13 Nights of Shocktober: Rosemary's Baby (1968)

 by A.J. 

Night 2: New Hollywood Horror Night

“This is no dream. This is really happening!”

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

In 1968 two films were released that would forever change the landscape of horror movies: Rosemary’s Baby and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Prior to these films, most horror films were period pieces and fantasies set in castles with period costumes and monsters. Universal monster movies of the 1930’s and the British Hammer Films and Roger Corman produced movies of the late 50’s and early to mid-60’s typified the genre. Both Rosemary’s Baby and Night of the Living Dead had contemporary settings—though Rosemary’s Baby is technically set two or three years before it was released—and approached their respective plots with a stark realism missing from most horror movies (Val Lewton’s horror movies for RKO in the 1940’s being the exception). It is hard to believe that a dark and disturbing movie like Rosemary’s Baby had such broad appeal upon its release. It's hard to believe that Rosemary’s Baby has sustained its appeal over the decades. Even today it casts its creepy spell and people who say they do not like horror movies will watch Rosemary’s Baby.

I think the most difficult thing for a modern viewer to understand is that the movie’s final revelation is supposed to be a twist. Like Psycho (1960) and Planet of the Apes (also released in 1968), the final twist is maybe the most famous thing about the movie. Both Ira Levin’s novel and the film adaptation play up suspicions about witches, witchcraft, and secret covens. All of the evidence Rosemary finds points to her new neighbors, friends, and doctor being part of a coven but she does not guess the true nature of her pregnancy. She comes to believe that they plan to sacrifice her baby in some sort of ritual.

Mia Farrow gives her signature performance as Rosemary Woodhouse. She is not a damsel but she is a person unaware of the danger around them until it is too late. Her petite figure accentuated by her pixie haircut (it’s “Vidal Sassoon” she says to everyone taken aback by her short hair) visually enhances that sense of looming danger. This only increases with her pregnancy. The stress of an unusual pregnancy, changing personality of her husband, and her isolation, paranoia, and realization that the circle of people she can trust is shrinking are effectively portrayed by Farrow. 

It is interesting that Rosemary’s Baby was such a watershed for horror movies, yet it began as a more conventional horror movie. William Castle, the B-movie producer famous for cheesy horror movies that used outlandish gimmicks (most famously rigging certain seats with buzzers for The Tingler), wanted to try his hand at more serious filmmaking. He optioned the rights to Ira Levin’s novel and planned to direct with his friend and frequent collaborator Vincent Price playing Rosemary’s sinister doctor. However, Paramount executive Robert Evans saw the potential for a substantial horror movie and hired Roman Polanski, then an upcoming European filmmaker of tense movies like Repulsion, later to be a fugitive from America, to direct.

Castle remained on the movie as producer, but Polanski as writer and director unlocked the potential that Evans saw. Polanski did not upend horror tropes of the time; rather, he stayed away from sensationalism, downplayed the supernatural, and grounded the film in a recognizable reality. Even the dream scenes retain a realistic but strange look, which only increases their surreal and disturbing tone–especially since one of those dreams turns out to be very real. The most important thing the film does is put us in Rosemary’s place, sometimes literally though POV shots. Unlike countless other horror movies, we don’t want anything bad to happen to her. The horror of Rosemary’s Baby is that it all feels so plausible. 

Whether you know the conclusion or not, Rosemary’s Baby is an incredibly effective horror film. Fashions and automobiles aside, little about it feels dated. In his review, Roger Ebert notes that instead of using surprise to scare the audience the movie uses a feeling of inevitability to create horror. That feeling of inevitability casts a tone of doom and dread over the whole movie and it lingers in the mind of the viewer. This is one of the greats of the modern horror era, but not the last thing you want to watch before going to bed.

Rosemary's Baby airs on TCM on Saturday, October 25th at 8:30CT and is available to stream on Paramount+, Kanopy, and Hoopla.

13 Nights of Shocktober: The Bride of Frankenstein

by A.J.

Night 1: Classic Horror Night

The Monster: You…make man…like me?

Doctor Pretorius: No. Woman. Friend for you.

The Monster: Woman?

The Bride of Frankenstein

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the release of one of the greatest and most influential movie sequels of all time: The Bride of Frankenstein. Naturally, after the success of Frankenstein in 1931, directed by James Whale, Universal Studios executive Carl Laemmle Jr. was eager to follow up with a sequel, but Whale was reluctant. Laemmle was wisely reluctant to do a sequel without Whale. When the sequel finally arrived in 1935, it proved to be worth the wait. Not only was The Bride of Frankenstein a hit and influential on later horror movies and filmmakers, its scenes and images have become iconic and part of the landscape of Halloween. 

There is a lot going on in The Bride of Frankenstein, which is impressive because it is only 75 minutes and never feels rushed. In a delightfully amusing prologue Mary and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron are gathered together again to celebrate the success of Mary’s novel, Frankenstein. Bryon summarizes the book, which serves as a recap of the first movie (though that movie bears little resemblance to Shelley’s novel). Then Mary Shelley reveals the details of a second volume deemed too shocking to publish. This is The Bride of Frankenstein. The story of The Monster and Frankenstein picks up right where the first movie left off and we learn that they both survived the fire at the windmill. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is at first unrepentant and wants to get back to experimenting, that is until he is approached by the truly mad Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) who wants them to combine discoveries in a new creation. Meanwhile, The Monster (Boris Karloff reprising his iconic role) wanders around and is abused and harassed by everyone he encounters, even after he saves a girl from drowning (perhaps a callback or attempt to make up for the infamous lake scene in the first movie). Then he encounters a kindly blind man who shows him friendship and teaches him to speak. Eventually though, he ends up with Frankenstein and Pretorius.

As far as mad scientists go, Dr. Pretorius, with his wild hair and nonchalance toward the macabre, puts Dr. Frankenstein to shame. Frankenstein comes across as a man who became lost in obsession. Pretorius, on the other hand, delights in being so mad that he was booted out of his university for “knowing too much.” When he shows Frankenstein his own creations, living miniatures of a king, queen, bishop, and more, he does so with all the flair and scripted delight of a magician putting on a show. When Pretorius finally meets The Monster his reaction is so understated that it makes him seem even more insane. 

One of the movie’s most famous scenes, perhaps one of the most famous of classic cinema, is The Monster meeting the blind hermit. This is where The Monster learns to speak and develops his iconic speech pattern: “Fire…No good!” Many horror fans and movie monster fans find The Monster to be exceedingly sympathetic and that is in large part because of this movie and this scene. The other iconic scene is the creation of The Bride, with the elaborate laboratory, lightning storm, and, of course, the Monster’s Mate herself. At first she looks like a mummy wrapped in bandages; then a dissolve shows her in her iconic look: a flowing white gown, high-top black hair with a silver jagged streak on each side. She shrieks and hisses and does little else, yet her striking visage has had such a profound impact that she has become a figure, a totem, of classic horror movies and Halloween in general. Her look has been reproduced and parodied in countless TV Shows, movies, commercials, cartoons. This all the more impressive considering how little screen time she has, only a few minutes, and appears in no other Frankenstein movies. I am always surprised by this; I think that I was mistaken about the last time I watched and she appears more; nope. 

The Bride is played by Elsa Lanchester, who also plays Mary Shelley, and while there is no significance in this, I have always enjoyed the coincidence. She only receives credit as Mary Shelly. The “Monster’s Mate” is credited with a question mark. This is fun marketing but is a disservice to her; at least she is known as the Bride now. She underwent 3 hours of make up and the iconic hairdo which wrapped her hair into the wig and was uncomfortable to say the least. 

The argument over whether “Frankenstein" refers to the monster or the doctor is not new (it refers to Doctor Victor Frankenstein, changed to Henry Frankenstein in these movies for no reason) and is at least as old as this movie. The title itself is the perfect example. Dr. Frankenstein has a fiancé and later wife, Elizabeth, but the title clearly does not refer to her. The credits refer to the creations as the Monster and the Monster’s Mate. Most confusing of all, when the Monster's Mate comes to life, Pretorius calls her “the Bride of Frankenstein” perhaps sparking off this whole what do you call the monster debate. 

There’s some camp value to The Bride of Frankenstein in the frantic energy of Colin Clive as Frankenstein and the over-the-top reactions of Una O’Connor to seeing The Monster. This only adds to the movie’s overall entertainment value, which is still strong 90 years later. It’s hard to convey the influence, both direct and indirect, of The Bride of Frankenstein. Clips of it turn up in everything from Weird Science to About a Boy. Mel Brooks’s brilliant Young Frankenstein parodies and pays homage to The Bride of Frankenstein, it even used some of the same props. “To a new world of gods and monsters!” Pretorius declares as he lifts his glass to toast Frankenstein after their devilish bargain is struck. The Bride of Frankenstein did indeed usher in a new world of horror cinema. 

Bride of Frankenstein is available to stream on Prime Video and will air on TCM on Halloween at 5:30 CT.

Best Pictures #117: The 2024 (97th) Academy Awards: My Choice

 by A.J.

The 2024 (97th) Academy Awards:

The 97th Academy Awards for films released in 2024 was held on March 2nd, 2025. Overall 2024 was not a strong year for movies, at least not when compared to the films and nominees of last year. Conan O’Brien hosted the ceremony which even though it finished only slightly after expected still felt very long. There was a musical dance and montage tribute to the James Bond films that felt unnecessary and inexplicable. The highlight of the night were Conan’s comedic bits which were neither too long nor mean spirited. Adrian Brody won his second Best Actor Oscar for playing another artist who survives the Holocaust. Zoe Saldaña won Best Supporting Actress for Emilia Pérez and Kieran Culkin won Best Supporting Actor for A Real Pain, though there is a strong argument that they are actually the leads of their respective films. 

The most nominated film of the night, Emilia Pérez, won only two awards (for Supporting Actress and Original Song for El Mal), a sign of how badly support for that film fell apart. In one of the night’s surprises Emilia Pérez lost the International Feature award to Walter Salles’s I’m Still Here, from Brazil, which is not only a better film than Emilia Pérez, but one of the best films of 2024. 

Another surprise was writer-director Sean Baker tying the record set by Walt Disney for most wins by a person in one night/ceremony. Though Disney’s awards were for four separate films, Baker’s awards were all for the same film, Anora, which he wrote, edited, directed and produced and won awards for doing each. By far the biggest and most shocking upset of the night also belonged to Anora when Mikey Madison won the Best Actress Oscar over frontrunner and favorite Demi Moore for The Substance. Moore winning award after award all season combined with her “comeback” narrative seemed enough to overcome the Academy’s aversion to the horror genre, but alas. Despite the loss, I feel confident that The Substance and Moore’s performance will stand the test of time and become influential in horror and other genres. 

Anora ended up becoming the most awarded film of the 97th Academy Awards, winning 5 of its 6 nominations. I liked Anora and think it is a fine and entertaining film, but if I had a vote to cast it would be for a different film.

My Choice for Best Picture of 2024: Conclave

Among its 8 Oscar nominations, Conclave did not receive a Best Director nomination for Edward Berger, a sign that it did not have strong chances to win Best Picture. I think this is also a sign that every aspect of the filmmaking works so well that the final film feels effortless. The Costume Design was rightfully nominated though I’m sure many grumbled that it’s just the same red robe again and again and don’t those robes and vestments already exist? Berger and costume designer Lisy Christl ignored the advice to simply rent costumes from The Young Pope and create their own. The robes in the film are thicker and heavier than the real cardinal robes, to the annoyance of Ralph Fiennes, but they are also from a richer fabric so instead of appearing orange on screen, their redness highlights each frame, especially in dark rooms and hallways. Christl used the crosses the cardinals wear to signal their personality or background. Cardinal Lawrence (Fiennes) wears a simple cross. The ambitious Cardinal Tremblay (Lithgow) wears an elaborate jeweled cross. In a masterful sequence we see a frontrunner’s chances for becoming pope collapse. When confronted by Cardinal Lawrence about a scandal, the other cardinal is not wearing his cross. The effect is that he seems naked, exposed, as his scandal is about to be exposed. Berger and editor Nick Emerson intercut this moment with scenes of the next day’s vote and a subjective shot of the fallen cardinal that shows his loss of support. From the striking and frantic opening image to the striking and peaceful closing image, Conclave is excellent filmmaking, impressive all the more for its great entertainment value.

Best Pictures #116: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Conclave

by A.J.

Best Pictures #116: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Conclave

“No sane man would want the papacy.”

A movie about the college of cardinals meeting in conclave, the paradoxically famous and secretive gathering to elect the new pope, could be so reverent and serious as to be pandering and dull or it could be so artificially sensational as to be tawdry and disrespectful. Director Edward Berger's Conclave, based on the novel by Robert Harris, finds a delicate and wonderful balance. This isn’t an exposé of the Catholic church, nor is it a Christ-sploitation movie. This is an exciting and thrilling film full of intrigue and secret conversations, incredible performances, and excellent filmmaking on every level. The result is an absorbing and electrifying film, without a doubt one of the best of 2024. 

After the death of the pope (from natural causes), the task of assembling and running the conclave falls to the dean of the college of cardinals, Cardinal Lawrence played by Ralph Fiennes. We learn early on that he is dealing with doubts, not so much in faith but in himself, and tried to resign from his position at the Vatican but the pope refused his resignation. He is dedicated to doing his job well, but everyone and everything seems to be against the conclave running smoothly. All the better for us. The candidates emerge: the liberal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), the conservative Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), the ultra-conservative Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), the opportunist Tremblay (John Lithgow), and the drama and infighting begins. 

The cast is an incredible collection of great performers, some well known, others lesser known but no less impressive. The breakout performance belongs to Sergio Castellitto as the ultra-conservative Italian Cardinal Tedesco. He arrives with such force that wind billows under his red coat making it look like a cape. At one point he howls with laughter and is constantly vaping. Carlos Diehz finds the exact notes necessary for the quiet and mysterious Cardinal Benitez, who no one knew about and arrived only at the last minute. Brían F. O'Byrne as O'Malley, Cardinal Lawrence’s right hand man, gets to play the only character who is maybe more stressed out than Cardinal Lawrence and provides some comic relief. Isabella Rossellini lends her great screen presence to a small and mostly silent role. Nevertheless she has a stand out scene and curtseys like it is a mic drop. Of course Tucci and Lithgow shine at every moment. 

At the head of the incredible ensemble is Ralph Fiennes, giving one of his best performances in a very impressive career. His Best Actor nomination is most deserved. It is clear Lawrence does not want his job, and he certainly doesn’t want votes when they start coming his way, but he also wants everything to go the way it should and the most worthy man to be elected. When his frustrations boil over, even his outbursts feel constrained, but Fiennes conveys everything that Lawrence tries to conceal. Lawrence does not have the most lines. He is a character who observes and reacts. Fiennes makes a would-be passive character into a sympathetic and relatable leading man.

Many reviews have called Conclave pulpy, trashy, even like an airport novel, but I have a word that better describes Conclave: fun. I suspect that this caught many people off guard and will continue to do. For several scenes Cardinal Lawrence has to be a detective, searching for information and answers without directly breaking the sequester. Characters gossip, scandals are uncovered; there are whispers in hallways late at night, and shouts in the cafeteria. The pageantry and rituals of the Vatican provide a certain level of class and seriousness, but the brilliance of this story is that it remembers that all of these aged holy men are just people and people can be petty, ambitious, deceitful, secretive, and sometimes even righteous. The Oscar nominated screenplay by Peter Straughan (who also wrote the adaptation for the brilliant character piece Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) provides for nuance as well as showpieces and speeches. Nothing that happens in Conclave feels contrived or unbelievable. Even an explosion (shown in the trailers) does not feel out of place.

Of course you don’t have to be Catholic or religious or familiar with anything about the church to enjoy Conclave. Neither director Berger or Straughan’s screenplay condescend to the audience. Explanations arise as they would in the natural course of events. When Lawrence tries to cardinal-splain simony to Bellini, Bellini responds curtly, "I'm aware of what simony is." If you are not aware of what simony is it becomes apparent a few scenes later. At its core, this is a movie about a stressed out manager, which is something that is very relatable.

Nominees: Tessa Ross, Juliette Howell and Michael A. Jackman, Producers

Director: Edward Berger

Screenplay: Peter Straughan; based on the novel by Robert Harris

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini

Production Companies: FilmNation Entertainment, House Productions, Indian Paintbrush

Distributor: Focus Features

Release Date: October 25th, 2024

Total Nominations: 8, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Actor-Ralph Fiennes; Supporting Actress-Isabella Rossellini; Adapted Screenplay-Peter Straughan; Editing- Nick Emerson; Production Design-Suzie Davies (production designer), Cynthia Sleiter (set decorator); Costume Design-Lisy Christl; Original Score-Volker Bertelmann

Best Pictures #115 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Wicked

by A.J.

Best Pictures #115 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Wicked

“Popular! I'll help you be popular!”

It is a shame that it took so long for the major Broadway musical Wicked to be adapted into a movie for a few reasons. One is simply that it took so long for a stage musical with great songs to come to a medium that can be widely seen by anyone anywhere. The other reasons are to the film's detriment I'm afraid. Wicked debuted on Broadway in 2003, was a major hit, and became influential, directly and indirectly, on other musicals, movies, and books. By 2024 however, many tropes and trends it helped popularize have become tired and cliched. Every time I see yet another movie or read yet another fantasy book that purports to invert “everything you thought you knew” about a well known story, or in which the main character discovers that the revered figure or institution is actually villainous,  I roll my eyes. Wicked does not deserve eye rolls but the effect of subverting the familiar world of Oz has been lost. 

There are still things to enjoy of course. The highlight for me was the surprising comedic talent of Ariana Grande as the glamorous Galinda, later to be the Good Witch of the North. Her funniest moment happens when she tries to turn green-skinned outcast Elphaba's frumpy coat, or froat, into a ball gown by shaking her training wand and saying "ball gown!" She's shocked when it doesn't work, after all, isn't that how casting spells works? I suppose it helps that she has the performance of the great Kristen Chenoweth, who played the role on Broadway, to help model her own performance. 

Once Galinda finally stops being a mean girl and befriends Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), the future Wicked Witch of the West, the movie really takes off. They have some wonderful moments together, including Galinda promising to make Elphaba popular (one of the signature songs). Galinda’s makeover of Elphaba turns out to be less about fashion and more about Galinda becoming a nicer person. Erivo handles the songs and dramatic moments well though her best moments are when she and Grande are together. They have much better chemistry as friends than as adversaries which makes the middle section of the movie enjoyable and adds tension to the final moments. Both Erivo and Grande have received Oscar nominations for their performances in the Lead and Supporting categories, respectively. 

Wicked’s Oscar nominations for Production Design and Visual Effects are very well deserved. Watching the deleted scenes with unfinished effects and the making-of featurette on the Blu-ray I was impressed by how much of any given set was real and tactile. Despite flaws with the pacing, on this level Wicked certainly qualifies as an impressive achievement. I read complaints about the look of the movie but I saw no problems. I wonder if people were unimpressed by the sights because Oz is a fantasy world that nearly everyone is already familiar with to some degree. 

It is not all songs and costumes, of course. There is a plot too. Elphaba, born green and marked as an outcast, is drafted into the Shiz, a sort of school or academy, after one of the teachers, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), witnesses Elphaba's magical talents. She's forced to room with Galinda, the pretty, pink, popular, and mean girl. After seeing the effects of a prank, Galinda has remorse and becomes friends with Elphaba. Although only Elphaba is invited to visit the mysterious and wonderful wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum), she brings Galinda along. Together they learn a dark secret truth about their world and their friendship is tested. There are important themes in Wicked, but they, like many side characters and plots, are not fully explored because of what is by far the biggest flaw of the movie. 

The big screen adaptation of Wicked unfortunately fell victim to the most cynical and unnecessary trend of current big budget fantasy films: splitting one story over multiple movies. The advertising did not mention it, but this is actually Wicked Part 1. On stage, the entire musical runs at 2 hours 45 minutes. For the movie, the first act of the stage version has been stretched out to be as long as the entire show, so that after 2 hours and 40 minutes we’re only halfway through the story. A few characters have been added but mostly scenes and songs have been stretched and stretched. Many stretch out beyond the breaking point of dramatic effectiveness and lose their poignancy. The scene of Galinda mirroring Elphaba’s dance at a prom-like event to show her newfound empathy lasts so long I went from feeling moved to thinking, “I get it already!” The most egregious example of a scene being stretched and broken up for the sake of runtime is the climactic song Defying Gravity. This wonderful and powerful song happens in fits and starts. It is broken up for dialogue and action beats, including a personal reflective moment for Elphaba, so that it stretches out for almost 14 minutes. I was expecting to be overwhelmed and blown back in my seat but instead I found myself frustrated and wondering if now the movie would let Erivo hit that big finale. 

Director Jon M. Chu has made successful movie musicals before, including my beloved In the Heights, but here I think the task of adapting Wicked must have overwhelmed him. The scenes of actual dancing are very well done and lively; he even finds a way to include his favorite touch, people dancing through water. In his commentary track Chu admits that it was difficult to decide what to show and when and for how long. This is unfortunately obvious, especially in Defying Gravity. Chu did his best to make a Part 1 that would stand on its own and it stands, but unevenly.

Wicked, the stage musical, made its debut on Broadway in October of 2003. I started college in New York in September of 2003 and it was all the rage among many of my friends who sang Popular so often that I knew the words without ever listening to the cast recording album. I never saw the original Broadway run and still haven’t seen any stage version, but I am absolutely ready to believe that the show is as fun and enchanting as my friends found it in the fall and winter of 2003. It seems like the movie had a built in fan base ready to like it no matter what–in that way it is like a Marvel movie–but they and my college friends deserve a better movie. 

Nominees: Marc Platt, Producer

Director: Jon M. Chu

Screenplay: Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox; based on Wicked by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman and the novel by Gregory Maguire

Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh

Production Companies: Universal Pictures, Marc Platt Productions

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Release Date: November 22nd, 2024

Total Nominations: 10, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Actress-Cynthia Erivo; Supporting Actress-Ariana Grande; Editing-Myron Kerstein; Production Design-Nathan Crowley (production designer)Lee Sandales (set decorator); Costume Design

Paul Tazewell-Makeup and Hairstyling; Frances Hannon, Laura Blount, Sarah Nuth; Original Score-John Powell, Stephen Schwartz; Sound-Simon Hayes, Nancy Nugent Title, Jack Dolman, Andy Nelson, John Marquis; Visual Effects-Pablo Helman, Jonathan Fawkner, David Shirk, Paul Corbould