The Baby Is A 1973 Slice of Absurdism

One of my favorite experiences as a fan of film is when I see something I absolutely can't place in a category. Something unlike anything I've ever seen before. When a movie is entirely unique it isn't subject to the normal aesthetic parameters of whether it's a good film or a bad film. Being unique is enough to recommend a film in almost all cases in my experience. Certainly there are exceptions, but when i come away from a movie thinking this is unlike anything I've ever seen that usually satisfies me. After everyone went to bed a few weeks ago I took a chance on such a film on Netflix and that's how I came across...

The Baby. A 1973 film you will surely assume is much more lurid and prurient from looking at this poster. The truth is The Baby is an interesting, even entertaining film simply because it's played straight. The absurdity of a grown man still being treated as if he were a baby by his mother and two sisters is played straight. There is violence and perversion in this movie, but far less than you might imagine and far less than you would expect if this had been filmed as a typical exploitation movie. It wasn't. It was filmed as a straight ahead story that become a pretty good action movie culminating with several cast members finding their ways to bad endings. 

I don't really do "reviews" in the sense of evaluating whether a movie is good or bad. My goal is to bring to the attention of niche and sub-genre fans movies they might have otherwise missed. This is one of those. If you're expecting something ala David Lynch or John Waters here you'll be disappointed. But the story is told in a straight forward style as if this were something happening in every neighborhood in every town. And...

Marianna Hill of Messiah of Evil (Dead People) is in it, so that's an added bonus. It's on  Netflix and if you have an extra  ninety minutes and want to see something out of left field The Baby will probably entertain you.

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Dead People (Messiah of Evil)

Dead People is a low budget 1973 horror movie written and directed by William Huyck and shot in various locations in California. Some very attractive women and quality actors were in the production, including Michael Greer and Marianna Hill. A very good, unusual movie with a magnificent eerie feeling to it. several really great scenes, including 

This unbelievably successfully creepy scene in a movie theater and

This one in a Ralph's supermarket. I bet you can guess what happens next.

This is one of those quirky, well-done early seventies horror movies where you wonder if things are going right by accident or if someone really wanted it to look and feel this bizarre. There are some great unintentionally bad gaffs like a classic mispronounciation of Richard Wagner which supposedly resulted from a straight reading of the script, but even these uneven moments will just make you fonder of this one-of-a kind movie. 

Not to be overlooked in the spooky atmosphere achieved by the script, location, and shooting of this movie, is some really interesting art work. 

Dead People, which will probably be titled Messiah of Evil if you see it in a bin at Best Buy, is a movie I can come back to anytime and be entertained and really just admire for it's atmosphere and sense of creepiness in a forsaken place. 

Is it a zombie movie? I'll let you decide that for yourself.

I later saw actress Marianna Hill in The Baby, another really magnificent and unusual early 70's movie.

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