Stars: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Victoria Vetri, Patsy Kelly, Tony Curtis

Director: Roman Polanski

Summary: When Rosemary Woodhouse and her husband, Guy, move into a new apartment block, they find themselves surrounded by some odd elderly neighbours. Rosemary soon falls pregnant after a disturbing dream and the neighbours start to pay a lot of attention to the expectant child... Based on the novel by Ira Levin.

In Roman Polanski's stylish occult thriller--possibly the director's most famous film and a big box-office success--a young, happily married couple, the waiflike Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and struggling actor Guy (John Cassavetes), move into a spacious apartment in a venerable old building off Central Park. They are befriended by the elderly couple next door, Roman (Sidney Blackmer) and Minnie Castavet (Ruth Gordon in an Oscar-winning performance), who seem to take a special interest in Rosemary's well-being. Shortly after another young woman in the building commits suicide by jumping out a window, Rosemary begins to be plagued by disturbing dreams, including a hallucinogenic black mass sequence in which she is raped by something "inhuman" while surrounded by a host of unlikely spectators. Rosemary discovers she is pregnant and soon falls violently ill. The Castavets offer advice and home remedies and even go so far as to talk her into seeing a new doctor of their choosing. But when the young couple's friend Hutch (Maurice Evans) exposes her eccentric but seemingly well-meaning neighbors as members of a witches' coven, Rosemary realizes that she is the victim of a Satanic conspiracy and that no one can be trusted--not even her own husband.

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For Rosemary's Baby, his modern horror tale about Satanic worship and a pregnant woman's decline into madness, Roman Polanski moves from the traditional monolithic mansions of Gothic flicks to an apartment building in New York City. Based on Ira Levin's novel, the story concerns Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse who find the apartment of their dreams in a luxurious complex in Manhattan. Soon after moving in and making friends with a group of elderly neighbours, Guy's career takes off and Rosemary discovers she is pregnant. Their happiness seems complete. But gradually Rosemary begins to sense that something is wrong with this baby, and slowly and surely her life begins to unravel.

Polanski uses such subtle means to build up the sense of preternatural disquiet that initially you suspect Rosemary's prenatal paranoia to be a figment of her imagination. But the guilty parties and their demonic plan to make Rosemary the receptacle of their master's child are eventually revealed and, as Rosemary looses her grip on reality, she realises that no one can be trusted. The performances are excellent throughout; Farrow as the young wife is so fragile that you wonder how she made it unscathed to adulthood and John Cassavetes is horrifyingly duplicitous as her husband Guy. But the real star is Polanski's masterful direction. The mood is at the same time oppressive and hysterical with the mounting terror coming from the situation and gradually unravelling plot rather than any schlock horror moments.

On the DVD:the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack shows off Christopher Komeda's eerie "lullaby" score to it's haunting best. The film is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and is relatively free of speckle and dust, some scenes filmed in low light are slightly grainier but this adds to the oppressive tension that Polanski is building up in the film. In terms of extras there is a 20-minute "making of" feature from 1968 and retrospective interviews with Polanski, production designer Richard Sylbert and producer Robert Evans. --Kristen Bowditch

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Retrospective Interview, The Making Of Featurette
Subtitles:	Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Turkish
Year:	1968
Release Date:	November 5, 2001
Runtime:	131 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P H E 8104
Keywords:	Baby, General, Thriller, Rosemary's
Genre:	Thriller