Rosemary's Baby, Roman Polanski's satanic, cinematic nursery-rhyme, shocked audiences when it premiered in 1968. It tells the story of a young couple, Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse, who move into an old apartment building on Manhattan's upper west side. When a young woman the wife just met in the laundry room commits suicide by jumping from their neighbor's window, Rosemary and Guy befriend Minny and Roman Castevet, the elderly couple next door.

Unusual events begin occurring and Rosemary finds herself pregnant after a particularly strange evening. She passes out after eating some chocolate mouse prepared by Minny and then proceeds to have a troubling dream in which she is painted with blood and raped by a beast-like creature. She awakens the next day with red marks on her body. Guy takes the blame, apologizing by making the rather lame excuse that he was very drunk.

Things go from bad to worse as Rosemary's pregnancy advances. She soon has suspicions about her neighbors, her doctor and even her husband. Are they witches? What do they want with her baby? The tension and atmosphere grow more and more taut as Rosemary slowly discovers the horrifying truth.

Mia Farrow is perfect in this role. Her image as the terrified young mother-to-be is firmly engrained in our movie memory, complete with flowered miniskirt and bobbed Vidal Sassoon haircut. Ruth Gordon is great as the creepy and garish Minny, with her ever-present drink mixture made with tanis root.

Roman Polanski perfectly captures the uneasy time period of the late sixties by taking advantage of the new freedoms in filmmaking. Nudity, violence and adult language were just becoming permissible in Hollywood. What makes Rosemary's Baby so scary is how seriously the subject matter is treated and in the fact that the director holds back more than he shows. After all what can be more frightening than our own imaginations?

Two historical and infamous murders have also added to this movies legend. It was filmed in The Dakota. The same apartment building that John Lennon was living in when he was gunned down in the street in front of the entrance. This is the same spot where the young woman's body is found when she jumps to her death in the movie. The other famous murder is, of course, that of Roman Polanski's young, pregnant, bride Sharon Tate by the Manson family.

Rosemary's Baby is paced leisurely and weaves an eerie spell that culminates in a chilling and horrific revelation.

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