Rob Price
Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby is a 1976 made-for-television horror film and is a sequel to the original 1968 critically acclaimed and Academy Award winning film, Rosemary’s Baby. The television movie was shown on October 29, 1976, on the ABC Friday Night Movie. The original movie was based on Ira Levin’s novel of the same name. Levin also wrote a sequel, The Son of Rosemary, but Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby is not an adaptation of that story, but instead is an original continuation of the life of Andrew / Adrian written by Anthony Wilson and Directed by Sam O’Steen who edited the original film.
The story Is presented in three chapters, “The Book of Rosemary”, “The Book of Adrian”, and “The Book of Andrew”. The first chapter begins eight years after the birth of Andrew / Adrian (child:Philip Boyer / adult:Stephen McHattie) and has Rosemary (Patty Duke) escaping the coven with her son. The coven leaders are still Roman (Ray Milland) and Minnie (Ruth Gordon) Castavet who attempt to use their powers to find the child but are unsuccessful at first. They eventually separate Adrian from Rosemary who is not seen through the rest of the film. The Book of Adrian is 20 years later and finds a grown Adrian getting into scrapes with the law with his best friend Peter (David Huffman) who tries to be a good influence on him. With the approach of Adrian’s birthday, the coven must do a ritual to see if Adrian is worthy to be fully possessed by Satan. Peter, to save his friend, is killed by Guy and this pulls Adrian out of his possession and makes him an unworthy vessel. The final chapter has Adrian waking up in a mental hospital for the criminally insane as he is suspected of murdering Peter but has been in a coma and was not expected to wake up. He now refers to himself as Andrew, the name his mother called him. He is attended to by a nurse, Ellen (Donna Mills) who later helps him escape to find Guy who Andrew knows is the real killer. Ellen, however, is part of the coven and has her own plans. Can Andrew survive the evil clutches of the coven and find his inner light, or will he ever be doomed as the Devil’s child? Watch and find out!
The original film was directed by Roman Polanski and was a wonderful mixture of paranoia, suspense and intrigue. It used atmosphere and relatable characters to tell a chilling story of an unsuspecting woman carrying the child of Satan. The sequel doesn’t have any of that. It is instead, a mixture of over-the-top disco dance sequences, car chases and satanic rituals. It lacked any of the subtlety that the original film had and instead hits you over the head with garishness and over acting. Ruth Gordon who won an Oscar for her part in the original film, just seems out of place here and the humor and realism she brought to the original film is devoid in this one. That being said, there are some interesting plot points in this television movie. I found the introduction of Peter, a wholesome and righteous person who is trying to bring out the good in Adrian an interesting intriguing concept. It is never explained where they met or if Peter is possibly a Devine entity which calling him Peter Simon feels like they were hinting at. Exploration of this storyline would have been a lot more interesting than the rest of the movie. This could have led to a more in-depth character exploration of the battle happening within Adrian / Andrew where he is struggling with the powerful darkness within him and the light that people like his mother and Peter have instilled. Overall, it wasn’t a terrible film, and I did enjoy it, but it does not live up to its predecessor.
You can watch Look What’s Happened To Rosemary’s Baby on You Tube.