LOOK WHAT HAPPENED
TO ROSEMARY'S BABY
You're lucky that this isn't available on video
That pesky Satan, who had nothing better to do in the seventies than corrupt kids, is up to his old tricks in a made-for-TV sequel that nobody asked for. For a similar horror-film lineage, check out Bates Motel. On second thought, don't.
Rosemary's Baby is possibly the most dated horror movie I've ever seen. Why that is, I've already gotten into in my original review, way back, but take my word for it - a more dreary, weary horror movie I've never seen, so long it limps on. (Brian's note - okay, okay, I'm relenting, I'll give it another chance. Stay tuned.) The sequel, as one might imagine, fares no better. It starts maybe six years after the original, with Rosemary running away with Damien - I mean, Adrian - I mean, Andrew - who no longer has those freaky-ass cat's eyes. (This ought to answer Criswell's concern about what he's going to do about this when he grows up) She wants to deny the child his pointy-horned heritage. When she takes refuge in the trailer of a southwestern madam (because the kid killed two other kids for stealing his toy truck - Andrew's mild-mannered, but when you piss him off, he gets...The Rage [TM]!), she's hilariously conned into giving up the kid. (she's taken, with the kid, to a bus stop, and waits for the bus. She gets on, failing to notice all the while that it's one of those new-fangled robot buses, which slams the doors behind her and drives off, with the kid outside. Ha, ha!)
Then the film picks up on the kid's 20'th birthday (you can tell it's the twentieth because there's twenty candles on his cake, arranged pentagram-style). He looks thirty. And if this is 1988 (20 years after 1968, duh), it looks an awful lot like the mid-seventies. And throughout his life, he's followed around by a coven of satanists who, well, seem pretty silly. They stand around and chant "Hail, Satan! Hail, Satan!" ALL THE TIME, no matter what they're doing. They must be fun to hit on at the bar. "Hey baby, come here often?" "Hail, Satan! Hail, Satan!" "'zat a no?"
By far, the goofiest scene is when the coven does up Andrew in mime makeup and chants for a while, hoping, presumably, for Satan to show up and get the lid off that jar of pickles that none of them can open. Satan doesn't show, so Andrew gets up, goes to the music club, and dances around, while his friend is poked to death outside with a live power cable. Sorry, I just thought this was pretty funny. Maybe it was the so-obvious-it's-funny Christ symbolism of when the lit-up, electrified carcass is pressed up against the window, arms wide, head tilted.
Andrew would be perfectly at home as a 90's, Rice-style vampire. He's brooding, morose, self-pitying, a rock-star wannabe, and he's obviously gay. (this is quite apparent with this male "friend" who's at least as gay as he is, and how his one moment of heterosexuality is quite, uh, "forced") He's also played sympathetically; he's not supposed to be a Damien-style villain. Doesn't make him any less lame, though.
Pretty much a waste of time and film by all involved, and that includes you, the viewer. Best part is the closing credits, which give you a frame-by-frame of the birth of the granddaughter of Satan (all this time you've been on the lookout for Satan's son, never paying attention to that little girl killing the cat in the corner). Kinda neat.
But the movie...kinda sucks. To my knowledge, it's not available on video. I only caught it on the Space channel, a week after I was fool enough to miss Last Man On Earth. Shame on me.