Baby’s First Exploitation Movie: Twisted Sisters, Diapered Misters, All Swaddled in Strange

This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series. For upcoming shows, click here.

After receiving news that her latest family client has filed a harassment complaint against her, social worker Ann Gentry rushes out of the tiny admissions office of Greenview School for Exceptional Children, leaving the administrator she was talking to in a stupor. "Ann, I'd like to know what's going on!" he calls after her. She turns, hand on the door knob, "So would I," she flatly replies, then slams the door. This interaction sums up the oddly exploitative, almost experimental film The Baby (1973). Written by Abe Polsky (Brute Cops, The Rebel Rousers) and directed by Ted Post (Go Tell the Spartans, Magnum Force), The Baby tells the story of a woman stricken with grief, looking to help an underdeveloped adult man trapped within the warped remains of a nuclear family. But that's painting with an extremely broad brush.

I should've known I was in for more than standard exploitation when I showed up to the Alamo Drafthouse and the poster display attempted to blank out its contents leaving only tiny text that read "Weird Wednesday” at the top. Our MC, Laird Jimenez, stood at the front of the theater, apologized for what we were about to see, then offered a silver lining, "You can see misogyny in almost any film shown on TV, sometimes you can even find misandry, but The Baby might be one of the only films to give you pure misanthropy," Laird said, gesturing to the screen. He wasn't wrong.

As Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer) and Mrs. Wadsworth (Ruth Roman) sat in a shabby living room talking about Baby (David Mooney), an adult with a cognitive regression that makes him infantlike in behavior, my eyes darted between their expressions and the shoddily organized set decor. With wide angle shots capturing a brunt of the exposition and rapidly delivered lines, the efficiency of the storytelling gave me the uneasy impression that a porno could break out at any moment. Even more sexual tension builds when Baby's sisters, Germaine Wadsworth (Marianna Hill) and Alba Wadsworth (Susanne Zenor), enter the frame. Presented, I presume, as what was the script referred to as "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! chicks," the Wadsworth women act more as a trio of psychedelically seductive sisters than a holistic family unit, something in the vein of a mini Manson family. The three women project hostile intent and standoffish obfuscation at every turn, treating common discussion as interrogation and serving as the primary villains of our story.

With our core characters established, a tug of war for Baby's custody and well-being kicks off promptly after Ann leaves the Wadsworth residence. If ever there was a movie that exemplifies failure in the Bechdel Test, it would be The Baby. Every scene with a woman leading the dialogue is turned toward Baby, his future, his past, his being. Every scene with a man is dismissive of the woman closest to him. Every scene with Baby is a tour de force of method acting, akin to mixing John Travolta's unhinged neurodiverse Moose from The Fanatic (2019) and Terry Notary's Oleg from The Square (2017). I doubt either of those actors scrutinized David Mooney's performance, but that doesn't make the comparison any less true. Mooney crawls on the floor with drunken motor skills, forms toothless faces of curiosity and naive joy, and coos at the women around him in a confusingly empathetic way. 

I won't say that I for one second thought this man was a baby, but I did believe he was afflicted with something powerful enough to make him think he was. It’s a compelling enough performance to put the audience on edge for any of Mooney's scenes, and at about the point that a babysitter is flogged for breastfeeding Baby, I noticed my jaw had been slacked in dismay for well over half the runtime. It was also at that time that another of Laird's intro notes echoed in my head: "This film is PG, so it's okay to bring the family along." With that kind of sardonic humor, I was also certain a savory irony would be had in Abe Polsky's screenplay—surely the cynical, shrewd performances and hokey dialogue of shock-driven cinema would get tongue-in-cheek or accidental laughs. I was wrong. The more this case study unraveled, the thicker the atmosphere of the theater became. 

Most films from this era at this budget often run out of steam by the halfway mark. The script begins to buy time for the coup de grace and the actors double down on a thinly veiled plot about drug pushers, dope fiends, corrupt cops, or a monster bumbling around on Broad Street all so we can see an explosion or shootout to cap off the night. Not The Baby. Sure, it succumbs to similar trappings, but the gimmick of a Man Baby and a family with a dark secret didn't seem to completely bore the audience, nor did it leave them in hysterics. I heard a few chuckles here and there, but ultimately the weird procession toward an even weirder conclusion was met with earnest engagement.

Maybe there's some wisdom or knowledge in its execution, but I don't feel confident in endorsing any intention. The meaning and subtext, if there was any, has long since been lost to time. Even the 35mm print it was screened on has faded into a mostly magenta montage of scuffs and scratches. As the house lights came up in the theater, I looked around at the other puzzled faces and heard the hum of a still processing crowd rise slowly back to room volume. We all proceeded out of another Weird Wednesday and back to our respective normals. I doubt The Baby will go on to be a cult phenomena with crowds lined around the block for diaper-themed midnight screenings; however, those who do witness it will remember it and go on to be haunted by the faint cries and coos of a grown man who latched hard enough onto his role to draw blood.

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