ILLUSTRATES Marcio de Castro
Life imitates art?
Director Roman Polanski told the story of a woman pregnant by the devil… and saw his wife, also pregnant, die a violent death.
1. Rosemary’s Babyfrom 1968, tells of a newlywed, pregnant woman, who starts to suspect that her husband, an ambitious actor, has offered her to be fertilized by the devil. For that, he would have enlisted the help of his new neighbors in the scary Dakota Building, in New York. The only person who believes in Rosemary, her colleague Hutch, dies of a mysterious brain clot.
two. The suspense caused instant hysteria since the premiere, on June 12, 1968. Fans described, horrified, the “demon baby” of the plot – and he is never even shown in the film! One critic says Rosemary’s neighbors look like «a typical small, reclusive California sect»
3. Because of the film’s «anti-Christian» theme, producer William Castle begins to receive death threats. In April 1969, Castle was hospitalized on an emergency basis, with kidney failure. It is the beginning of the curse. At the hospital, witnesses say they heard him raving and saying: «Rosemary, for God’s sake, drop that knife!»
4. Macabre coincidence: in the same hospital was Krzysztof Komeda, composer of the soundtrack ofRosemary’s Baby and good friends with the film’s director, Roman Polanski, and his wife, Sharon Tate. Like Hutch, Rosemary’s friend, Komeda also dies because of a clot in the brain
5. In August, things get bloodier. Sharon Tate is stabbed to death by four fanatics from a small, reclusive sect in California (ever read that description somewhere?). Like Rosemary, Sharon was pregnant with her first child. Four more people are killed in the attack, which took place at Polanski’s home. On the door of the place, the criminals write “pig” with the blood of the victims.
6. The crime won the newspapers and became known as “Helter Skelter”, the name of a song by the Beatles (the expression means “chaos”, “decadence”). Final coincidence: 11 years later, Beatle John Lennon is murdered outside the building where he lived… the Dakota Building, where the plot ofRosemary’s Baby
7. Years later, Polanski eventually recounted, in his biography, that he even considered Sharon for the role of Rosemary. Macabre coincidence? The death of the filmmaker’s wife was among the «ten most shocking moments in entertainment», ranking created by the channel E! In the 90’s
SOURCES Documentary The Curse of The Omen, by John MacLaverty; Software AND! True Hollywood Stories: The Exorcist It is poltergeist; booksHollywood Hex: An Illustrated History of Cursed Moviesby Mikita Brottman, and Roman by Polanski, by Roman Polanski; newspaper The Sunday Herald; websites cracked, Mania, imdb It is BBC