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The Baby

The Baby

Horror · Thriller · 1973

A social worker who recently lost her husband investigates the strange Wadsworth family. The Wadsworths might not seem too unusual to hear about them at first - consisting of the mother, two grown daughters and the diaper-clad, bottle-sucking baby. The problem is, the baby is twenty-one years old.

Movie details

The Baby

“What goes on in this nursery isn't for kids!”

1973 Horror · Thriller 1h 24m

Critical arithmetic

One number, for now.

TMDB

5.9 / 10

Community rating

A social worker who recently lost her husband investigates the strange Wadsworth family. The Wadsworths might not seem too unusual to hear about them at first - consisting of the mother, two grown daughters and the diaper-clad, bottle-sucking baby. The problem is, the baby is twenty-one years old.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over The Baby?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?

Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?

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Mrs Rosie Forrest, aka 'Auntie Roo', has a holiday tradition of inviting orphans to her mansion for a party. But Roo isn't completely sane; she lost her husband and is obsessed with her deceased daughter, whose corpse she still keeps in the house. When Katy Coombs sneaks into the party with her brother, Christopher, the deranged biddy abducts the young girl with the hopes of replacing her daughter.

Fear in the Night

Fear in the Night

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It took Peggy Heller a long time to recover from the trauma of a brutal physical assault, suffered in her youth. When she married Robert, he provided her with the love and reassurance she craved for and the two settled down in a pretty house in the grounds of the public school where Robert was a master. But the headmaster of the school is not what he seems and Peggy is convinced he means to harm her - is her fear a figment of her tortured imagination or are there forces at work that intend to manipulate her anxieties with fatal consequences?

Deception

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Night Watch

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Twisted Nerve

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Martin Durnley is a young man with an infantilizing mother, resentful stepfather and an institutionalized brother with Down's syndrome. To cope, he retreats into an alternate child personality he calls Georgie. After being caught during a theft attempt at a department store, he befriends a female customer who is sympathetic to him, but his friendship soon turns into obsession.

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Ted Post

Written by

Abe Polsky

Anjanette Comer

Anjanette Comer

Ann Gentry

Ruth Roman

Ruth Roman

Mrs. Wadsworth

Marianna Hill

Marianna Hill

Germaine Wadsworth

Susanne Zenor

Susanne Zenor

Alba Wadsworth

Tod Andrews

Tod Andrews

Doctor

Michael Pataki

Michael Pataki

Dennis

B

Beatrice Manley

Judith

Court is in session

Put The Baby on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Adrenaline Seeker

“Its refusal to behave is the point.”

The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.

The prosecution The Prestige Tourist

“Oddness is not depth.”

A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.