Turner Classic Movies is having a full weekend of classic horror films of such quality that you should probably try and catch at least one or two of them. Tonight, TCM has many of the original Universal Horror classics, from Dracula to The Black Cat (but not Frankenstein since he has been the monster of the month). Tomorrow has a bunch of bizarro classics including The Devil Doll and the original The Blob. Sunday has The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Gaslight, and the original Diabolique (which, seriously, is a master class of trashily fun noir).
But, Saturday night features Underground Above Ground, where the usually late night cult movies make it to prime time. Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace as well as Carnival of Souls are both required viewing of 1960s moody horror. But, we’re not here to talk about classics. That would be too easy. Besides, many people smarter than myself have written books about these movies. I’m here to talk about one of the weirdest experiences I have ever seen: Ted Post’s The Baby.
Screenwriter Abe Polsky’s first feature film credit was a story credit on 1969’s The Gay Decievers, a piece of homophobic comedy that ridicules both the homosexual community and the military in equal measure. The story is one that would be repeated in recent times, two straight dudes get drafted to the Vietnam War, and dodge the draft by moving in to a gay apartment building while trying to secretly date women until they’re permanently blacklisted from the military. If this had been made from the gay perspective, the movie could easily be about the insidious nature of the closet and how dangerous and damaging it is to hide your identity under constant pressure from an oppressive government. Instead, it’s a regressive piece of cinema that still manages to other the gay men while making a movie about their life.
In 1973, Polsky’s final credit would disappear into the ether before being rejuvenated by cult film lovers. The Baby is a weird piece of horror trash that dabbles in feminist and anti-feminist tropes like a child playing with grenades. Ann Gentry, a female social worker, is throwing herself into her work after she and her husband was in a horrific car accident. She stumbles onto a family with of four where three women have to care for Baby, a 20-something man who seems to be in a permanent state of childhood immaturity. Baby’s father had left the family shortly after Baby’s birth, and it seems that the women take out their frustrations on Baby to keep him in a state of permanent regression.
And, let’s look at that whole concept for a second. Second wave feminism had started hitting loud and hard in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Gloria Steinem founded Ms. in 1971, and Roe v. Wade finally made the final decision about abortion in 1973. Strong women were scary, frightening, emasculating beings who would exact vengeance on all of the male population for the injustices that happened to them. They wouldn’t even stop at killing their own babies to take control over their bodies.
In the light of male fear about women emasculating men as a cultural movement, The Baby seems to be a horror movie validating that exact fear. Even the finale ultimately reinforces the fear that women shouldn’t be trusted. But, The Baby is so over-the-top that it almost appears to be a Poe’s Law-esque satire of these same concepts. Polsky and director Ted Post (Magnum Force, Hang ‘Em High) have made a movie so paranoid and fearful of the feminist movement, the movie turns into a curdled horror comedy that almost seems to double back and criticize its own concepts.
The Baby is a wacky disturbingly weird horror movie that never lets up. From the initial concept to the psychedelic final reel – one that feels echoed in the hockey rink scene of Running Scared – Ted Post keeps The Baby so far off kilter it becomes a bizarre artifact of toxicity that still stands as the basis for many discussions on classic feminism. Whatever you take from The Baby, there’s probably enough evidence within the movie to support it. Yet, I’m probably putting more thought into a movie that doesn’t necessarily deserve it.
The Baby airs at 1am on Saturday night on TCM