Horrorfest 2014: The Baby

As soon as I read the premise for 1973's THE BABY on Netflix I knew I had to watch it. Check this out: it's about a social worker (Anjanette Comer) who is assigned to a family who has a 20-year-old man living like a baby – crawling around, in a crib, in baby clothes, drinking out of a bottle, not talking, everything. How can you not watch?

Even though it seems like pretty straight forward exploitation, THE BABY has some surprises. First of all, the titular Baby (David Mooney) is not the source of the horror – he's not some misshapen beast languishing in a crib. He's just a regular looking young guy who happens to act like a baby all the time.

Also, the house the family lives in isn't some gross place that's falling apart in the middle of nowhere. It's just a big southern California house. I was picturing a freak show of the TEXAS CHAINSAW variety, but that's not quite what this is.

Ruth Roman stars as Baby's domineering mother, a chain smoking non-too-classy, brassy broad who doesn't want anyone to take Baby away or help him develop into a normal dude. Also living in the house, Baby's two hot to trot sisters played by Marianna Hill and Suzanne Zenor.

Comer is good as the social worker, wholesome and concerned, ready to go the extra mile to get Baby out of the house, not willing to give up (or disappear) like some previous social workers have.

One of the creepiest things about the movie is that Baby's voice is dubbed over with real baby sounds – so he does not sound like a grown man acting like a baby, but like an actual baby. Reading up on this flick I learned that the original film's soundtrack had real vocalizations by the grown actor and these baby noises were dubbed in at some later date. So, this is creepy by accident instead of design.

I wouldn't dare give away the surprise ending of this flick. I'll tell you it's totally earned, totally set up and I still didn't see it coming. It's to this movie's credit they even bothered with the twist ending at all – a lesser flick would have just rested on the absurdity of the premise. Not this one!