Movie Review: "The Baby" (1973)

UP FRONT CONFESSION: I pride myself of being a connoisseur of the cheesy, shocking, tasteless, subversive, & generally fucked up fare that Hollywood has to offer..........but I missed one!! I am ashamed of myself, but I must thank my "Sister from another mister", Brandy Foster, for turning me on to this. I thought I knew what I was getting into, but I was mistaken. I am saying that with a great, big smile.

The story centers around Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer), a social worker who is recovering from the death of her architect husband. She's clearly a little fragile and maybe she cares too much. She takes a particular interest in the case of Baby, a "grown" man who still lives as a baby and is cared for as such by his batshit crazy family. His mother, Mrs. Wadsworth (Ruth Roman, "Strangers on a Train"), will make you squeamish from the first scene....she's got those big, wild eyes that scream PSYCHO BITCH!! She and her 2 sultry daughters, Germaine & Alba (Marianna Hill & Susanne Zenor), care for Baby in all kinds of smothering and creepy ways.

I can't describe well enough how sleazy some of this shit is. You simply could not make a movie like this today. Uh-uh, no way no how. The director is Ted Post, famous for 5 seasons of Peyton Place, 8 season of Gunsmoke, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, & Magnum Force. He's an action movie guy who does a first-rate job of walking the line between frankly erotic and disgustingly taboo. It's not X-rated, but it doesn't have to be. The suggestion is enough until it's not, if you can pick up what I'm throwing down.

Again, the main character is a man in a diaper being treated like a fucking baby for an entire film and he plays the part!! There's a tension that builds that's utterly unique to anything else I've ever seen. You know something bad is coming, but you'll be damned if you can figure it out. You're pretty sure you don't WANT to figure it out.

And when you get to that ending? Oh, how I laughed............and laughed.............and laughed. Then I took a shower and cried in a little ball.

You're welcome. Thanks, Brandy "Standy"!!