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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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.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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