Tag Archives: Rosemary’s Baby

Ira Levin might just be one of the most quietly influential figures in the history of horror and science fiction. Mention of his name often leaves people blank, grasping for some connection, trying to place the vague sense of familiarity ...

On the 50th anniversary of Roman Polanski’s classic Rosemary’s Baby, David, J. P., and Dima sit down to discuss the film, its place in the zeitgeist of the latter half of the 1960s, and how Polanski’s direction exemplifies the auteur ...

There’s been much recent debate over why we shouldn’t be watching the films of Roman Polanski. We have recently published a couple of articles here, at Diabolique, arguing for why we need to separate the artist from the art. I ...

The first Hollywood scandal occurred in 1921 at a party at a San Francisco hotel. It involved Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, the silent screen star exulted as the first actor to sign a million-dollar contract (and that was a million dollars ...

Episode IV “CAN YOU SURVIVE…?” The Sound Of Fear moves into the realm of shock horror, with music scoring zombies and chainsaws sharing space with possessed children and a movement of films centred around the offspring of the devil. Episode ...

During the 1980’s, the American Satanic Panic epidemic was in full swing.  The previous decade planted the seeds for hysteria concerning the cloven hoofed lord of the abyss and his earthly worshippers; but it wasn’t until allegations of Satanic ritual ...

When the Church of Satan was established by Anton LaVey in 1966, he declared it “Annos Satanas,’’ – the first year in the “Age of Satan.’’  A man of great charisma and considerable celebrity status already, it wasn’t long before ...

After the release and subsequent success of films like Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, horror cinema spawned a new obsession: religion. The ’70s witnessed the release of a slew of religious-themed horror films, many of which came ...

Horror films have hit a point where reinterpretation and adaptation—if not full-blown recreation—have become standard practices. Trends form and filmmakers are quick to follow. Homage has been replaced by imitation; the boundaries between creative and derivate severed. That is why ...

Horror, in its most honest form, is a distillation of cultural and historical trauma, a generation’s culmination of disaster, inhumanity, and marginalization. Dracula reflected the Western xenophobic anxieties of an increasingly modernized society. Cthulhu reminds us of our cosmic helplessness. ...