ROSEMARY'S BABY 1968 lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2011/09/rosemarys-baby-1968.html
“Cinematically speaking, if stressful social times trigger in our culture the need for escapism as a coping mechanism, then such conditions must equally inspire the necessity of what can be best described as a shrouded emotional outlet: an avenue, concealed to the psyche, through which the fears and uncertainties of the times can be safely vented. In this manner the horror film has always been socially revealing.” - Quote from a book on cinema horror whose author I can no longer recall Rosemary's Baby: Child of the 60s: Rosemary’s Baby was released in June of 1968. And as social climates go, one couldn't find a year more defined by stress, fear, and uncertainty than America in 1968* (*America 2016 was unimaginable at the time of this posting). This was the year that saw: Richard Nixon elected to office of President; the assassination of two American symbols of hope (Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy); U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam escalate; and big cities and college campuses across the nation wracked by violent civil rights protests and heated anti-war demonstrations. Observed Los Angeles Times journalist Bettuane Levine: “It was a very bad year. Strikes, sit - ins and bloody riots dotted the land, as various groups sought their share of the pie. The result was a country in crisis, our cities in tatters, our dislocated lives punctuated by assassination, Cold War threats, nuclear terrors, and a general feeling that nothing would ever be the same again.”
Real-life Time Magazine cover, dated April 1, 1966, poses the unasked question that Rosemary's Baby's powerfully ambiguous ending inspires.
For anyone endeavoring to make a horror film in the '60s, a seemingly insurmountable hurdle lie in determining what could possibly frighten an audience which, on a nightly basis, had beamed into their homes the real-life terrors
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