an A.D. who chows down with Alice in a food fetish sex scene that prefigures 9½ WEEKS. The anamorphic 1.85:1 pre- sentation generally looks decent, though the source material (ap- parently an old 35mm release print) has its share of nicks and speckles. Writer/director Tom Scheuer (a former comic book artist who later changed his name to Tom Sawyer) and producer Gary Maxwell talk about the project on a lively commentary track, touching on subjects like their silly rating negotiations with the MPAA (eg. Girl moving har- monica vertically over her vagina = X, while girl moving harmonica horizontally over her vagina = R) and which characters were inten- tional and unintentional parodies of actual Hollywood personalities. Also on hand is a theatrical trailer under the original title GOSH!, and an alternate opening title se- quence from that version, as well as trailers for other Code Red titles.
THE BABY 1973, Severin,
$19.98, 84m 53s, DVD By Eric Somer
Directed by Ted Post (MAG- NUM FORCE, BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES), this un- forgettable, PG-rated(!) indict- ment of Momism establishes its family turf somewhere between WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? and SPIDER BABY, and points the way toward more modern dramatizations of pos- sessive mothering such as BAD BOY BUBBY and LOVERBOY (2005).
LA social worker Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer) is assigned to the Wadsworth residence, where an adult man appropriately named Baby (David Mooney, act- ing as David Manzy) still requires high chair feeding sessions fol- lowed by diaper changes. The crackpot family matriarch Mrs. Wadsworth (Ruth Roman) ap- pears to have discouraged her
boy’s normal development. Ann quickly makes Baby her top pri- ority, despite repeated reminders she has other obligations. One of the most astonishingly mi- sogynistic films of the 1970s, THE BABY blames self-centered women for the title character’s plight. Each of Mrs. Wadsworth’s children had different fathers, and all are out of the picture, leaving Baby trapped in an environment of monstrous females who abuse him. His half-sister Alba (leggy actress Suzanne Zenor), always provocatively dressed, punishes him with a cattle prod and forces him into closet- based time-outs. His nicer half- sister Germaine (Marianna Hill) removes her nightgown one evening and mounts him, while a babysitter (Erin O’Reilly) sur- renders to his insistence by dropping her blouse and paci- fying him. Even Ann’s interest in Baby seems peculiar, as she infantilizes a man in desperate need of anything but smotherly
Marianna Hill, Anjanette Comer and Ruth Roman peek in on the afternoon nap of THE BABY (David Manzy).
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