The Monster

Dwarf Spirit

The Monster
aka I Don’t Want To Be Born
aka The Devil Within Her
aka Sharon’s Baby
UK 1975 Directed by Peter Sasdy
Network Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: This one has all the spoilers.
If you don’t want to know, don’t read.

I’ve been wanting to see I Don’t Want To Be Born aka The Monster aka The Devil Within Her aka Sharon’s Baby for some time now and regular readers of my blog can probably guess why... yeah, that’s right. One of my favourite people in the world, Caroline Munro, is in this one. So when Network brought out a Blu Ray edition of the film last year, I was very keen to get my hands of a copy (thanks @cultofthecinema and a Merry Christmas 2021 to you too). Now, although it’s been released under the title The Monster by the company, I’d only ever heard of this as I Don’t Want To Be Born. Trying to find it under any of these titles on the IMDB though (at time of writing) proves a bit of a slog. You’ll find it listed there under the completely ludicrous title, Sharon’s Baby. Why is that a ludicrous title? Well for starters, there’s no character called Sharon in the movie so... yeah.

Okay, the film starts strongly with a pregnant Lucy, played by Joan Collins, screaming her head off as the credits roll and Dr. Finch, played by Donald Pleasence, tries to extract her baby from her. The kid puts up quite a tussle and it’s at this point that Dr. Finch exclaims to his assisting nurse (played by none other than a very young Floella Benjamin), that it’s like the baby doesn’t want to be born. Something which, later on in the movie, he’s reminded of when someone says that, um, it’s like the child never wanted to be born. All I can say that, even at the first utterance of this, I was pretty sold on I Don’t Want To Be Born as being the one, truly genuine title for this film. I mean, I’ve talked about the non-existent Sharon but, did I also mention the baby Lucy gives birth to is a boy? So, you know, calling it The Devil Within Her is a little over the top if alluding to the child and, if it’s not, then it’s certainly only in Joan Collins character for about two minutes before it’s born into the world. Born into the world and, apparently, half scratching Lucy’s face off and looking like it wants to drink more of her blood. So, yeah, this is not the best delivery the good doctor’s seen in recent years.

Okay, so Lucy’s husband Gino, played by Ralph Bates attempting to do an Italian accent, collects gal and sprog but it’s not long before the little tyke is causing a ruckus and, eventually killing people. Lucy’s friend Mandy, played absolutely brilliantly and naturalistically by my heroine Caroline Munro (it’s got to be one of her best performances... she doesn’t just hold her own with Joan here, she acts her off the screen), can’t really suggest much in the way of help but maybe her boyfriend Tommy (played by John Steiner, with a brilliant cockney accent here) whom she works for as a stripper, may know what the answer is. Well, Lucy remembers it might be something to do with when she used to work and sleep with Tommy at a strip show too, where she rejected the advances of Hercules the dwarf (played by George Claydon) and so said little person put a curse on her.

Meanwhile, Gino’s sister Albana (played by Eileen Atkins), who really is a sister with her nun’s habit and holy ways, recognises something amiss with the little darling child. Maybe it’s the fact that it manages to somehow go on a killing spree and do things like chop Donald Pleasence’s head off with a couple of well placed blows with a garden spade... or that time it killed its dad, Gino, who has apparently ‘gone missing’. At the end of the film, after the toddler who shouldn’t be able to even crawl yet has chased mummy with a knife and stabbed her to death, Sister Albana exorcises the demonic spirit from the baby... which also somehow affects Hercules (who somehow was manifesting as the child... not sure how that works), causing him to die of a heart attack on stage at the strip show, due to having his dual spirit exorcised from the kiddies body. It makes about as much sense as anything else in this movie but, well, here’s the thing...

Call it a guilty pleasure, if you like, but I really had a good time with this one. It’s not the fact that Sasdy’s use of camera movement to wander away from a honed in set up to pan somewhere else (which I’m sure I’ve seen him do in some of his Hammer films) or his interesting compositions are all that special. It’s not even the acting which, was quite good from some people and not great from some others... honestly, Caroline was the best thing about this movie for me... and it’s not even super cool Ron Grainer’s wildly catchy but, let’s be honest here, mostly inappropriate score for the movie (which I would love on CD please record companies?). It’s the fact that it’s such a wildly ambitious idea to have a killer baby going on the rampage before CGI was even a thing. I mean, this is literally, you see a knife coming at the camera or a spade coming down towards camera or a window or cot bashed apart and then... cut to cute picture of a completely immobile toddler to somehow show that it was the baby committing all these crimes. It’s just so wildly funny... I hate to say it but, it’s hugely entertaining because of how silly the execution of the premise is (and there have been much better killer baby movies done in the intervening years, of course).

But there you are... a film with some strange influences at work in its genetic make up... intentionally or not. So obviously trying to ride the wave of The Exorcist but, also, that Grainer music is played through in a way almost against the visuals and running as an accompaniment rather than an illustrative score... much like Italian groups like Goblin or Libra might provide for a giallo or horror movie. I thoroughly enjoyed... hmm... I’ll refer to it as I Don’t Want To Be Born... and Caroline Munro looks absolutely stunning in this, as well as being at the top of her game. So, there are good reasons to have this title but, for me, it’s just a fun experience.