hyped garbage

Did you people see the same film I saw?

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Sex, scandal, strippers and more mix in this unintentionally funny horror flick that's an absolute must for people who treasure bad genre movies.This one is in the vein of "Rosemary's Baby" and "It's Alive". Joan Collins plays Lucy Carlesi, a woman who comes to fear that her newborn is possessed. And she could be right: almost every person who comes into contact with this infant meets a horrible death.You have to hand it to British actors: they can sell just about anything, and make this train wreck more entertaining than it has a right to be. Collins does a remarkably sincere job, and is well supported by Ralph Bates, as her husband Gino, Donald Pleasence, as Dr. Finch, Caroline Munro as her sister Mandy, Eileen Atkins, as her sister-in-law Albana, Hilary Mason, as the grumpy Mrs. Hyde, John Steiner, as sleazy Tommy Morris, and George Claydon, as malevolent dwarf Hercules. Although their performances are fine, the "accents" affected by Bates and Atkins - who are playing Italians - are downright hysterical. Just get a load of the way that Atkins says the word "devil".The best moments in this thing have to be the kill scenes, which should inspire some pretty hearty chuckles. People get shoved into a river, decapitated with a shovel, and hung before this is over. There are some fleeting breast shots for voyeurs and a fairly decent dose of gore. The movie can boast *some* style, particularly in a nightmare sequence. The score by Ron Grainer is most amusing, sounding more like porno music than anything else.Picked up by A.I.P. for distribution in North America, "I Don't Want to Be Born" is a real hoot and a half. It might not be "good", but it's fun schlock.Five out of 10.

Horror films were a major feature of the British cinema in the sixties and early seventies, largely because such matter could not be seen on television, the broadcasting companies regarding it as being unfit for family viewing. "I Don't Want to Be Born" (aka "The Devil Within Her"), clearly shows the influence of "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Exorcist", although the film to which it bears the greatest resemblance, in terms of its story, is "The Omen". Yet as it came out in 1975, a year earlier than that movie, it clearly cannot be an "Omen" rip-off. Perhaps "The Omen" was an "I Don't Want to be Born" rip-off.Like "The Omen", "I Don't Want to Be Born" involves a devilish child with a symbolically significant name. In "The Omen" he is called Damien, obviously a play on the word "demon". Here he is named Nicholas, presumably a reference to the fact that the Devil is sometimes referred to as "Old Nick". (I often wonder how this usage arose, given that Saint Nicholas, aka Father Christmas, is one of the most beloved saints of the Christian Church).Nicholas is the son of Lucy, a former nightclub stripper, and her husband, a wealthy Italian businessman living in London. (At least Lucy is assumed to be a stripper, although from what we see of her act it does not actually involve taking her clothes off. Joan Collins, at this point in her career, seems to have been rather more coy about nudity than she was to be a couple of years later in films like "The Stud" and "The Bitch"). The title refers to the baby's reluctance to come into this world; having been thrust into this vale of tears against his will has obviously had a deleterious effect on young Nicholas's character, as in the first few weeks of his life he proceeds to slaughter everyone who comes near him, including both his parents, his nanny and the doctor who delivered him. The only person who seems able to control him is his aunt, a nun who flies in from Italy to act as exorcist.I was a teenager in the seventies and recall constantly being told by my elders and betters that my generation were all a bunch of hooligans. Numerous explanations were put forward for this supposed epidemic of juvenile delinquency- boredom, youth unemployment, peer pressure, drugs, alcohol and the permissive society- but the cause of Nicholas's bad behaviour seems to be something more exotic, namely a curse placed upon his mother by a lustful dwarf whose sexual advances she rejected. The said dwarf is employed by the nightclub to prance around on stage while the girls are performing, although it is never explained why the club owner assumed that this bizarre diversion would increase the erotic allure of their performances.Although the film contains some well-known British actors of the period, including Donald Pleasence, Eileen Atkins, Caroline Munro and Ralph Bates, none of them bring much conviction to their roles. (Bates seemed to specialise in horror films- he also acted in "Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde", and this is referred to when in a hospital scene we hear an announcement for a "Dr Jekyll". The family's housekeeper is called Mrs Hyde). Collins looks incredibly glamorous for a woman in her early forties, but nevertheless manages to turn in one of the worst performances of her career, even though she could at times be very effective in horror films like "Tales from the Crypt"."The Exorcist" and "The Omen" may have their faults, but they are technically well-made films, well-acted and at their best genuinely scary. "I Don't Want to Be Born" is none of those things. It is a the sort of trashy low-budget horror flick, thing that the British film industry could churn out by the dozen and which generally showed that industry at its worst. The one good thing about it is that it came towards the end of the British horror boom. The genre declined in importance in the second half of the decade, largely because the broadcasting authorities were becoming more permissive about violence provided it was shown late at night, and in the eighties the industry, freed of its addiction to horror exploitation movies and silly sex comedies, underwent a revival when it returned to making intelligent and watchable films. "I Don't Want to Be Born", however, serves as a reminder of just how bad British cinema could be at its nadir. 2/10

Well stone me, what a farce. I actually enjoyed this film.It certainly is, as somebody a long time ago said, a game of three halves. The first half hour or so is laughably bad, and had me chuckling throughout. Then the tone shifts slightly and you find yourself actually getting vaguely interested into what on Earth's going on and where it could all possibly be leading. And then the last thirty minutes are genuinely disturbing, with some rather scary bits in there and a few set pieces that you won't have seen coming. All in all, rather absorbing.The plot itself sounds like something cobbled together from "The Exorcist" and "The Omen" (despite the latter film being released the year after, but stay with me). Joan Collins (?!) plays a woman (good show) who's given birth to an "evil" child, who spends the film apparently viciously assaulting people whilst those of the religious faith find it all terribly intriguing. The scenes of the aforementioned child attacking people are usually quite laughable, usually comprising of somebody leaning close to it, recoiling in horror clutching their cheek and moaning "It bit me!", followed by a shot of a not particularly frightening little child looking frankly bewildered at the fact that he's in a film. Ah ha, but the baby has "Surprising strength for his age," we are told, so that's all right then.The rationale for all this, given to us as a flashback about 10-15 minutes in, is one of the funniest bits of the film. Joan's character used to be a stripper, and performed her acts with a small dancing midget who apparently fancied her like mad. On her last day of work, the midget toddles along to her dressing room and tries to feel her up, whereupon she screams and a spiv wanders in and tells the midget to get lost. The midget toddles away again and Joan and the spiv (her old boyfriend, and manager of the strip club) begin to make out, Joan switching from "horror-struck and upset" to "giggly and horny" in the space of three seconds. The whole scene looks like it was shot in one take, and is played so languidly to defy belief. Later that evening, as Joan leaves the club, the midget leaps out at her from the shadows and rather improbably cries "You shall have a devil child!!!" before scampering off again.Quite why Joan (recounting the story to a bored-witless Caroline Munro) should assume that this is the only explanation for why her child has anger-management problems I have no idea. And quite why she turns out to be right is even more startling. Soon she starts seeing the baby transform into the very same gurning midget in the blink of an eye, and most of the deaths are accompanied by such supremely seminal camera work depicting the hands of the midget (hmm, now there's a title for a Hammer... "Hands of the Midget") groping around and punching people.And this is just the basic premise of the story, all given within the first twenty minutes. From then on it's a whirlwind of the good and the bad. For the former we have Donald Pleasence giving a superbly understated performance as the doctor whom everybody seems to be seeking advice from (he actually seems like a doctor, somebody the makers had hired out from a surgery to appear in the film rather than just an actor, and it works wonderfully). The spiv, though a complete bounder, has a few amusing lines - "Said you'd come to me so I could cheer you up. I've got another six Irish jokes since we last met." Joan Collins, despite being a bit wooden at the beginning, actually gets better as the film progresses. And I was positively delighted by a cameo from Stanley Lebor, better known as lovable Howard in "Ever Decreasing Circles" (and, hurrah, a sitcom actor who actually survives the film - that's a rarity in the 70s). And then there's Pleasence with "I thought today was going to be normal routine, I didn't think I'd be discussing mysticism with an Italian nun." And then there's the laughably bad bits, including the rather shaky ground surrounding the "Midgets are evil" thing, the most unconvincing birth scene ever, in which Joan looks more as though she's being orally pleasured than having a child, and the gratuitous stripper scenes peppered about every so often which don't serve to do anything much at all ("Am I boring you?") In fact, various scenes of steamy romance and general sauciness seem to be chucked in just to give the film a higher rating - that's the only reason I can think of for a rather touching courting scene between Joan and blank-faced husband Ralph Bates (nice accent, Ralph) being followed up by the two of them having sweaty, fumbling sex whilst the melodious seedy music that we've been subjected to throughout the entire duration reaches a new low. And eyebrows will raise when you glance at the credits and see that this entire musical travesty (it really just sounds like porn music, I'm sorry) was composed by Ron Grainer, the man who composed the "Doctor Who" theme tune. Go Ron. You do your funky thang.But yes, to sum it all up, "The Monster" (where "I Don't Want to be Born" comes from I have no idea, as it's not the title on the print) is at times a rather lopsided affair which manages to actually remain consistently entertaining throughout, whether by accident or by design. It's probably all a matter of taste, and maybe I just ended up liking it as it was nowhere near as bad as I thought it'd be, but it's a rather fun feature that does end on a few shocks. 7/10

I DON'T WANT TO BE BORN (USA: The Devil Within Her) Aspect ratio: 1.85:1Sound format: MonoA nightclub stripper (Joan Collins) is cursed by a dwarf (George Claydon) whose attentions she spurned, and she later gives birth to a murderous baby possessed by a demonic spirit.Clearly inspired by the contemporary vogue for satanic shockers, this slapdash concoction - memorably dismissed by UK journalist Nigel Burrell as a 'crapulous farrago'! - was thrown together by Hungarian director Peter Sasdy, previously responsible for such superior offerings as "Taste the Blood of Dracula" (1969), "Countess Dracula" (1970) and "Hands of the Ripper" (1971). Here, his contempt for the material is obvious in the weak storyline, feeble horror scenes and lackluster staging, and his concessions to the exploitation marketplace (strippers at work, a gory decapitation, etc.) are shoehorned into proceedings with reckless abandon.Quite apart from its ridiculous premise (unlike the mutant creature in Larry Cohen's similarly-styled IT'S ALIVE, sweet little babies simply aren't frightening, no matter how much filmmakers try to make them seem otherwise!), the movie is further stymied by indifferent performances and half-baked characterizations: Collins runs the gamut from A to B and back again, Donald Pleasence provides little more than marquee value as Collins' doctor, and Ralph Bates (playing the heroine's husband) is a blank slate throughout. Hilary Mason - the blind lady in DON'T LOOK NOW (1973) - plays the wary housekeeper, and Eileen Atkins is Bates' sister, a nun who performs the commercially-dictated climactic exorcism. Support is offered by Caroline Munro as a fellow stripper (though she looks far too glamorous to be playing such a lowbrow Cockney strumpet!) and Euro-favorite John Steiner as one of Collins' former boyfriends. There's enough campery to entertain die-hard fans, but the sloppy production values and leaden pace will certainly limit the film's appeal to anyone else. Oh, and watch out for abbreviated prints: If you don't see the head come off in the aforementioned decapitation sequence, you're viewing a censored version...