The Baby

This is a low budget thriller about a bizarre family: a woman and her two grown daughters who are raising ?Baby,? a fully grown man in diapers. Supposedly he's mentally retarded, but a social worker who visits has her doubts. She starts to investigate the family. The film delivers some surprisingly good performances: the looks exchanged between the mom and her daughters and the social worker are terrific, and reveal a lot of creepy subtext. You begin to wonder about the motivations of everyone involved. The ending is a nice little twist that's unexpected and worth the wait. This not high caliber art, but it is fun, and delightfully twisted.

I went into this one totally blind- I was actually expecting a cheeseball, low budget ripoff of "Rosemary's Baby." Boy was I mistaken.

This movie is totally strange and uniquely disturbing; and I mean that in a good way. The image of the baby playing ball and trying to stand up will be forever burned into my psyche. The day after viewing, I found myself thinking of his awkward movements and his upsetting cries.

Nice little twist at the end- not on the level of some flicks today. but hey for '73, it definitely impressed me.

Recommended for fans of early John Waters, 70's TV horror movies, etc. Would make a good double feature with "Bad Boy Bubby." 8 out of 10, kids.

This is a bizarre piece of southern gothic. It's a movie full of bright primary colors and very over-the-top performances. I can't really figure out what it's really about but it's fascinating, morbid, perverse and has one of the most shocking twists at the end of it.

They could never make a film like this today. If they did, it would have an all-star cast, a loud, obtrusive score, and dizzying, roller-coaster camera effects. Back in the 70s they had to get by on talent, imagination and audacity alone. Luckily, they had plenty of that back then. This is not a 'twisted" film, at least anywhere nearly as twisted as say, "Bad Boy Bubby" or "Sonny Boy" (now those movies are reeeeally twisted!), but then what can one expect from Hollywood? This movie is like Diabolique made as a 1970s TV movie-of-the-week with a drive-in sleaze chaser. There's definitely a lack of credibility in this movie's plot - not that a woman couldn't keep her grown son in the mental state of a six-month infant. That's plausible and has happened before, but it's extremely unlikely that the authorities who knew about this kid all those years wouldn't have insisted on special schooling and therapy from day one. But who cares? Here we've got a film with two wicked Barbie Doll sisters who have venom in their veins and just looove to tease men. There's some great bad seventies fashion and a 'wild party' scene (well, wild for the suburbs. Ahh, Hollywood – so out of touch!). And what can you say about Ruth Roman? She's Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine all rolled into one. They just don't make broads like that anymore!

As mentioned by others, there are lots of twists and turns in the plot, but most anyone can figure them out very early on. But again, who cares? This movie works because of its audacity in the face of its conventionality and well, there is an intelligence at work somewhere in the midst of its drive-in movie formula. Take that whole scene with the babysitter for instance (for those who haven't seen this, you'll just have to see for yourself). I knew what was going to happen, but the way it built up so naturally seemed very honest and real. Which is why it freaked me out so much. Every now and then the film slips that comfort rug out from under you. Freak city! Then it relaxes safely in the realms of convention, but that's okay too because the whole movie has such charming camp appeal. Let's make that clear: this is a camp movie, NOT a horror movie! It's stupidly being marketed as horror, so it's understandable that the kiddies who are looking for lots of gore and boobies are feeling disappointed. Stick with Argento, kids! Oh yeah… huge kudos to David Mooney (Manzy – whatever) who played 'Baby'. He should have become a star.

The Baby joins a select club of really flaky little films from the poofy-hair-on-guys era, early 70's to early 80's; the best of these was Night Warning, William Shatner's wigged-out Impulse is another, the MST'd Touch of Satan is another. The Baby and Impulse even share the services of the wondrous Ruth Roman, who in The Baby looks more than ever like Victor Mature in full drag. All these feature somebody driving around in a Dodge Dart or a Maverick and plot twists that make you ask, "What were these people ON?"

Ted Post was already in his late fifties when he did The Baby, so the lame direction can't be written off as a young director learning his craft. It just plain sucks. Anjanette Comer stands around screeching and flapping her hands for emphasis like she's at a community-theater audition; it's hard to see any of the luminescent Aimee Thanatogenos from The Loved One, just eight years before. And Baby is a hoot - this was pretty much the entire career of the hard-working young actor trying to make us believe he's a teenager operating at a 9-month-old level, but somebody decided to dub in the sounds of a real baby coming from his adult voice-box, and you don't buy the bit for five seconds.

But there's just enough here to make it worthwhile to stick it out for the snapper ending. Anybody who says they guessed where this was going is lying like a red dog. It's no Night Warning, but if you've seen Night Warning and you need another sip from the same bucket, it'll do.