The Devil’s Seed: Terror In Its Purest Form

The Devil’s Seed is probably one of the most recognized films of the filmmaker Roman Polanski. And it is not only because of its great cinematographic quality, but also because of the mysteries that seem to surround it.

Shot in the building where a little over a decade later John Lennon would be assassinated, in the same building where Boris Karloff lived and died and just a year before the murder of the filmmaker’s wife, Sharon Tate; The Devil’s Seed is a film that, even today, arouses horror and mystery. Polanski, in turn, is one of the most controversial filmmakers, mired in legal trouble, but whose cinematic legacy is almost unmatched.

A young couple, extraordinarily peculiar neighbors and a most tragic pregnancy will be some of the keys to the film. Rosemary and her husband are immersed in the usual task of finding a home and raising a family. Although the husband’s ambitions will exceed family expectations, forcing the marriage to plunge into a hell less implausible than it appears.

In short, The Devil’s Seed is a feature film that takes us along a path between the fantastic and the rational, a path full of traps, misadventures and claustrophobia. And, of course, one of the great gems of horror movies.

Uncertainty as the key to terror

Despite all its virtues, on the contrary, we will say that the title in Spanish seems anything but accurate, since Rosemary’s baby , the original title in English, is much more suggestive.

However, in the 60s, it seems that the word spoiler was not a problem, but an unknown, and giving such a spoiler to the title should be the right thing to do. Even so, it should be noted that, despite the explicit title, the film continues to arouse passions in the Hispanic arena.

Leaving this question aside, the film takes us down a path of uncertainty, it takes the liberty of raising doubts in the viewer and putting them on the tightrope. A rope that borders on agony, suffocation and even claustrophobia, but always surrounded by shades of rationality.

And speaking of uncertainty, already in the 19th century, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, one of the great scholars of Edgar Allan Poe, allowed himself to say that the brilliance of Poe lay, precisely, in “being a rationalist and aspiring to be fantastic. “

A statement that today, a couple of centuries later, we can perfectly fit into Polanski’s feature film that concerns us today. And it is that uncertainty, doubt and psychological terror are the bases of The Devil’s Seed .

Polanski makes the viewer doubt the real and the fictional. Are dreams mere dreams or the fruit of reality? What about Rosemary and her neighbors? The viewer will only wonder and wonder what he is seeing on the screen. It is true that, in the middle of the 20th century, religions had a fundamental role and, in this sense, the film was a true revelation, even a blasphemous one.

However, in the middle of the rational and skeptical era, in the XXI century, the viewer ends up wondering the same thing as several decades ago. Thus, The Devil’s Seed demonstrates the imperishableness of his speech and reveals a terror that, far from being read under the magnifying glass of a specific time, continues to frighten and disconcert today.

That doubt or vacillation between the impossible and the possible, between the real and the unreal, is the real key to terror and suspense in Polanski’s film. The way of directing our gaze, of placing ourselves in a certain point of view thanks to a frame and of presenting the characters at the key moment, does not understand times or trends, but directly appeals to the psychological. In short, to our mind, to the terror of the unknown and the uncertainty that doubt arouses.

Polanski has not invented the satanic cults, but it is something that comes directly from our own reality. Polanski does not invent the setting either, but he does enter a familiar starting point. As if from the end of a romantic comedy, the filmmaker takes the young and idyllic couple to disengage, destroy and even ridicule her. Not without forgetting the fundamental role of the public that will give meaning to a story with a fantastic appearance, but credible; and that you will end up doubting everything you see on the screen.

The devil’s seed , a cursed movie

Much of the cult – or admiration – that surrounds the film resides in the strange events that accompany it. As we have already anticipated, the film was shot in the Dakota building in New York, a place that, in its construction, was quite far from the nerve center of the city. But, with time and its growth, it became a building desired by people of high birth and various personalities from the world of cinema, music or mass culture.

Without going any further, it seems that Polanski was warned: everything seemed to indicate that shooting there was a kind of suicide. Tragically, his wife was found murdered just a year later. The composer of the soundtrack himself, Krzysztof Komeda, would die shortly after. Even the protagonist of the film, John Cassavetes, passed away shortly after.

Whether Boris Karloff had practiced spiritism – or not – while residing in the building is still in doubt. But a few years after the filming of the film, John Lennon died at the doors of the Dakota building, where he had established his residence.

Endless mysteries are linked to the perfectionism of Polanski, a filmmaker who did not hesitate to put his actors in extreme situations. Thus, its protagonist, Mia Farrow, had to eat raw meat despite being a vegetarian and was forced to shoot a scene crossing a street that had not been cut. Therefore, the vehicles that we see running around her and braking so as not to run over her, are not a thing of the cinema, but of reality itself.

Likewise, the young actress received the divorce papers from Frank Sinatra while filming the film and, in addition, she faced various feuds on the set. Thus, The Devil’s Seed is not only cursed because of the issues it deals with, but also because of the mysteries and uncomfortable events that surround its filming.

The real terror

In spite of everything, we will not say that the terror resides in the anecdotes and horrors that surround it, but in the film itself. Few times we are faced with a terror that does not understand times or fashions, that it does not matter how long has passed, but the universal nature of what it narrates.

And it is that The Devil’s Seed presents something universal, makes use of the cinema and the stylistic resources that are lent to configure a classtrophobic, terrifying and hopeless atmosphere.

A shocking, beautiful result that displays all the cinematographic imagination, but which only won an Oscar, that of Ruth Gordon in her role as Minnie Castevet.

Despite all these changes, Polanski made the script his own, managed to appeal to the Freudian in a dream like no other, which questions the real against the fantastic, which puzzles the viewer and puts all the horror on the grill.

Without a doubt, we are facing one of the best horror films of all time, a film in which old age or even the obsolete find no place, but instead appeals to the subconscious, to that quasi-animal feeling of ‘being on alert’ , as if something exceptional is going to happen while we watch the movie.