LOOK WHAT’S HAPPENED TO ROSEMARY’S BABY (1976) FORGOTTEN TELEVISION

LOOK WHAT’S HAPPENED TO ROSEMARY’S BABY (1976) – With The First Omen currently in theaters, its creative team’s obvious desire to make their Omen prequel seem more like Rosemary’s Baby made me decide to review the often forgotten made-for-television sequel to that horror classic. 

Let’s be clear that this telefilm has nothing to do with Ira Levin or his later sequel novel Son of Rosemary. Levin’s genius was sorely missed in Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby, an aggressively “meh” little nothing. After all, in addition to his novel Rosemary’s Baby, Ira Levin wrote the books The Stepford Wives, A Kiss Before Dying, The Boys from Brazil and Sliver. 

Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby (henceforth LWHTRB) featured Ruth Gordon as the only returning cast member from the 1968 movie, reprising her role of Minnie Castevet. Ray Milland played her husband Roman Castevet and George Maharis portrayed Rosemary’s actor husband Guy Woodhouse.

Rosemary herself was portrayed by Patty Duke, who had missed out on playing the character in the 1968 film. In the role of Rosemary’s son Adrian/ Andrew was cult actor Stephen McHattie. 

The tepid tale kicks off when Adrian is 8 years old and Rosemary has spirited him away to avoid some weird new ritual that Ruth Gordon and her fellow Satanists want to subject the boy to. The villains use some of Rosemary’s personal possessions to cast a spell tracking her down.

She and little Adrian are huddled in a synagogue in another city. The Satanists cause some minor uproar in the synagogue but because it’s a holy site they cannot abduct her or injure anyone inside. The next morning, Rosemary and Adrian slip away to a bus station. Like an idiot, she STILL hasn’t learned not to trust her husband Guy, who is now a big star thanks to his deal with Satan in the original movie.

She wants Guy to wire money so she and Adrian can take a long bus ride. Guy dutifully informs Ruth Gordon and company, and they have Marjean, a prostitute played by Tina Louise, another devil-worshiper, offer Rosemary and her son shelter for the night while they wait for Guy to supposedly send money to them.

The next day, Rosemary exits the picture, taken away by a Satan-controlled bus whose door closes before Adrian can join her. Marjean holds Adrian to prevent him from running off while he watches his mother get taken to her doom by the remote-controlled empty bus.

The next portion of LWHTRB starts off with the portentous title The Book of Adrian appearing on screen. Despite the mostly dull open, those words did get me to refocus on this little honey, hoping it would get better. 

Forget that! It’s twenty years later and Adrian (now played by McHattie) has grown up to be the kind of wimp that Damien Thorne could kick through all nine circles of Hell. He’s the embodiment of the term “failure to launch” and is still dominated by “Aunt Marjean” whom we learn has convinced him that his mother’s death by bus was really a crash that killed both his parents, so he has no idea his foster father is a famous actor.   

Yes, Adrian is twenty-eight years old now, and though you’d think the son of Satan would have been led into a powerful position and getting ready to challenge Heaven’s authority, you’d be wrong. Despite having been raised by a woman who is part of the Castevet’s cult of Satanists, Adrian is a nobody loser like Otto on The Simpsons.

Next, Adrian and his slacker friend Peter (David Huffman) get into the kind of trouble you’d think they’d have gotten out of their systems back when they were teenagers. They go on a joyride and pick a fight with some bikers.

Okay, I give this thing points for making it seem like Adrian’s pal Peter will be his unholy version of the Apostle Peter with more disciples to follow. Once again, however, it lets us down and the two remain so boring you wouldn’t think they’d get into any trouble worse than stealing hubcaps. 

Ruth Gordon and her hubby show up at the tawdry little casino run by Aunt Marjean and drug Adrian into unconsciousness. Yes, at the tender age of twenty-eight the cultists have finally decided that Satan’s spawn is ready to get involved in some mischief. (I was half-convinced he was still a virgin at this point, while Damien Thorne had been setting up threesomes for himself in military school.)

Guy Woodhouse, still beholden to the Castevets, shows up that night to participate in the upcoming ritual. Adrian’s nosey buddy Peter recognizes the movie star and spies on him, the Castevets and Aunt Marjean. 

The Satanists have adorned Adrian with white mime makeup while he was knocked out, and the cultists chant and chant in Latin, asking Satan to make his son get up and go look for a job or something. Or clean his room, maybe.

At length the ritual works and Adrian wakes up, then frantically runs out onto the casino’s dance floor. (Disco Son of Satan!) He possesses all the other dancers and induces odd behavior. (Disco Inferno? Had to be said.)

Peter was still looking on, and though I expected him to deny three times that he knew the dork in mime makeup causing an uproar on the dance floor, he instead tried to convince Guy Woodhouse to help him save Adrian from whatever was going on. (Movie Star = Emergency Responder to Peter.) 

Guy kills Peter and frames Adrian for the murder. Adrian, having been energized by the dark ritual, continues his stint as the dullest devilspawn EVER by lapsing into a coma. I’m not joking.

Up next, the words The Book of Andrew appear on the screen, and if you thought The Book of Adrian was hopelessly boring, The Book of Andrew smites you and puts you in your place. Our Antichrist-as-loser drama continues as our main character remains in a coma indefinitely. (This guy is a dynamo!)

Anyway, the remainder of the telefilm needs to live up to that scary chapter title The Book of Andrew, so we viewers get to see the Andrew-est, bookingest tale EVER to come along. Our star emerges from his coma … with amnesia.

Ellen, his nurse, is played by seductive and shifty Donna Mills, so she might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says “I Joined the Castevet’s Satanic Cult and All I Got was This Lousy T-Shirt”. She tells her formerly comatose patient that his name is Andrew.

He fearfully tells her about what little he remembers about a ritual, mime makeup and, most frightening of all … a disco dance floor! Ellen assures him that she believes him and helps him escape from the hospital. 

Ruth Gordon and Ray Milland learn that “Andrew” (Why the name change? We are never told.) has come out of his coma and has escaped the hospital. They inform Guy, who fears that the young man may hunt him down and kill him to avenge Peter, so he gets in his car and drives off.

Ellen and Andrew/ Adrian check into a hotel, where she seduces him. He falls asleep afterward, which made me start to wonder if this entire production was just one big troll of its viewers.

The sleeping son of Satan dreams about Ellen in monster makeup slashing his chest, then wakes up. I would imagine this Monstrous Ellen was added just so the creative team could add a seemingly scary scene to the commercials for the telefilm.

At any rate, Andrew books on out of the hotel room looking for Ellen. Guy Woodhouse tries to kill him by running him down with his car, missing Andrew but hitting the nearby Ellen before crashing. Andrew checks the vehicle and sees that Guy has died in the accident.

Confused, Andrew/ Adrian runs off into the night, never to be seen again. I’m serious. Anyway, apparently the Satanists had finally realized that this schlep was never going to make a half-decent Antichrist and we are shown that Ellen has survived the accident.

Under the closing credits she gives birth to the child that Andrew impregnated her with during their one-night stand. This yawn-fest’s final twist is to reveal that Minnie and Roman Castevet are Ellen’s grandparents, and they’ll help raise the infernal child to be … well, probably an insurance salesman or something if the father was anything to go by.

Believe it or not, there was no demand for a sequel to this dull, disappointing and relentlessly dopey flick. Never learning “what’s happened to Rosemary’s Baby” after all is a fitting finale. 

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