 Welcome to another episode of Freightfully Forgotten Horror Movies. What are we drinking today? Today we are drinking Chuckie's Check Pills That Kills. Alright. Today we're going to bring to you a movie that was suggested by one of our fans, Deadpan 80. I wonder if that's his real name. Hello Mr. Deadpan. The movie is 1973's The Baby directed by Ted Post. He did a lot of notable movies to name a few Magnum Force, Hang'em High and Beneath the Planet of the Apes. And Jeanette Comer stars in this. She was in just tons of 70's shows. Ruth Roman is also in this in like a thousand movies or whatever so we're not going to mention any except Strangers on a Train. Michael Pataki is in this and he was in Halloween 4. Just bear with me this speech, I've been listening to it for a decade. The Baby starts off with our main character Ann Gentry going to the Wadsworth house cause she's a social worker and she's just been assigned to their case. They sit down and talk and we learn a bit of a backstory that the husband of the family took off right after this baby was born. They've been collecting welfare to support the family. She asks if she can see the baby. The mother takes her upstairs to go see the baby. Looks in the crib and we find out it's a grown man. In a giant crib no less. In a giant crib with the diaper on. Making like the baby noises too. Baby does not actually have a name, it's just baby. Baby's name is Baby. There's also two other daughters in this family and they're odd too. The family goes out one night and they get a babysitter. Baby wants to get out of the crib and keeps throwing its toy outside the crib. Yeah. Okay, I'll let you out and she lets the baby out of this crib. It kind of flops out or the legs don't work. Baby hits his head on this fireplace and starts freaking out and babysitter takes the baby to kind of try to calm him down and the baby starts latching on to the babysitter's breast and the babysitter's like, No, baby, no, no, and then, no, no, baby, just no allows it. It just lets it happen. The family comes home and they got home a little early so they go upstairs and open the door and see the fact that the baby's latched on to the babysitter's breast. Got your damn tit in his mouth and that's nothing. And then two daughters hold her down and the mother takes some belt down and starts whipping the babysitter with this belt. You want kicks? I'll give you kicks. It starts whipping her with that belt. One of the sisters comes to the baby's room at night. The nightgown drop and she gets into the crib with the baby. Like what? In the scene, Ann. Ann starts coming around more and more often and she's getting kind of really obsessed with baby and always wants to play with the baby and push the baby's limits to see if it can kind of come out of this baby state. She's trying to get the baby to stand up in its crib and then the mom comes and she's pissed off. Yeah. It cuts to the baby's room and they're all taking some cattle prod to baby. Baby doesn't talk. Baby doesn't walk. The mother invites Ann to baby's birthday party. The mother and the daughters drug her drink, knocks Ann out a little bit and they drag her into the basement and tie her up. While that's going on, baby's on the floor playing but sees all this happening. Baby slowly goes down while the mother and the daughters have gone upstairs again and deal with Dennis. Yeah, they're all distracting Dennis because he's kind of all into Ann. He's looking for her so you send one of the daughters to hit on him. Would somebody deal with that idiot? She's all like torturing him, like burning his hand with that flame and everything. Ouch! Baby goes downstairs and helps Ann get out of her restraints and everything. While the last people in the party leave the house, so does Ann with baby. They go to follow Ann in their car but Ann already punctured one of the tires. They're going to hatch another scheme to try and get baby back and that's where we're going to end it. If you want to see what happens with the mother and the daughters, what happens with Ann and the baby, keep watching. It's a crazy movie. Yeah, it's a wild movie. It's tons of fun. It's not a bad movie. It's kind of disguised as a B movie but it's actually very, very good. Yeah, and it's extremely smart. Like, I think it takes maybe two times watching it to really start to get all the subtle undertones of it but there's so much. You know, the baby is like a metaphor. Also, the movie is extremely female dominated, right? And the baby is like a male and he's like an idiot, right? He's a baby. All the males in this movie are morons and the women are strong. Women's lib, which they briefly mentioned a little bit, starting to get stronger around here. The cast in this movie is superb, especially Ruth Roman as the mother figure. She is so good at playing this kind of conniving, evil woman. Even baby, you believe that baby is actually a baby or doesn't believe or isn't acting. Imagine going to audition for that role. What am I reading for? You're not reading anything. You just tend to be a baby and the sounds that the baby makes is kind of what really helps make this movie kind of off-putting. Like the crying and the whining. You're like, oh, it's piercing your ears, but at the same time, it's kind of funny and it's a weird experience. And Jeanette Comer does a great job of the sort of the obsessive character as well. You believe that she's slowly kind of going off the rails and getting obsessed with this baby. Yeah, you can tell in her facial expressions and stuff, which is really good that she is kind of into this baby thing. Almost sexually into it. He almost seems like she's like attracted to this baby. And you're like, that's kind of a weird way to play it. But the movie is smart enough where all these weird things that happened in the beginning that you question, they all kind of get answered at the end. Yeah, which is really neat. It's almost like a couple of twists at the end of this movie. Once it gets to the end, it's like, boom, it's like, holy shit. You're sitting on the edge of your seat wondering what's going to happen next. It's wild. It's a wild ride. And the payoffs in this movie, as you get to them, are perfectly placed. Exactly. It's just enough to keep you hanging on till the next weird thing happens. The next weird thing. You think it can't get any weirder. Like, oh, it just, yeah. Here's the cattle prod. It's that underlying current in the movie, too, that makes you question who's really the sane one here and who's the insane. Is it like, nobody seems to ever question that this baby is a grown man. Yeah, nobody. It's just normal. It's just accepted. Like, at the birthday party, everyone's dancing and like... Yeah, and the baby's there. The baby's there in the height. You're eating a cake and everything and crawling around. Yeah, it's like... Not one person's like, what the fuck is this? That's what we probably do when we walk into the party. It's like, what the fuck is going on here? Probably even say that to the mother. And you realize what... You realize what you're doing here? You've the babysitter. Like, you're calling for a babysitter gig. Well, I need a sitter tonight. Okay. You know, walk in as a fucking man, you're like, okay, sure. Now our channel is a horror movie channel and this movie doesn't really kind of get into the horror end of things until probably the last 20 minutes of the movie. It's more of a black comedy with some pretty crazy social commentary. That is kind of what the movie really is at its heart. Nowadays remakes are constant. You could never remake this movie. You just never be able to capture that magic and the sort of that social commentary, the underlining black comedy stuff in it. So if you're in the mood for a one hell of a wacky fucking movie... Fun though. Yeah, it's a fun movie. It's full of surprises, it's full of laughs. It's definitely a movie that you need to see once in your life at least. Keep drinking.