Frank Davis and his wife are about to have a baby. Then they have it, and the entire maternity ward is left drenched in blood with corpses strewn about. What's wrong with the baby? Find out as Frank Davis and the local Los Angeles Police Department track down the infant...
To appreciate this film at all you have to prepare yourself in advance and say: "this is a b-movie" -- otherwise you will be thoroughly disappointed. Little gore, no nudity, a decent but not spectacular plot... and rated PG, which is usually a big mistake for a horror film. But if you go in remembering the creators aren't trying to make quality, but rather just throw some sensationalized idea at you, you might come out alright. Personally, I thought the film was decent.
Mysteriously, Larry Cohen (Master of the B-Movie) was able to get not just one, but two Oscar-winning people on his crew. Bernard Herrmann, perhaps best known for his work on Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and Rick Baker, a world-class makeup artist. (For the record, I don't believe Baker had won his Oscar at this point, and the makeup in this film is not the least impressive.)
Bernard Herrmann's music is most noticeable during the scene with the milkman (the song being titled "The Milkman Goeth"). This, for me, was probably the best part of the film... something about the way the milkman handles the Davis baby (or barely handles him at all) makes for a classic scene.
Now, as I said, with a b-movie the idea isn't to make a great film. In this case, it is to push the idea that chemicals are bad for babies. In an early scene, a group of men in the hospital talk about lead poisoning, bug spray and smog. While they have nothing to do with anything, this part is really the crux of the whole story: what are we ingesting and how will it affect our unborn child?
I saw director Cohen in person and he denied that this film was influenced by thalidomide, but was more concerned with the generation gap between parents and children: how the children are so different from their parents, but yet they must be loved. I find this a very hard to swallow motivation, but it comes from the man himself...
I think this movie is worth seeing, as long as you don't expect much. Someday I would love to remake this, because if done as a "real" horror movie, the deaths could be really disturbingly graphic. The milkman especially, again. And I would update it so instead of smog or lead, the father has returned from the Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) and his exposure to depleted uranium has left him with mutated sperm. Iraqi babies are born with flipper arms and missing body parts... it could come here next.
To appreciate this film at all you have to prepare yourself in advance and say: "this is a b-movie" -- otherwise you will be thoroughly disappointed. Little gore, no nudity, a decent but not spectacular plot... and rated PG, which is usually a big mistake for a horror film. But if you go in remembering the creators aren't trying to make quality, but rather just throw some sensationalized idea at you, you might come out alright. Personally, I thought the film was decent.
Mysteriously, Larry Cohen (Master of the B-Movie) was able to get not just one, but two Oscar-winning people on his crew. Bernard Herrmann, perhaps best known for his work on Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and Rick Baker, a world-class makeup artist. (For the record, I don't believe Baker had won his Oscar at this point, and the makeup in this film is not the least impressive.)
Bernard Herrmann's music is most noticeable during the scene with the milkman (the song being titled "The Milkman Goeth"). This, for me, was probably the best part of the film... something about the way the milkman handles the Davis baby (or barely handles him at all) makes for a classic scene.
Now, as I said, with a b-movie the idea isn't to make a great film. In this case, it is to push the idea that chemicals are bad for babies. In an early scene, a group of men in the hospital talk about lead poisoning, bug spray and smog. While they have nothing to do with anything, this part is really the crux of the whole story: what are we ingesting and how will it affect our unborn child?
I saw director Cohen in person and he denied that this film was influenced by thalidomide, but was more concerned with the generation gap between parents and children: how the children are so different from their parents, but yet they must be loved. I find this a very hard to swallow motivation, but it comes from the man himself...
I think this movie is worth seeing, as long as you don't expect much. Someday I would love to remake this, because if done as a "real" horror movie, the deaths could be really disturbingly graphic. The milkman especially, again. And I would update it so instead of smog or lead, the father has returned from the Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) and his exposure to depleted uranium has left him with mutated sperm. Iraqi babies are born with flipper arms and missing body parts... it could come here next.