I Don't Want To Be Born

[dem bones]

Jun 14, 2008 8:52:39 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Did anyone happen to see Jonathan Ross last night? Probably the only time a clip from Peter Sasdy's awful 'I Don't Want to be Born' will ever be shown on a prime time TV talk show (the guest was Eileen Atkins & rather than show a clip of Cold Mountain or something else more worthy they showed the bit where she exorcises the baby while George Claydon falls over at the strip club)

Any old excuse, I'm not proud.

Also known as It Lives Within Her, It's Growing Inside Her, Sharon's Baby, The Baby, The Devil Within Her and The Monster. You can dress it up in whatever fancy title you like and this ungainly leap on the Omen/ Rosemary's Baby/ Exorcist bandwagon will still be as Godawful as Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde is sublime and The Horror Of Frankenstein is .... Horror Of Frankenstein.

Stripper Joan Collins spurns the advances of amorous dwarf Hercules, little knowing that he is a dwarf possessed of diabolical powers. Hercules is very put out by the manner of her rejection (it is on the heartless side) and lays a curse on her first born - it will be the son of the Devil!

Nine months later and, after a "difficult birth" (lots of heavy breathing and wailing from Joan) the tiny tot announces himself to the world by drawing blood from his mum and getting it smeared all around his mouth. Everyone comments on how big he is but moribund Dr. Donald Pleasance says everything's normal, no need for concern.

He's a great help.

Things get progressively worse when Joan takes tiny tot home to she and husband Ralph Bates's swanky Kings Road flat. The little monster divides his time between pulling baby faces, trashing his nursery, going berserk when Ralph's sister, a nun, tries to bless him and forcing the abandonment of his baptism by throwing a fit when the Priest produces a Bible.

Joan is terrified of him even before he lamps her with a bottle.

"I feel he hates me, loathes me!" she emotes to best friend Caroline Monro.
"Come on darling! You know that's ridiculous!" fibs Caro.

Caro is also a stripper at the same club but don't get too worked up - neither of them actually strip. Ms Munro wasn't up for that sort of business and turned down the female lead in Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde because it required a gratuitous starkers scene. Anyway, Joan also lets slip that - gasp! - the baby may not even be Ralph's! On the night when it all went off with Hercules, she allowed herself to be comforted by smoothie club owner and Irish joke specialist Tommy Morris!

Once Joan's got that off her chest (via a jaw-dropping flashback sequence featuring a Joan talk-over), the baby's reign of terror can really get underway. He drowns the nanny (one of the great screen deaths: his tiny hand pushes her in the back and she goes hurtling into the stream and bashes her head on a convenient rock), hurls his teddy from the cot, lynches Ralph and pulls his corpse down a manhole, claws Sister Albana, pulverises the Ples with a spade, skewers Joan - he upsets an awful lot of people. Just when you think he's going to massacre the entire cast, Sister Albana performs a belated exorcism with the result that baby is wrestled from the Devil's clutches and Hercules cops a fatal stroke while cavorting onstage with the showgirls. Well, I guess he'd have wanted it that way.

You have to feel sorry for Ralph in this one because he's a perplexed victim from start to finish. Also, he's been saddled with a part that requires him to attempt an 'Italian' accent and before long it's fluctuating wildly out of control. Ironically, arguably his best moment is yet another male-to-female transformation scene when, during Joan's nightmare, he briefly materialises as a nun's undead corpse.

[jkdunham]

I chanced upon this on DVD in a charity shop last year (as The Monster, if memory serves). Even at a pound, or it may have been 50p, I opted to give it a miss having seen it on TV once (and once being enough). After reading this post though, I'm almost tempted to go back and see if it's still there.

[dem bones]

See if you can knock them down to about 3p and you shouldn't feel too done.

[killercrab]

The great Ralph Bates sporting a dodgy accent - Joanie Collins on top form and a monster baby. It's a britrash classic I tell you ...

KC

[Johnlprobert]

Well seeing as tis has its own thread:

What an odd film! An Italian-UK co-production which means the strip club owner is played by the bloke who gets an axe in his head in Argento's Tenebrae while the midwife helping to deliver the baby at the start is Play School's Floella Benjamin! Janet Key (Dracula AD 1972) is the nanny who gets flung into the lake and Stanley Lebor (Ever Decreasing Circles) is the policeman investigating the case.

It's still rubbish, but I feel better now.

[franklinmarsh]

Top weekend's filmic entertainment. The Beast Must Die (still disappointing), National Lampoon's Animal House (still funny), Long Weekend (odd low-budget 1978 Aussie Eco-Horror/Nature's Revenge curio - very ambiguous - but good - apparently being remade) and .....The Monster/I Don't Want To Be Born. The first 15 minutes or so were a bit of a trial, but then the sight of Our Joanie in her scanties being molested by a hunchbacked dwarf piqued my interest and we were away on an outrageously enjoyable slice of hokum (although the last fifteen minutes lost it). Full marks to Donald Pleasance for delivering an understated, subtle, meaningful performance (in the wrong film!) and being given a spectacular death.