is so impressive because...
All it takes is for Roman to flatter Guy just a little bit. The very first time he meets him, you know, they're just having dinner. It's very innocuous. And all it takes is for Roman to give... guy a few well-timed personal just like descriptive compliments And guys like hook, line and sinker. Like, sure. Yeah. I'll, you know, participate in my wife being drugged so that she can be raped by Satan to bear the son of Satan so that I can become famous. Yeah.
And I'm sure that he probably doesn't think about it that linearly. He's thinking, oh, this is what's best for me and my wife. Right. And she'll forget about it. It's not important. But. That's in essence what's happening. Oh, yeah. Guy has a major like dude crush slash like daddy fixation with Roman. Like you can tell we don't know.
anything about Guy's background. And we know very, very little about Rosemary's background. So we don't know, you know, did he have an absent father? Or did he crave of, you know, parental attention? He has like a major like, oh, this is a cool, cool older dude. I'm going to, you know, that kind of a thing with Roman. It's like really obvious from the start where he's like, oh, he's my buddy.
And he's a struggling actor. I mean, he's been in two successful plays, and Rosemary mentions that he's been on a lot of TV and radio, but no movies. There's a bit where he loses out on a role to another person, and later that... other person has a curse put on them but he's struggling and so that flattery that like flattery specific around his work is like hook line and sinker to him yeah you know he's like oh all right cool dude
The first person he tells when Rosemary says, oh, I'm pregnant is like, oh, I'm going to go tell Minnie and Roman like, what? Yeah. I mean, slow your roll, buddy. It's sort of understandable because they're closest in proximity. But like, wouldn't you call your family? Right. We have no idea what their familial relationships are like at all. Although I do know that in the book...
Rosemary has a conversation with her sister, Margaret, and Margaret tells her like, something bad is going to happen to you. You should stay inside all the time. That doesn't come out in this movie. But that's it. You know, they don't call their parents like their parents don't seem to be a part.
of the child's life or you know her pregnancy at all so maybe they just don't have anybody there to talk to about it but it is weird that he's like i'm gonna go tell roman and minnie they're gonna be so excited yeah okay i think with rosemary the only explanation i could come up with is when she is talking to Minnie about her family at one point. And she mentions that she has something like six or seven siblings and 16 or 17 nieces and nephews. And so...
I think we're just meant to understand on Rosemary's side, you know, everybody's busy doing their own thing. Like everybody's got a whole bunch of kids that they're dealing with. They probably don't have time to extract Rosemary from the Satan cult. There's 30 goddamn kids.
He's the last of them to have babies. Right. It's like, who cares at this point? You know, I think that's a real thing that a lot of people deal with is like, if you're not having the first grandkid, everyone afterwards is just like, meh. Or niece or nephew or what have you, you know? Yeah, because I am an only child and I come from a very small extended family. I don't know what those dynamics are like with bigger families. And I think, obviously...
It's family dependent. You know, I do know people who come from very large families where everybody is close and knows what's going on and others where either because the age ranges are so wide or just because.
humans are going to human you know people are not very close and sometimes it's because they can't stand each other and sometimes it's not for lack of love it's just everybody's doing their own thing we're taking care of other family members right right So I find it really interesting that in this particular movie, the husband is obsessed with the television. Oh, yeah. It's because he's watching out for his commercial. But it's a commercial. Yeah. And he's already seen it one time.
It's a short commercial. It's nothing groundbreaking. He's like, I'm going to hop on this Yamaha and right away. But it's nothing groundbreaking. But there are several scenes in which. Rosemary is left alone and Guy is sitting in front of the television like 12 inches away. And he watches it all the time. I just think that that's really fascinating. an era when it was a lot more common at this point in time to have a television in your home, but it certainly wasn't the centerpiece.
of many people's homes. Unless you had a small child, in which case they're like, let's watch Gunsmoke. We're going to watch that every day. And it certainly was before the kind of... Al Bundy, Homer Simpson trope of the schlubby dad in front of the TV with the beer. I think that that was – I'm not saying people weren't doing that in 1968, but I think as a –
media trope and as a film trope, that kind of wasn't a thing yet. So that is an interesting observation. He's not... relaxing in front of the TV he's not like watching the TV to get away from his troubles he's like actively obsessed with being close to the television so many times throughout the movie and I just think that that's Such an interesting concept is that he's so obsessed with like the next thing that he can't stop watching the television for himself. It's like he's got that.
weird self-gratification thing where he's like oh I need to see my commercial over and over and over again and when Rosemary watches the TV because she wants to see his commercial she's like gleeful and happy and you know excited to see her husband on television but there are so many other instances when guy is like watching the tv and it's just wild to me like it seems deliberate and specific
I'm sure it was. Yeah. I did not clock that at all, but that's a really, really good point. I want to talk a little bit about the way people perceive this movie when it first came out in 1968. One of the things I find... so fascinating is that so many people hated this movie.
Like for some context, Mia Farrow was married to Frank Sinatra at this point, and they actually got divorced because Frank Sinatra is like, our marriage is failing. You have to stop working and be in the home. And then Mia Farrow was like, OK.
all right, I'm going to quit because Sharon Tate was her understudy. So she's like, there's somebody else. So I will quit. And then she was shown the dailies and they were like, you're going to win an Oscar if you do this movie. So be in this movie. And she was like, okay, I'm going to leave.
frank sinatra spoiler alert she did not earn an oscar in fact she did not even get nominated for this film which just seems wild to me yes but shit 1968 was wild year for movies so like whatever i haven't seen all of the oscar noms for this year but like Maybe she didn't make the cut. In either case, you know, she split up her marriage so that she could be in this movie. And people did not like it. In fact, they thought that Rosemary was crazy.
that she was having paranoid delusions and that she dreamt up the entire thing. And that none of the witchcraft stuff was real. That she had made it all up in her head as a way to cope with being a mother. That she was scared of being a mother. So to them, we can't take anything that we see from her perspective as truth because she is not a reliable narrator. So Ira Levin wrote a sequel.
to the book, not until 1997. Interesting. And it was called Son of Rosemary. It takes place with Rosemary waking up having been in a coma since... like 1973. Holy crap. She reconnects with her grown son, who is indeed the Antichrist. But then at the very end of the book... She actually wakes up again, and it's 1965, the year that the original book took place, and it was all a dream. Oh, I hate that trope. Yeah, hate it.
Hate it. Thanks. Now, the movie sequel did not go in that direction, to be clear. Yeah, I never watched the sequel. And the reason why we actually put this movie on our list was because the Apartment 7A miniseries came out, which I also haven't watched. Yeah, I haven't watched it yet either. But it just so happened that it fit very well into real world events.
I think it's so important that we talk about like, whether or not the events that happen within the movie are real, because lots and lots of people were like, no, you know, she's pregnant, so you can't trust her. type thing yeah that all of this stuff is made up in her head we don't know what else is going on outside of you know the events that we see in the movie and like so many mental hoops that people were willing to jump through and I understand there's so
much that you can read into movies. I mean, this entire podcast is about reading into movies and talking about social commentary and how it shows what was happening during that time. However... it is always so fascinating to me the mental hoops that people are willing to jump through to ignore the message that the director and the writer are specifically giving to us yes because other than Rosemary hallucinating during her rape and then also when she's having the baby.
There are no other instances where we're led to believe that Rosemary is not of sound mind and a reliable narrator. Exactly. So I just find it so fascinating that folks at the time are like, well, she is crazy because she's pregnant. And so.
none of that stuff is real. And she definitely did not have the spawn of Satan. And there was never anything at the end of the movie to lead you to believe it was all a dream. Yeah. You know, it's not like she goes to rock the bassinet and looks in and it's like a normal ass baby. exactly exactly so and we never get to see the baby you know william castle wanted to show the baby show the baby yeah that should be the name of this episode show the baby show the baby um
No, like, okay, if we're talking about whether or not it was all a dream, that would be the perfect vehicle in order to do that is to show the baby. Maybe the baby looks completely normal. And then it would absolutely cast a question. Is this the spawn of Satan? If you go the omen route, then the baby looks totally normal, except it's got a, you know, a mark on it.
Yes, do that. And then I would say, for sure, I understand. Yes, you could absolutely put that into question. But they don't show the baby. And when Rosemary sees the baby, she freaks out because it's got goat eyes. Yeah.
So, yeah. Although we don't get to see the goat eyes. We do not. No, William Castle wanted to show the baby and make it look like real, real grotesque. And they were like... no like yeah they they did like the newspaper like bopping you on the nose saying like no william castle no this is not the tingler This is not House on Haunted Hill. This is a film. Yeah. And we're not doing that. William Castle got bumped to producer. He wanted to direct this. Yes, he did.
But they wouldn't let him know. Paramount said no. They were like, no, dude, you do schlocky B movies. You're not allowed to be on this big... capital f film yeah and i say this all with love because i love william castle schlocky b movies he's like oh Yeah. He does get to be in the movie for a hot second, which you can't say about Roman Polanski. So it's true. There's that. You know that if William Castle directed this, Roman would have been played by Vincent Price. Yeah. All right.
which man i don't know like no shade to vincent price i've i friggin love vincent price you know this he's he's like my fake grandpa i saw a clip of him on the on the betty white show with his his pug oh my god if you've never seen it it is required viewing at this point he is adorable and so is betty white but that like the two of them back and forth their banter is just incredible but I think that Vincent Price might have been too much to play Roman. Oh, he would have.
He would have. It would have been a completely ridiculous movie if William Castle had directed it. And Minnie is already ridiculous. She kind of needs a straight man to play Roman so that they're not both... caricatures yes yeah like if vincent price had been there and many too like if they had been the cast of vets it would have been like okay it would have been wacky time yeah it would have been too wacky you know yeah and roman like is a kind of a goofy guy.
Like nobody wants to hear about all of your stories, dude. Nobody cares. Yeah. Except for apparently Guy for some reason. I love Vincent Price and I will watch all of the movies that he's ever done. But I think that that was probably a good choice for him not to be Roman.
So side note, I did look up the Oscar nominees for Best Actress in 1968. Okay. And like, I'm really bummed that Mia Farrow isn't on the list. But then when you read some of the list, you're like, oh, yeah, it was stiff competition. Catherine Hepburn in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and Bancroft in The Graduate, and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde, among others. Like, okay, yeah, that's a rough year. Yeah, that was a lot. Yeah. Shit.
And I'm a Katherine Hepburn stan all the way through. Yeah, Katherine Hepburn is one that won. Oh, yeah. Okay, it makes sense. It's just wild to me that the reception was so like... cold for some folks and also like sometimes i watch clips of people in 1968 like have you ever watched those bbc clips where they would go out to like just normal regular people and be like try these chips and tell me what flavor they are you know
sometimes steve sends me those and i'm just like man 1968 was just it was a wild time it was a wild time it was a it was a very shifting world in 1968 you know you know it's wild i i just looked up like average weekly cinema attendance uh-huh this is like kind of getting off topic but In 1968 was actually when we hit a low, and it has never really picked up. Oh, that's interesting. Now, it was...
Like it's the low kind of started. The highest average percentage of the U.S. population that went to Cinema Weekly was in 1930. It was like about 65%, took a big steep drop in the 30s, went back up during the time of World War II, back up to about 60%. And then it was a... from 1947 all the way through 1953 it was a huge steep drop off and then once again it dropped
down to about 10% in 1964. And actually, this was measured through the early 2000s. It never really recovered. It was like about 10% forever. So, I mean, that's the people going weekly. Right. I don't know if it was getting more expensive or whatever, but it's just interesting to think, like, how many Oscar nominated pictures are you going in 1968? Are you going to see?
you know for the average person so perhaps you know they're not allowing themselves to be bought in to what's being told in this movie As readily as we are now in 2024. Yeah. I think the other thing about it is that Oscar nominated pictures were definitely more. accessible or they were more like just like regular regular movies like
The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke, Bonnie and Clyde, as opposed to now, so many films that are nominated for Oscars are only going to the art houses. They're not even making it to the multiplex. Movies that go to the multiplex are looked down upon by the Oscar committee. they're like meh yeah for the most part you know yeah if it's getting wide release it's like meh yeah
Now we're getting like Sundance movies and stuff. Right. Like that's a pretty wild switch, though. You know, I have a friend that I used to work with who when she watches every year, she will watch all of the Oscar Best Picture nominees. And I'm just like. And so many of them are not readily available to watch. Right. You know, like they're showing up on streaming maybe sometimes or you're not going to be able to see them until next year because the way that they were released.
it's just weird yeah oh yeah i mean typically once the oscar nominations are announced our art houses will double back and try to get those movies in but sometimes there are movies that they never showed in the first place which is You know, I could get into a whole like that's kind of weird and elitist that those of us in the Midwest don't even have access to these films before they're nominated. But, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Which like just goes to show how out of touch the Oscars are.
Yeah. You know, we've talked about how much the Oscars are garbage, so. Yeah. And the garbage continues. Yeah. Speaking of garbage, should we get into the Roman Polanski of it all? I do want to talk a little bit more about Guy before we switch over to... Also garbage. Yeah.
I specifically want to talk about Garbage Guy. I think it's funny, first of all, that his name is Guy because he is supposed to be like the every dude. Yes. So I think that's funny. But the scariest part of this movie, there's two.
scenes that I think are terrifying in this movie and one of them is like maybe one third of the way in through the movie which you don't typically see you know I think even Rosemary kind of plays this off but After Rosemary gets drugged by Minnie and then is raped, which specifically the rape is terrifying because she switches between having a hallucination where she's on a boat. And also on the boat, they say Catholics only on the boat and leave Hatch behind.
Hutch. Hutch. I don't know. I think my phone might have autocorrected to hatch. But yeah, it alternates between her having this hallucination of being on a boat and also like the real assault. between her and also this Catholic deacon and... Satan and we don't know 100% for sure if it's guy possessed by Satan and that's who it is or if it's actually Satan which is okay like we're never told one way or the other yeah but the scariest part of this movie
to me, or one of the two scariest bits of this movie is that Guy specifically admits to raping her while she was unconscious. Yeah. Like, outside of her actually being assaulted by Satan, like... He plays it off because she's got all these scratches all over her sides and her arms. And he's like, oh, well, you know, I didn't want to miss baby making night. And she's like, while I was out. And he's like, well, I already clipped my nails. So you won't have to worry about that again.
It doesn't matter. To me, the cult aspect of this and ushering into Satan and all that stuff is like so second class to this breach of trust between this guy and the woman that he supposedly loves is that he is ready to admit. that he raped his wife while she was unconscious. Even if he didn't actually do it, he is so ready to say, oh, yeah, that was me. Sorry.
I scratched you. I'm not sorry that I did this. I'm sorry that you bear the marks from it. Yeah. And that's absolutely terrifying to me. And of course, we end up like whittling away. rosemary's autonomy and her her own choice but that breach of trust to me is like one of the two scariest bits of this movie yeah i completely agree
So a very good quote that I want to share from Eleanor Johnson. She wrote an article called Guy Horror, Rosemary's Baby and Coercive Control on publicbooks.org. She said, quote,
Without Guy's coercive control of Rosemary, there would be no satanic rape. Without the rape, there would be no satanic baby. The horror of Rosemary's baby is to show how terrifying, unimaginable, supernatural horror... piggybacks on the routine quotidian mundane reality of domestic abuse rosemary's baby recognizes that coercive male behaviors gaslighting psychological control social isolation restriction of movement and knowledge sexual control and reproductive violence
are what spawn evil in the world. It literalizes that idea through the satanic baby. End quote. In order for people to buy this movie, they had to introduce satanic... the satanic baby to hammer the punchline that the real horror of this movie is domestic abuse and coercive control. Oh, yeah.
absolutely yeah like people would not have bought this film had they just said like look how bad he's treating his wife it's shitty they had to say look how bad he's treating his wife he put a satanic baby in her that goes back to the thing we always talk about which is that often horror can say things that other genres can't yeah because of the nature of horror because
How many people are going to go see or buy into a movie about domestic abuse, unfortunately? Especially in 1960. Especially in 1968. But how many people are going to go to a movie about a satanic baby and then receive the message about domestic abuse? you know it and some people still didn't there are lots of people who don't like this movie yeah yeah and i mean you know and that's that's the tricky part then of horror is
How many people then are – I say this all the time about the Saw franchise. How many people are never going to get the message in those movies and are just going to see an either – turn away from or gleefully participate in the gore and the torture and the this and the that and the blood and the guts and not see
the message behind those things, what those things are being used as a vehicle to portray. Yeah. That's the double-edged sword of horror really is, you know, you can put it out there, but not everybody's going to be ready.
to get it yeah i think too that maybe a lot of the people who were not willing to receive that message were men who were having a hard time or maybe women who had had the same thing happen to them and so could not see beyond their own control that had been implemented upon them.
A really fascinating thing I thought too about this movie is that Guy had no problem with giving over control of his wife to two other people that just... live next door to him because he had never had to experience a loss of autonomy right him signing over his son or the child to these two random neighbors had nothing to do with his own autonomy. And therefore, he didn't care. He was willing to sign that over and just say, okay.
cool she can have this baby yeah and it won't hurt her he and he even actually says in the film close to the end uh they promised they wouldn't hurt you and they haven't really right which i think you know there are huge parallels in you know um making decisions and voting and doing things in the world where you're like well it doesn't hurt me and and look
They told me you'll be fine, whoever the you is that we're talking about here. You know, whatever group that is actively being harmed. Oh, no, they told me you'll be fine. They're not gonna. Exactly. Yeah. So the second scariest part of this movie to me is the scene at the very end. It's not Rosemary seeing the baby. It's a scene where... you know, guy tells her that she's not really been hurt. But at the very tail end of that, when...
What's her name? Lori Louise or Lisa Louise or whatever her name is. Oh, yeah. The lady with the thick glasses. Yeah. She's rocking the baby too fast. And, you know, she tells. She tells Roman that. Roman's like, go away. He motions for Rosemary to come up and start rocking the baby. And she's like, you want me to be his mother? And he said, well, aren't you his mother? And then you could see, like, she's going to take care of this baby.
She didn't have to. I think their original plan is that they were just going to take the baby, tell her it was dead. She would accept that. And then she would go to Beverly Hills with Guy and just have her own kids and completely forget about that. And that would be like the acceptance. thing. But then she kind of strikes back. She infiltrates their house with a knife and then she decides that she's going to accept this child.
in my head while i'm watching this her accepting this baby and accepting this responsibility even though she did not want to do this has such a clear parallel to what we're experiencing right now in terms of oh, I'll take care of it. It's fine. I need to do this.
While I was watching it, it just made me think of like the fact that over 50%, I think it was like 54% of white women voted for Trump. Oh, you'll still have bodily autonomy. You'll still have your access to abortion. I'm voting because of the economy. in me and like being brainwashed it's just what I was feeling when I was watching this is you're surrounded by a bunch of people telling you what's going to happen even though
You're ignoring the reality of what has actually happened to you. So you just keep going. Yeah. And it's harmful, you know, like Rosemary has had this extremely traumatic. thing happened to her. She was raped and impregnated by Satan. And then she was forced to carry the baby to term to her own great detriment in pain, in sickness, thinking that this was going to be her baby. And then...
told, oh, actually, your baby is a vehicle of Satan, and therefore that's what's going to happen to him. You don't get to have the family that you thought you were going to have. You're going to be taking care of this baby that is already...
appropriated for this one purpose um and she doesn't anyways and i was just like jesus this is so wild and it has so many parallels to what we're actually going through right now is like listening to people who have seen what has happened and have been there through the, you know. Roe v. Wade being revoked or being overturned, your access to abortion is now a measure that's ruled on state by state.
And many states have not only revoked it, but caused people irrevocable harm, have put people in prison, have caused people to have babies in jail, have removed their access to health care. And now. you know, pivoting a little bit, even outside of reproductive autonomy, we're also talking about autonomy in general, in terms of healthcare, your access to gender affirming healthcare. Well, they said,
that that won't be a problem. Well, guess what? Yeah, it's been a friggin problem since 2016. Like it hasn't stopped being a problem. And no matter what they've told you and what they've convinced you of, if you look at
the things that have happened, those promises that they've made you or those things that they've told you have not come to fruition. And those things that they told you they would... they would protect like abortion which like that is baffling to me like oh no they they said that abortion is going to be protected like cool but it's not is the thing can you explain to me texas can you explain to me indiana like
I don't understand how we can have this sort of cognitive dissonance. Yeah. And in this movie, we also have that same cognitive dissonance. Yeah. And the thing I think is really. interesting and makes this movie all the more timely and relevant you know nearly 50 years later or no over 50 years later excuse me is that although the issue of
pregnancy and choice around that is central to this. Autonomy about healthcare is also a really prominent thing in this movie. You know, Rosemary's... ability to decide her own care and to be, and we said this kind of earlier, to be listened to and affirmed and to be able to articulate like, no, this is what I need for my body, for my health. It's completely removed, even outside of abortion. You know, her prenatal care is not in her control at all.
And I thought that the third scariest part of this movie, also with Guy, there's a scene getting closer to the end of the movie where Rosemary is saying, I want to go back to Dr. Hill. I don't like this other doctor. He's putting me on all these weird herbs and this drink and I don't feel well and I want to go back to my... doctor, the doctor I trusted. And Guy is more concerned about hurting the doctor's feelings than her getting healthcare.
You know, like he is more concerned, you know, guy is the, well, we can all get along on Facebook of this movie in that scene, you know, where he's just like. Oh, you're actively suffering over here in physical and mental anguish. But can't we just play nice? Because we don't want to hurt the man's feelings. Like, come on.
And she she says what he says, it's not fair to Dr. Saperstein. And she said, not fair to Dr. Saperstein. That's what's fair to me. And it's a really interesting scene because immediately after that. We're not sure exactly why this happens, but her pain stops. That's why she looks so shitty is because she's in pain constantly. She can't do anything. She's at home all the time. She hasn't been drinking these shakes for a couple of days.
like three days now. But after she stands up for herself, the pain stops. And so it's kind of an interesting question. Does the pain stop because she stood up for herself? Or does the pain stop because the spawn of Satan is like, oh shit. Yeah. I better stop. Yeah. She's about to go back to Dr. Helen and he's going to know that my eyes are weird. Well, actually, I mean, she doesn't ever have an ultrasound. And after the baby is born, Laura Louise or whatever her name is, she says.
his hands his feet yeah so we're led to believe that he's probably got like hooves show us the baby show us the baby show us the baby Make the baby and show it to us. Also, I'm just going to say, poor Hutch. I love Hutch. I know. Hutch was such a great character. He's a really good character, and I feel bad for him. Okay, now we can talk about the Roman Polanski of it all. I mean, the thing that always strikes me watching this movie very specifically is like...
I have to sort of divorce myself in parts. If I'm going to watch this movie as this movie, I have to just like watch the movie and not think about him. Because if I think about Roman Polanski, I just get like... actively pissed off at the cognitive dissonance that you can make this movie and then do what he did. Like, what the fuck? You know? I just...
I mean, and obviously, like, you know, he is not unique in this, you know. There are, unfortunately, so many people who have made art that is saying one thing and their behavior is saying. something else you know but this movie is just such a glaring example of that that it's like if i watch it and i think about him i'm just i get like just frustrated but how how yeah
Roman Polanski was basically the Joss Whedon of the 70s. Because the thing that we're talking about didn't happen until... Well, it didn't come to light until the 70s, which is when he... kind of made his escape um but yeah Roman Polanski was uh he was charged with um raping a 13 year old and then he fled the country to avoid the charges for it and has stayed outside of the United States so that he would not have to face those charges.
And continue to make movies and be famous for many, many years after that happened. Yeah. So extremely disappointing. And, you know, this movie came out in 1968. I'm not sure exactly when that happened, when the act occurred. I think the charges came up in 78 and that's when he left. But the other thing is, you know, he made this movie and Sharon Tate, his his fiance, I believe, during the time of this the film being made and then his wife later on was.
Very pregnant in 1969, obviously, when Charles Manson and the Manson family murdered her and her friends and associates at their home. And then... shortly after robin flansky does this terrible thing and then he's like well i'm going to france or italy i can't remember where he was but it's another country in europe i think france france okay france because he had
he has french citizenship so that has somehow prevented his extradition i mean all the laws perhaps the way that this movie comes across is by function of him sticking so close to the source material and not going off script yeah because maybe if he had gone off script it would have not packed as much of a punch as it does i mean we can only speculate at this point yeah um
there are it's one of those things like i hate saying separating art from the artist because i understand there are tons and tons of people who take a real hard line on that and i absolutely appreciate that But if we watch this movie as women in 2024 post-Trump's second election, it's hard to divorce yourself from the impact that this movie has.
on yes understanding you know coercive control and bodily autonomy and reproductive autonomy even in spite of roman polanski being a terrible piece of shit because that it has a black mark against it for him you know, having made this movie, but it was also not to say that he didn't do anything evil prior to this movie being made, because I don't have that amount of knowledge on him, but it was also a movie that he made before that. So...
I don't know. I'm not saying that's an excuse. I'm and I'm saying like, please absolutely be socially cognizant when you're watching film, because I think that you should. But I also don't think that that should. Make it so that you cannot absorb this message. Agreed. Yeah. I mean, you know, although not a director, you could take the same. a hard line against any of the Weinstein movies yeah you know yeah sure um we wouldn't have scream we wouldn't have the matrix which I think is you know
What a conundrum. What a conundrum there, you know. And yeah, I think there are times to leave art and artist irrevocably. entwined. I also think they can remain entwined and you can watch a film for its message and kind of compartmentalize. the artist watch the film as a film and then go back.
and apply the artist to the art and and really do that hard work of parsing it out well i mean we contain multitudes so i agree exactly i don't think that it has to be like well roman polanski is a piece of shit so i'm not gonna watch this movie because i
think that that would remove our ability to you know watch slash enjoy slash parse through so much art in history unfortunately because that's just how it is right but our responsibility is to be cognizant of that while we're partaking of that work you know is not to say, like, you can't watch it, but you should be able to hold that at the same time. Yeah, exactly.
I want to talk about the conspiracy theories around this movie. Ooh, okay. If you're ready to move on from this. Let's keep on trucking here, yeah. All right, so. William Castle thought this movie was cursed. And many other people thought this movie was cursed as well. William Castle, apparently after this movie... had like terrible health problems. He got a bunch of kidney stones. He wound up in the hospital. He was in a coma for a minute. And then he did not leave his house for years.
Because he thought that he got cursed from this movie. Because he thought that he produced a movie that cursed him. Fuck around and find out. He did. He faffoed, man. Also... Sammy Davis Jr. I did not know this about Sammy Davis Jr. Oh, yeah. Did you know that Sammy Davis Jr. was in the Church of Satan? Yes. What the hell? He was buddy-buddy with Anton LaVey. Yes. Holy shit. It's funny because in this movie, Rosemary is reading Sammy Davis Jr.'s autobiography.
which had come out before in like 65. So very popular. It would have been in everybody's home at that time. So very popular, very timely. And then later... After this movie, or around the time of this movie, he joined the Church of Satan and then was in there until the 70s, apparently until an orgy went sideways. Did not read into that. We're having a P. Diddy sans right now.
I don't need to know about Sammy Davis Jr.'s lube parties. Yeah, no. I'm already traumatized from the P. Diddy shit. But wild that that all is connected. Also... This is a wild thing. The scene where Terry's body is found and Rosemary and Guy are there and then the Cassavetes come up and that's when they run into the Cassavetes for the first time. That is filmed.
in the same spot where John Lennon was assassinated in 1980. That archway is where John Lennon was assassinated. I did not know that... Mia Farrow and her sister Prudence went to India with the Beatles when they did the whole yogi Maharishi yogi. And they wrote, dear Prudence, about Mia Farrow's... sister prudence and then they came back and then john lennon later would be assassinated there and then charles manson
I mean, partially, it's not the entire reason, but partially the reason why he murdered Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski's wife, was because of the White Album and Helter Skelter, which was made by the Beatles. Yes. What the hell? yeah i love a good conspiracy it seems like pretty friggin intertwined though you know um but wild like all of the stuff that's happening around this time now granted like
It's hard to throw a rock without having people who are connected to the Manson family murders because Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski were like high ass in the Hollywood, you know, stratosphere there. So they knew pretty much everybody. There's something about Jack Nicholson I read too. Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of Guy, but they said he was too sinister looking. That's fair. He is pretty sinister looking. Yes. No, it was something about...
Something that happened. Oh, Roman Polanski. The incident that happened that caused him to flee to France happened in Jack Nicholson's house in California while Jack Nicholson was vacationing in Colorado. So that is how Jack Nicholson was wrapped up in that. Well, and then I'm going to connect Jack Nicholson to somebody else. This was one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite films, which totally tracks.
Yeah. He and Roman Polanski are kind of cut from the same cloth. Yes. Auteur, pieces of shit. Yes. Both and. Yeah. I'm glad that we went with the talk about the movie and then talk about the bullshit later because I feel a little bit cleansed after talking about the conspiracy theories because I felt very heavy after we talked. about the movie but I think it's appropriate I can't fucking believe it but a movie that 56 years later is still so relevant and and the reason why I read
Miranda Corcoran's article was because she wrote that article in 2018, which she's Irish. Actually, in 2018 is when they removed the amendment to the Irish, I believe, Constitution. Don't come at me. I'm not sure what the... article or the document was oh the abortion thing in ireland yeah yeah so in 2018 that's when that was happening so that's why she was writing about it is because in 2018 they restored access to abortion in ireland they removed the amendment that
that limited the access to abortion, which was for a long, long time, obviously. terrible for Irish women there and their own bodily autonomy. So that's why she was writing about it. And now I can't fucking believe it. But six years later, we are still talking about this because we have just reelected Donald Trump as our president for this.
second time and people are like oh we should have well we're like i'm just like strapping you know yeah what the fuck do we do watch more horror movies watch more horror movies to dissociate but also like definitely encourage you to get it involved locally in your local activism. Reach out if you can. If you can't spend your time, spend your money. If you can't do that, then, you know, repost stuff. Share with your friends. Go stand in solidarity.
Speak up when you see injustice happening because holy shit. There's a really good book called Microactivism. Check it out. What's the author? Microactivism by Omikari L. Williams. Okay. Awesome. Okay. We did it. We did the thing. Next time for Christmas, we're doing not a Christmas movie.
I looked at that and I was like, shit, we probably should have had a more topical movie, but who cares? It's our podcast. And Christmas, like if you couldn't tell, holidays are not Juliet and I's bag. No, no, not really. I mean, we try, but.
yeah we'll loop back to horror christmas horror christmas we'll go back to christmas horror next year or maybe we won't i don't know yeah who cares there's so many christmas horror movies though like go you know watch one of them yeah um go watch silent night deadly night 2 yeah we did we did that one we did it's fine we did garbage day yeah
But we're going to do 2000. We're going back to we said we were going to do rec. We didn't do rec. Now we're going to do rec. Yeah. For Christmas. It's a Christmas present. Or non-denominational winter holiday. That's right. Yule Solstice. solstice what have you it's coming out five days before the winter solstice so there you go yeah yeah happy solstice
Thanks for listening to attack of the final girls. Find us online at attack of the final girls.com and hear bonus episodes at patrion.com slash attack of the final girls. We're Attack of the Final Girls on Instagram and TikTok. Our theme music is by House Ghost and is available on Rad Girlfriend Records. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode and rate and review on Apple Podcasts so more...
where people can find the show. I'm Juliet. And I'm Teresa. Until next time, stay scary.