The Devil Within Her

This 1975 flick directed by Peter Sasdy goes by a lot of titles - The Devil Within Her, Sharon's Baby, and I Don't Want To Be Born to name a few -  but they all mean one thing: killer baby movie!

You gotta love the “killer baby” sub-genre. Some movies give you a killer kid deformed by chemicals, and some give you murderous munchkins malformed by mutants from outer space. But I bet if you counted them up, then the vast majority would be about diabolical delinquents deformed by the devil!

Yes, Satan hisself! Ol’ Scratch. Lucifer. Hob. Whatever you want to call him, it’s the fellow with the horns, pitchfork, and red hue that’s to blame for kiddies pushing their nannies out of windows and the mothers tossing themselves down stairwells.

And we sorta, kinda, maybe have the devil to blame for the satanic shenanigans and ghastly goings-on in The Devil Within Her. Or…it could be that we have another “D” word to point the finger at: a dwarf!

Or maybe a devilish dwarf? Or a dwarfish devil?

It’s all very confusing. Let’s take a closer look...

The Devil Within Her opens the only way a movie like this should: with Lucy Carlesi (Joan Collins) screaming her bloody head off. Ol’ Lucy is nine months prego and on the table at her local hospital, trying to rid herself of the little parasite...er...I mean little angel. The close-ups and cutting from shot to shot are disturbing: lots of sweaty foreheads and terrified eyes above surgical masks. The li’l monster doesn’t want to come out to play, so the doctor makes with the forceps. Out comes the kid with a POP! — and the look on everyone’s faces lets you know that not everything is hunky-dory.

(Side note: the music playing over the opening credits sounds like a poor man’s WINGS. Which is saying quite a bit…none of which is good.)

Things soon reveal themselves to be out of the ordinary: while nursing and cuddling her newborn son, Lucy is scratched across the face…or rather she is clawed. A shot of her son shows blood dripping from his fingers and lips, so it wasn’t just a defensive maneuver on Junior’s part. Mom wasn’t hugging him too closely, he was hungry…for something a little more tangy than mother’s milk. Blood is thicker than water…or milk…after all.

Proud papa, Gino (Ralph Bates), just thinks little Nicholas (Nicholas? Nicky? Nick…another name for the devil? Hmmm.) is just big boned and randy for his age, but Lucy knows better. She tells her friend, Mandy (Caroline Munro), that something strange happened on her last night dancing professionally (wink, wink…nudge, nudge) at a local club may have had more to do with Nicky’s rambunctiousness.

Lucy tells Mandy that her former dance partner, Hercules (George Claydon), a dwarf dressed in Harlequin gear, came on to her on her final night. Rebuffed by Lucy, Hercules spits a curse in anger at her: “You will have a baby, a monster, an evil monster conceived in your womb. As big as I am small and possessed by the devil himself!"

We can assume Hercules didn’t sign the “Good luck in the future” card for Lucy or chip in on the ice cream cake in the break room.

Of course, Lucy is assured that Hercules the dwarf had nothing to do with Nicky’s birth and the subsequent goofy goings-on. And of course, we the audience know that’s a load of rationalist, spoil-sport hoo-ha!

The Devil Within Her proceeds as planned. Gino’s sister is…care to have a guess?…you got it: a nun! She blesses Nicky upon seeing him for the first time, and the baby throws the biggest temper tantrum this side of the seventh circle of Hell. There are scenes at the baby’s christening (hint: it don’t go well), scenes of Lucy’s pediatrician, Dr. Finch (Donald Pleasance) looking worried and guilty as if he knows something (and has Donald Pleasance ever looked otherwise?), and scenes of escalating mayhem as the baby lashes out more and more and more.

I don’t think What To Expect When You’re Expecting covered baby’s murdering their nannies and knocking off their doctors.

Whatever you care to call this movie, do not call it faint-of-heart. There’s lots to love here. The fashions are steeped in the 70s’ love of earthtones and distressing patterns. (Maybe little Nicky just hates paisley and houndstooth?) The movie also knows how to build things up. The violence escalates nicely as the film proceeds. There are also some nice creepy touches — Gino finding himself on the wrong side of his son’s graces in the backyard at night is just one of them. Since this is the 1970s, the soundtrack is psychedelic and sleazy, and it adds to the weirdness of the images.

Joan Collins was only a few years away from taking on the role that would define her in the minds of yuppies and lovers of conspicuous consumption everywhere, that of Alexis Carrington on the American nighttime soap opera Dynasty. She was also only a few years removed from another role that many genre fans hold dear to their hearts: Edith Keeler on the Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever.” It might be hard people to reconcile these roles with the many sleazy, creepy ones she played in the 1970s. In addition to this film, Collins also played a part in the horror film classics Tales From the Crypt (Freddie Francis, 1972), Fear In the Night (Jimmy Sangster, 1972), and Dark Places (Don Sharp, 1973). She also starred in two slightly softcore sex pics based on her sister’s, Jackie Collins, novels: The Stud (Quentin Masters, 1978) and The Bitch (Gerry O’Hara, 1979). Seeing her disheveled (and in a state of dishabille) is slightly strange when one is used to her being perfectly coiffed and dressed. I kinda like the down and dirty Joan, truth be told.

The Devil Within Her is a nasty piece of filmmaking, and I mean that in the best way possible. Not sure if you can chalk up the influx of killer baby movies in the 1970s to the feminist movement and the abortion issue, but I’m sure these movies tapped into a deep-seeded fear that folks had of the younger generation…even the youngest generation possible!

C.H.U.D.

“A recent article in a New York newspaper reported that there were large colonies of people living under the city. The paper was incorrect. What is living under the city is not human. C.H.U.D. is under the city."

Great tagline…great movie!

C.H.U.D. (Douglas Cheek, 1984) is a classic of the 1980s. It’s gooey and gory and goofy. But beyond that, like any horror movie worth its salt, it’s got some interesting things to say about what life during the Reagan years was doing to the people who lived then…above and below the streets of our larger cities.

C.H.U.D.: come for the slime, stay for the subtext!

Let’s take a closer look...

It’s 1984. It’s America. Ronnie Raygun has been guest-starring as “The President of the United States” for the past four years. And Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk has yet to be Disneyfied. The buildings are still decrepit, the streets are still mean, and the people are still decrepit and mean. The American urban landscape has never seemed closer to the debauched environs surrounding Castle Dracula.

As our film opens, a woman walks her dog down the rain-soaked streets of the city…although seeing this is NYC in the 80s, they could easily be blood-, urine-, or semen-soaked, as well. Not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, our dog-walker stops her excursion next to a steaming manhole cover. In an extreme example of New York City’s “Keep Our Streets Clean” campaign, an animal-like arm shoots out from the manhole, grabs ahold of a fashionably clad foot, and pulls the damsel and her doggie into the netherworld.

Self-cleaning streets! Maybe Mayor Ed Koch wasn’t as big a knucklehead as he seemed?

The next day we are introduced to photographer George Copper (John Heard). George is a man caught between two worlds: the lucrative world of fashion and commercial photography and the artistic world of documentary photography. George’s lady friend, Lauren Daniels (Kim Greist), is a model who is counting on him to work with her on her next shoot. George, however, has plans of his own.

George had been working an exposé for a magazine highlighting the lives of the scores of homeless people who live beneath the streets of the city. The article’s deadline is fast approaching, and George’s editor, Derrick, wants his pictures. George is an artiste and will serve no wine until its time, as it were. He is holding back the photos he has in order to find the perfect shot. Unfortunately, enough time has passed that George is unaware of where his original subjects have gotten off to. As luck (or convenient screenwriting) would have it, one of his photographic subjects soon gets in touch with George…people are allowed one phone call when they are arrested for trying to lift a cop’s gun, after all. Relieved to have an excuse to leave, George hightails it from Lauren’s fashion shoot to bail the poor woman out.

Meanwhile, the police are having quite a rash of “missing persons” cases lately. Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) has been keeping a lid on these cases in the Lafayette neighborhood for Police Chief O’Brien (Eddie Jones) long enough. Fed up with the bureaucracy, Bosch takes things into his own hands.

He visits a local soup kitchen run by the “Reverend” A.J. Shepherd (Daniel Stern). The Rev and Bosch have a history together — and it ain’t necessarily the kind that breeds love and trust. The Rev has reported that a lot of the homeless people that visit his shelter have gone missing. And not just the “regular” street people, either. It is specifically the “undergrounders” who have disappeared. Bosch discloses that other people have gone missing, too, including his wife (the woman out walking her dog at the beginning of the movie). Soon, the Rev and the Captain join forces with George Cooper to investigate not only the missing homeless folks, but the reasons for a so-called “routine” inspection of the sewers of NYC by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Committee.

A movie like C.H.U.D. walks a dangerous line. At any moment it could cross into the utterly absurd and become more humorous and ridiculous than it needs be. Thankfully, the acting in this flick is very good. Each of the leads is your typical New York school character actor, and each delivers his/her lines with utter believability. The early scenes with Bosch and the Rev are especially juicy, and they lend credences to the history these characters have together, as well as the grudging respect that grows between them.

But let’s face it: we ain’t watching C.H.U.D. for the acting — no matter how good it may be. This is a monster movie, after all, so bring on the latex, the fake blood, and the glowing goo! The Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers are kept in the background for most of the film. Their presentation in the first half of the movie is made up of off-screen growls and shadows. This reluctance to show the monster isn’t like Steven Spielberg’s choice to hold back the shark’s introduction in Jaws (1975) because the SFX didn’t work. Au contraire! Holding back only makes their eventual appearance more shocking. The CHUDs look creepy and great. A combination of full latex body appliances with some animatronics and puppets thrown in for the really outré stuff (stretchy neck CHUD, fer instance!), the monsters add a high degree of grotesquery and believability to the proceedings. Like any good monster, you’ll want to cover your eyes and look at the same time.

All of the above — the acting and the SFX — are used to good effect to comment on a world in which government on every level is more concerned with covering its ass over the disposal of nuclear waste in a major metropolitan area than with the effects said waste has on the under- and un-privileged homeless. Laugh all you want, but C.H.U.D. is an excellent example of the ways that the genre films of the 1970s and 1980s were better adapted than their more upscale brethren for dealing with the horrors of modern life. Life during the time of the Vietnam War, Watergate, Love Canal, Three Mile Island, the Moral Majority, and the rise of the New Right had to be understood as being a complete fantasy — albeit the darkest and most nightmarish of fantasies. Movies like John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982), and, yes, C.H.U.D. are horror films on one level and political allegories / critiques on another. Understanding the monster in the closet or under the bed is the only way of understanding the monster behind the pulpit or in the Oval Office.

C.H.U.D. was one of those movies that I knew more from pictures in Fangoria magazine than from actually seeing it. Looking obsessively at the film stills and behind-the-scene photos of the monsters in the movie creeped me the hell out as a little kid. The greenish color in all of the photos gave a patina of sordidness to the flick. Thanks to HBO (and parents who let me stay up all hours watching whatever dreck I wanted), I saw the movie about a year after reading about it. At the time, I was more than happy to enjoy it as a straight-up gory monster movie. Time has been kinder to C.H.U.D. than it has to other movies of the time period. Now when I watch it, I see it as the end product of a society searching for a mythology that will help it deal with horrors. Not of the silver screen variety, mind you, but of the all-too-real kind they saw on the evening news.