Roman Polanski's Hollywood debut, and his deepest dive into commercialism. These working conditions serve mainly to point up his shortcomings as a storyteller. He slides right over some of the cues for spine-tingles, as if he simply missed them in his reading of the trashy Ira Levin novel. And his expressionistic camerawork, with its distorting lenses and furtive movements, converts the Manhattan apartment locale into a sort of undulating funhouse, and it thereby undermines the intended shock effect of situating demonism in a cozily mundane setting. The acting doesn't add any stability, what with John Cassavetes's j.d. sulking, Ruth Gordon's birdlike squawking, Mia Farrow's precarious teetering behind a pumped-up belly, and the headless stand-in used for Mia's nude shots. A better, more earthbound movie on devil worshippers in New York City is the Val Lewton-Mark Robson Seventh Victim. (1968) — Duncan Shepherd
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