Hrm.

Honestly, when I saw it on the shelves of the store, I thought- "Hey, a movie that finally makes pro-lifers look as crazy as they are!"

This just makes me feel very sad. Maybe it was inevitable, but, yeah - I am speechless.

This just makes me feel very sad. Maybe it was inevitable, but, yeah - I am speechless.

This seems sooooo weird to me! I mean, I'm all down for making violent Pro-Lifers look as they exactly are, crazy and hypocritical, but weird...a horror movie where a girl is pregnant with a monster devil creature thing? I don't think that's going to have much pull or give much insight into the first point. Again, just weird. Anyone seen anything else on this movie?

Abortion is wrong. Unless your giving birth to a demon then, well... its cool.

God only knows what the pro-life brigade make of it. Wonder if they've done any blog posts...

I saw that at Target. I dunno, looks pretty hilariously camp to me.

Unless you are a anti-choice satanic cultist. Then you just get shut out of all those OTHER anti-choice meetings, snubbed at the parties, dismissed at their rallies, sigh.

This has to be a fake movie. It has to be. How... weird.

Hey now, John Carpenter might hit the right note on this...it is demonic to force a woman to carry to term the product of a rape (or force her to abort); depending upon how its done, it could be a good allegorical film...

Nope Jenny it's real. It was an episode of Masters of Horror, which I watched for the two seasons that it was on and most of that time I regretted watching it.

This was an awful episode where pretty much everyone was nuts and the special effects were terrible.

The papa demon comes up from hell (literally) and I believe the demon baby gets its head bashed in and papa demon is understandably pissed. Don't remember what happened to the girl but all the prolife people pretty much bought it.

I love John Carpenter! This was a made for Showtime movie, I'm sure it's delightful fun. I'm not sure I understand what people are taking issue with.

I think this was part of an episodic Showtime series directed by different senior horror people, including that Iraq vet zombie film directed by Joe Dante ("Homecoming").

Plus, hasn't anybody ever heard of The Brood or Basket Base?

OH yeah, the child was a product of rape. the girl was on a swing and papa demon reached up (from hell) and impregnated her. For some reason her dad wanted her to have the kid, we never get why (if I remember correctly). It actually wasn't done well.

No, JLP, it's not fake.

I haven't seen it, but I've read reviews, and I don't know if it's necessarily that bad: the teenage-girl protagonist wants an abortion, but her anti-choice father and brothers (having received messages from "God") occupy the clinic and force her to give birth to...a demon child. The baby's demonic father (actual source of the voices from "God") rises up and starts a-slaughtering (including the anti-choicers) until our heroine shoots the demonbaby, forcing "daddy" to return to Hell.

Personally, I don't think it's possible to cinematically spit in the forced-birth crowd's faces any harder. No doubt Carpenter's getting some threats over this.

I've seen all of the "Masters of Horror" series and this one was actually one of my favorites. Ron Perlman is great as the freaky pro-life crusader. If you like horror with a political slant, I definitely suggest this one and 2 more in the series: "The Screwfly Solution" and "Homecoming."

The true cost of outlawing abortion?

Demon babies. Lots and lots of demon babies.

The true cost of outlawing abortion?

Demon babies. Lots and lots of demon babies.

The true cost of outlawing abortion?

Demon babies. Lots and lots of demon babies.

I honestly don't know what to say. Which is rare for me.

I can't believe that no other bad movie buffs have noted that this is a ripoff of 1974's It's Alive! demon-baby movie. Which was inspired by Rosemary's Baby, the Omen, and all the other demon child movies back to Bad Seed, I guess. Remember, children are evil and they'll kill you!

The trailers for It's Alive! featured a beating heartbeat and a closeup of a fetus with ominous music, and scared the pee out of me as a youngun'. The actual movie features a rather unconvincing demon-baby puppet with claws that is somewhat less scary.

I gotta agree with Erin here--I'm not sure what people are objecting to. This looks fabulous. Horror, when done well, can be a potent tool of social critique, and lots of fun to boot. I'm going to add it to my netflix queue ASAP.

(hehe, "It's Alive!")

I was dragged to see "Joshua" the other day...kind of mediocre, but the ending was definitely straight out of the 1970s demon seed era.

How... delightfully sensationalistic. I have a soft spot for John "They Live" Carpenter, and the idea of equating a forced birth to the birth of the Anti-Christ -- frankly, I love it. Tongue in cheek, unabashedly political, offensive, and outrageous. I love it, I tell you! I'm not saying it adds anything intelligent to the discourse on abortion, but that does not detract from the love.

I want to score a poster for that film so badly I can hardly stand it.

It reminds me of the spate of horror movies like It's Alive that came out around the time of the original Roe decision.

Wired and just a little messed up! I have not seen or heard of this in Canada although I am sure it is out there somewhere.

It's actually pretty good, but if you're not a horror fan it might not be up your alley. It has a pretty great portrayal of the dangers faced by the doctors working at the clinic, and especially the patients there for other services from the pro-life family members of the girl. The clinic where most of the movie takes place is heavily guarded, and I believe the girl's family has a restraining order to keep them off the property due to their past actions.

Like most horror, you have to look at the analogy being made. Take away the demon aspect, and you are left with a rape victim being forced to carry to term a child that she doesn't want.

If you do like horror though, there are a few other Masters of Horror episodes that might be of interest. "The Screwfly Solution", that Cherry also mentioned, is about a virus that causes the entire male population to attack the female population; it's extremely violent, but the story is interesting. Also, "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road", is a take on the typical psycho attacks cute girl tale, but with another level dealing with domestic violence. Again really violent, but the story twists are good and the female lead is a pretty strong character.

The one thing that I read in quite a few online reviews that put me off was the implication that the anti-choice crazy father was portrayed as a rather likeable, even possibly protagonistic character (the caring father) rather than a anti-choice crazy killer. How "neutral" is it to equate the "humanity" involved with wanting to have an abortion after being raped (by a demon, I might add) with killing doctors who perform abortions?

But then again, I haven't seen the movie.

Vanessa -

It's Ron Perlman. He can make anyone seem likeable.

Besides - and, again, I haven't seen the movie, either - the fact remains that his character is 100% wrong (in fact, the "Voice of God" that he follows is actually demondaddy), nearly unleashes a demonic horror on the world, and ends up getting killed in the end. A movie doesn't have to make a character utterly unsympathetic in order to condemn them.

For what its worth, there is also an interesting horror film (made in Hong Kong, I believe) that deals with abortion called "Dumplings."It doesn't have demon babies or psycho-killers (the horror is primarily psychological) but it was well made and had some amazing performances. I wouldn't call it feminist, but the film did have some interesting things to say about standards of beauty and the way women are treated in China.

Just a word of warning, it IS Asian horror, it is a very uncomfortable film to watch, and it is not for everyone. If you're interested you should probably read up on it to make sure its something you want to see.

I have to second the comment about John Carpenter maybe hitting the right note on this. I've been a Carpenter fan for years, and he often has strong women in his movies.

I also think this movie could be hilariously campy.

I have to second the comment about John Carpenter maybe hitting the right note on this. I've been a Carpenter fan for years, and he often has strong women in his movies.

I also think this movie could be hilariously campy.

I have to second the comment about John Carpenter maybe hitting the right note on this. I've been a Carpenter fan for years, and he often has strong women in his movies.

I also think this movie could be hilariously campy.

I agree with those above about this series. This episode was extremely disturbing, but fantastic. The psycho father was about as unsympathetic as possible and the waiting room father wasn't much better. I loved the fact that all that unquestioned sanctimony, hatred and violence all followed a "voice of God" that was a demon. Also interesting was the implication that despite a repressive and restrictive environment, something got to the girl that was even worse than some teenage boy. Grisly, but not anti-choice in my view.

Well, emjaybee, "Pro-Life" may be in some ways a rip-off of Rosemary’s Baby, but I always thought Rosemary’s Baby was sort-of a rip-off of Daddy’s Gone-a-Hunting, a creepy, well-made, and strangely unknown film (these days). “Daddy’s Gone-a-Hunting� was released in 1969, was set in San Francisco, and featured a pretty and very adept Carol White starring as the ex-girlfriend of a psycho ex played by Scott Hyland, who seeks revenge against Carol for having an abortion when he had gotten her pregnant in a previous relationship. As revenge, he kidnaps her baby in a subsequent relationship, runs around San Francisco with the baby in a basket, kills and castrates the doctor who performed the abortion, and in general unknowingly becomes a role model for the modern pro-life movement, which to me anyway basically didn’t exist in prior to the Carter-Reagan transition period.

I don’t know if one would consider the movie “Pro-Life� described above to be “pro-life� or “pro-choice�. I’m sure “Daddy’s Gone-a-Hunting� would not be considered by me to be “pro-choice� as it’s a film best understood as being set in a bygone era when terms like “pro-choice� did not exist. Her ex-boyfriend is psychotic as some ex-boyfriends can be, the film was done back in an era when psychology and psychiatry was held in greater respect by liberals and leftists of the day and that’s what’s seen to be wrong with the picture that various parties, including a FBI agent try to deal with while they get Carol’s baby back. I think that’s what the audience back then thought of the drama, at least they probably put the drama of profiling and crime-solving beyond reading anything political into the movie, which by the way was produced and released after the 1967 doctor’s strike for abortion rights and the Therapeutic Abortion Act (which essentially made abortion legal, but only for women less than 20 weeks pregnant who could prove health reasons for the abortion, so it wasn’t quite as unrestricted as it would be after Roe). It’s not clear if Carol’s abortion was technically legal, but one subtle point that may have been made was that it wasn’t a freaking issue in the movie – the kidnapping and the murderous, psycho ex-boyfriend was the issue – and people who were in the market for that film likely would have wanted abortion to be made more accessible, like most people in general in society, the only question was how.

I kind of think controversy over “Pro-Life� may become overblown similar to the controversy over “Knocked Up�, which one can read a "style" commentary -- again -- about in tomorrow's Washington Post (Pregnant With Meaning? Alas, We Were Expecting More). “Knocked Up� has been out for about two months now, and for a film that deals primarily with the pathos behind an unintended pregnancy that was very intentionally carried to term by a young adult couple that briefly, consensually, half-drunkenly “hooked up�, it’s remarkable how much commentary is over the “controversy� of the movie not mentioning “abortion�. It is mentioned, of course, at many points in the film, but for humorous effect – which to be funniest means it’s not so much mentioned by the lead characters but by so many of the wanna-be significant others who prove to be not quite so significant to the couple as each other becomes as the pregnancy progresses.

“Knocked Up� was compared by Judd Apatow and some more insightful reviewers to “Fast Times at Ridgemont High�, as it should be, as both are funny movies which in their own ways portrayed reproductive issues and becoming a responsible young adult in pioneering, and humorous, ways. I wish though that more people would know that the actors in “Knocked Up� really did talk at LOT about abortion, using the “a-� word as they did it – but it was in group sessions the actors had as they put the film together. Hmm…maybe some of the “controversy� over the lack of explicit references to “abortion� is a bit of hype, meant to whet demand for the DVD?

You see, you’re going to get HOURS of abortion talk in the DVD extras, enough to content the most pro-choice film buff, when the DVD is released later this year. Well, maybe not enough for me – if they’d thrown in the deleted scenes from “Fast Times in Ridgemont High� that never made it to any of the “Fast Times� DVD versions, including the abortion clinic scenes and the mall rat teach-in that Phoebe Cates leads regarding the minipill vs. diaphragms, I might be content – and the “Knocked Up� DVD release will happen right around the 25th anniversary of “Fast Times� – so I was thinking, maybe they somehow include it so if you played the “Knocked Up� DVD backwards, you’d get the “Fast Times� deleted scenes?