Horror Double Feature: The Baby & The Abandoned!

In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will be gobsmacked by a grown man who lives in a baby crib, the always-wonderful Marianna Hill, zombies, and a haunted farmhouse! It’s The Baby and The Abandoned!

THE BABY (1973)

Although many of us have been guilty of “not acting our age” on occasion, few can be said to be so consistently immature as the character David Manzy plays in the 1973 horror film The Baby. Manzy’s Baby is a 21-year-old man who lives in a crib, wears diapers, gurgles and drools, despite having NO mental disabilities! The youngest member of the Wadsworth clan, Baby lives with his domineering mother and two very strange sisters, but his current living arrangements may soon be changing, as a snoopy young social worker named Ann Gentry – who the viewer soon realizes has a mysterious agenda of her own – has just been assigned to his case… Anyway, while Manzy brings a convincing wide-eyed and innocent wonder to his manchild, it is the quartet of beautiful and talented actresses on display here that really puts this terrific film over. Anjanette Comer is excellent as the ambiguously motivated Ann, Ruth Roman (pushing 50 here but still quite foxy) is not a little frightening as Baby’s whackjob mother, and Suzanne Zenor (who I’d never encountered previously) and Marianna Hill (who I’ve had a major “thang” for ever since seeing her, over 50 years ago, in the classic Star Trek episode “Dagger of the Mind”) are both mesmerizing as Baby’s very unusual siblings, Alba and Germaine. The Baby, as directed by Ted Post, grows increasingly suspenseful and horrific as it proceeds, culminating in as sick a final 10 minutes as any jaded horror fan could wish for; no wonder the reference book DVD Delirium calls the film’s ending “unforgettable and absolutely bonkers.” Top grades to composer Gerald Fried also, for his freaky, string-laden score. The Geneon DVD that I recently watched looks very fine, by the way, but is completely devoid of extras; no chapter stops, even! If ever a film warranted a new deluxe treatment, this would be the one. The Baby is a genuine sleeper that deserves the best presentation it can get.

THE ABANDONED (2006)

The 2006 frightfest The Abandoned comes with a pedigree almost as complicated as its story line. It was directed by a Spaniard (Nacho Cerda), stars an Englishwoman (Anastasia Hille) and a Czech (Karel Roden), and is a Spanish/Bulgarian coproduction that takes place in the unusual horror backdrop of rural Russia (but was filmed in Bulgaria). In it, Hille plays a Russian-born woman named Marie (who was brought up in England but lives in the U.S.) who returns to Russia to take possession of a 40-year-decaying farmhouse that used to belong to her parents, who she never knew. But once there, the house seems to take possession of her, as Marie encounters some increasingly terrifying manifestations, including a run-in with what appears to be a zombified version of … herself! One of the creepiest haunted (farm)house films to come down the pike in a long time, The Abandoned has atmosphere to spare, and every glimpse of Marie’s zombie self, or of the strange figures walking through the darkened house’s many shadows, will most certainly send the ice water coursing down the spines of most viewers. The picture dishes out loads of supernatural mishegas that required two screenings for this viewer to make sense of, but it’s all in the service of a sustained feeling of dread that Cerda manages very well. The picture also features much in the way of subliminal weirdness on the soundtrack, and my advice to all viewers would be to turn the volume up good and loud. Kudos to Karel Roden, who gives a marvelously restrained performance as Marie’s brother, and to Ms. Hille herself, an unconventionally attractive performer who turns out to be a most gifted screamer. Though I’m still a trifle unclear as to one or two plot points, I can admit to being creeped out by this one. Recommended!

COMING ATTRACTIONS: An LSD freakout! A meat-cleaver murder! Bare-nekkid ladies! Extraterrestrial insectoids! It’s Mantis In Lace and Breeders, in the Shocktober Double Feature #20…