"Rosemary's Baby" must have influenced a lot of films that were sucked into its wake, and this is one of them. A normal couple -- the beautiful wife, Jacqueline Bissett, the husband, Alan Alda, a not-quite-fulfilled professional pianist -- are invited to the home of a weird couple -- a mysterious Curt Jurgens who dresses all in black and is a little too friendly, his daughter the gorgeous Barbara Parkins who also dresses in black and ties her hair severely back and never smiles. They're pretty witchy already and we don't even know them.
Jurgens is a virtuoso on the piano himself and takes a great interest in Alda's career. He dies of leukemia and leaves his estate to Alda and to his daughter. There are dream sequences. There are ALWAYS dream sequences in these kinds of movies. Or ARE they dreams? In "Rosemary's Baby," they were a mixture of dreams and half-awake fantasies. Here -- ditto. There is also a guy on the outside who wants to be helpful and pays the price that Maurice Evans paid in "Rosemary's Baby." I won't go on. Jurgens' soul is transferred by means of perfumes, pentagons, candles, and chants into the body of Alan Alda, who begins to make it with Barbara Parkins. That would make perfect sense, except that it means the soul of Jurgens is schtupping his own daughter and -- well, even then.... It still makes sense if you remember what Barbara Parkins looked like.
On the other hand, it means that Alan Alda is ignoring the needs of his own wife, the supernal Jackie Bissett. Why can't he do both of them? The mind reels with possibilities.
I see I'm kind of skipping over the plot but there's not much in it that will surprise you if you've seen "Rosemary's Baby." I don't mean to imply that everything is ripped of from that original template. Not at all. The ending -- in which a good person sacrifices his (or her) life for the salvation of another -- is ripped off from "The Exorcist." Oh, the TV guide says that there is "brief nudity." There is in fact brief nudity, but it's nice brief nudity.
The musical score is freaky and disturbing -- dark, tumbling, jagged with dissonant chords that strike out of the murk like flashes of lightning -- enough to drive you mad. I kind of liked it. If you can have a Dance Macabre, why not a Mephisto Waltz? It's apt too. Faust sold his soul to Mephistopheles to have his wishes granted, and that's what Alan Alda does here, though, to be sure, in Alda's case he'd been subject to an enhanced pitch and the deal was signed while he was evidently asleep.
Jurgens is a virtuoso on the piano himself and takes a great interest in Alda's career. He dies of leukemia and leaves his estate to Alda and to his daughter. There are dream sequences. There are ALWAYS dream sequences in these kinds of movies. Or ARE they dreams? In "Rosemary's Baby," they were a mixture of dreams and half-awake fantasies. Here -- ditto. There is also a guy on the outside who wants to be helpful and pays the price that Maurice Evans paid in "Rosemary's Baby." I won't go on. Jurgens' soul is transferred by means of perfumes, pentagons, candles, and chants into the body of Alan Alda, who begins to make it with Barbara Parkins. That would make perfect sense, except that it means the soul of Jurgens is schtupping his own daughter and -- well, even then.... It still makes sense if you remember what Barbara Parkins looked like.
On the other hand, it means that Alan Alda is ignoring the needs of his own wife, the supernal Jackie Bissett. Why can't he do both of them? The mind reels with possibilities.
I see I'm kind of skipping over the plot but there's not much in it that will surprise you if you've seen "Rosemary's Baby." I don't mean to imply that everything is ripped of from that original template. Not at all. The ending -- in which a good person sacrifices his (or her) life for the salvation of another -- is ripped off from "The Exorcist." Oh, the TV guide says that there is "brief nudity." There is in fact brief nudity, but it's nice brief nudity.
The musical score is freaky and disturbing -- dark, tumbling, jagged with dissonant chords that strike out of the murk like flashes of lightning -- enough to drive you mad. I kind of liked it. If you can have a Dance Macabre, why not a Mephisto Waltz? It's apt too. Faust sold his soul to Mephistopheles to have his wishes granted, and that's what Alan Alda does here, though, to be sure, in Alda's case he'd been subject to an enhanced pitch and the deal was signed while he was evidently asleep.