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I Don't Want to be Born
The Monster / It Lives Within Her / The Devil Within Her / The Baby / Sharon's Baby / It's Growing Inside Her
UK 1975
produced by Norma Corney, Nato De Angeles (executive) for Unicapital
directed by Peter Sasdy
starring Joan Collins, Eileen Atkins, Ralph Bates, Donald Pleasence, Caroline Munro, Hilary Mason, John Steiner, Janet Key, George Clayton, Derek Benfield, Stanley Lebor, Judy Buxton, Andrew Secombe, Susan Richards, Phyllis MacMahon, John Moore, Floella Benjamin, Penny Darch, López, Susie Lightining, Val Hoadley, Janice Brett
story by Nato De Angeles, screenplay by Stanley Price, music by Ron Grainer, special effects by Bert Luxford
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
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Lucy (Joan Collins) and Gino (Ralph Bates) are just having their first
baby, a healthy twelve-pounder who doesn't even want to be born by the
looks of it ... and it couldn't be worse, as the little toddler pretty
much starts to bite everyone (including his mother) from the day of his
birth, and scares the living daylights out of most people as well, even
though he looks like a perfectly normal baby, and even the doctor in
charge (Donald Pleasence) can't find anything wrong with the little boy.
Only Lucy thinks the boy could have been cursed by the midget Hercules
(George Claydon) she performed with when she was still a stripper, and the
fact that the boy might not be the son of Gino after all but of the owner
(John Steiner) of the nightclub she has worked at isn't exactly calming
her down either. After a while, the toddler even leaves his bed and room
at night and starts killing people, including the babysitter (Janet Key),
daddy Gino and the doctor, and in the end he even stabs mommy, but thank
God Gino has called his sister (Eileen Atkins), a nun, in for
consultations while still alive, and ultimately, she performs an exorcism
on the toddler, which turns the little one back into a perfectly normal
baby while it kills midget Hercules while he performs on stage ... Caroline
Munro plays Lucy's best friend and former colleague.
It's
Alive, with traces of The Exorcist
and Rosemary's Baby, done the British way - meaning everything
that's happening is done in rather good taste, the direction is slick in
ann old-fashioned sort of way, the pace is less than excited/exciting, and
the cast is pretty much first rate. Now don't get me wrong, the British
were responsible for some of the best horror movies out there based on
exactly that concept ... but unfortunately, I Don't Want to be Born
is not one of them, it's a rather old-fashioned rip-off of some of
groundbreaking genre movies that never quite manages to come into its own
and suffers from a few too many dull stretches. That all said, the film on
the other hand is not a total loss, if Brit-horror with tastefully done
traces of trash is your thing, just don't expect anything remotely
resemble a classic in its own right. By the way, this film is sometimes
also called a The Omen-rip-off, mostly by American
mainstream-centered co-called genre buffs - which is highly unlikely since
that movie wasn't released until 1976, or one year after I Don't Want
to be Born.
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