The horror content here--i.e. when anything bad happens--is so hilarious that this would be an absolute trash classic if the overall pacing weren't so lethargic and the general ambiance that of lame 70s British softcore (without most of the actual softcore content). Peter Sasdy made some better films, but this one is just poorly directed, on top of being horribly written. But hoo man, that script is SO bad it's almost great.
Presumably ripping off the prior year's "It's Alive" (plus bits of "The Exorcist," with a few odd anticipations of next year's "The Omen"), the story has Joan Collins ex-showgirl giving birth to a normal-looking baby that nonetheless does completely abnormal things (but only whenever off-camera) because...um, she was cursed by an evil dwarf. And not just ANY evil dwarf, but the one that still works at the club where she used to do a ridiculous dance act with him in musical-comedy "gypsy" drag, complete with a tambourine. Yes, we're supposed to believe that went over bigtime at a strip club, where the other women duly go topless.
Anyway, said dwarf was unhappy she spurned his amorous attentions (even though he looks so fetching in his jester hat!), so he cursed her, which of course he could do because...er, all showbiz dwarfs are in league with Satan? God only knows; the script can't be bothered to explain. So the normal, angelic-looking baby she later gives birth to supposedly gets up to tearing up its room, clawing faces, pushing babysitters to their deaths, and so forth whenever no one is looking.
Needless to say, it's a preposterous movie whose unintentional-comedy joys are only heightened by one of Joan's worst performances. As her husband and nun sister-in-law, Ralph Bates and Eileen Atkins sport bizarre "foreign" accents you'd never be able to identify if we weren't repeatedly told they're supposedly "Italian." (Couldn't they have hired Italian actors? Those exist, you know.) The other performances are also no better than the material deserves, with the perhaps surprising exception of Donald Pleasance, who manages to preserve his dignity by underplaying every ridiculous scene as Collins' doctor. Anyway, it's a movie with a lot of moments you will howl at--it's just too bad that between those highlights, the rest of it is rather mediocre and tedious rather than inspired camp.
Presumably ripping off the prior year's "It's Alive" (plus bits of "The Exorcist," with a few odd anticipations of next year's "The Omen"), the story has Joan Collins ex-showgirl giving birth to a normal-looking baby that nonetheless does completely abnormal things (but only whenever off-camera) because...um, she was cursed by an evil dwarf. And not just ANY evil dwarf, but the one that still works at the club where she used to do a ridiculous dance act with him in musical-comedy "gypsy" drag, complete with a tambourine. Yes, we're supposed to believe that went over bigtime at a strip club, where the other women duly go topless.
Anyway, said dwarf was unhappy she spurned his amorous attentions (even though he looks so fetching in his jester hat!), so he cursed her, which of course he could do because...er, all showbiz dwarfs are in league with Satan? God only knows; the script can't be bothered to explain. So the normal, angelic-looking baby she later gives birth to supposedly gets up to tearing up its room, clawing faces, pushing babysitters to their deaths, and so forth whenever no one is looking.
Needless to say, it's a preposterous movie whose unintentional-comedy joys are only heightened by one of Joan's worst performances. As her husband and nun sister-in-law, Ralph Bates and Eileen Atkins sport bizarre "foreign" accents you'd never be able to identify if we weren't repeatedly told they're supposedly "Italian." (Couldn't they have hired Italian actors? Those exist, you know.) The other performances are also no better than the material deserves, with the perhaps surprising exception of Donald Pleasance, who manages to preserve his dignity by underplaying every ridiculous scene as Collins' doctor. Anyway, it's a movie with a lot of moments you will howl at--it's just too bad that between those highlights, the rest of it is rather mediocre and tedious rather than inspired camp.