Donald Pleasence! Caroline Munro! Luke Quantrill reviews I Don't Want to Be Born!

Poor old Joan Collins. She really did hate that fallow middle part of her career in the 1970s where she had to appear in horror films in order to pay the gas bill and put Vesta curries and Arctic Roll on the table. Joan was not a horror fan in the slightest but needs must. Sometimes you just have to do a job you don't like simply to keep a roof over your head. Black Forest gateau does not pay for itself. Joan Collins later said she never enjoyed making horror films much at all and when the trashy films The Bitch and The Stud made some money and she then got a part in the glossy American soap opera Dynasty she was jolly glad to bid the horror industry adieu. Joan was absolutely minted once she got the part of Alexis Carrington. Her kitchen cupboard now heaved under the weight of Butterscotch Delight, Monster Munch, pineapple rings and Frazzles. She ate like a king and this was washed down with all the Tizer she could drink.

If I had to pinpoint the breaking point, I would bet the final horror straw for Joan Collins, the old trooper, was the 1976 Bert I Gordon film Empire of the Ants - where she's up to her neck in swamp water (her makeup somehow still perfect) and being chased by a giant rubber ant in one of the worst films ever made. I'd wager good money that when Joan was a bright young thing at RADA in the 1950s she never dreamed she'd end up acting in a swamp in a film about giant ants. She was lucky though because RADA do a lot of workshops related to swamp acting and giant ants. They prepare their graduates for any eventuality. I really don't know why horror films are so worried about the ants taking over. Speaking personally, I would welcome our new insect overlords with open arms. They couldn't possibly do a worse job of running the planet than humans have done. I reckon the ants would soon get the trains running on time and you certainly can't fault their bridge building abilities.

Anyway, here's the thing though. Joan Collins, with her larger than life persona, archness and sex appeal was absolutely perfect for daft 1970s horror films. Her frightened panto turn in Tales from The Crypt (where she is menaced on Christmas Eve by an escaped lunatic dressed as Father Christmas) deserved a special Oscar if you ask me. Joan is also great in the 1971 film Dark Places - where she is in full on smirking gold digger mode, the vamp meter turned up to eleven. And who could ever forget Tales That Witness Madness - where Joan plays a jealous wife whose husband has (for reasons best known to himself) fallen in love with a spooky supernatural tree trunk. No marriage is big enough for a husband, wife and a, er, tree trunk. Joan Collins did not much care for these horror films but she never lazily phoned in a performance or reversed the charges. If you've got the name Joan Collins on the poster of a daft horror film you know Joan will vomit some scenery and make it more watchable than it might otherwise have been. Sadly, she was all too happy to leave this racket behind for shoulder-pads and catfights in a pond with Krystle Carrington. So it was farewell to loony bin Father Christmas, haunted houses, giant rubber ants, demon babies and marriage wrecking tree trunks. The world suddenly became a much poorer place.

Out of the horror films Joan Collins made, 1975's I Don't Want to Be Born (aka The Devil Within Her and Sharon's Baby) is definitely one she'd probably like to forget. This film was directed by Peter Sasdy - who directed some Hammer films and the excellent The Stone Tape for television. I have to admit I have a soft spot for Peter Sasdy because he did a lot of directing on Hammer House of Horror, Hammer House of Mystery & Suspense and the two Adrian Mole television shows (the classic ones with Gian Sammarco as Adrian - the much later series based on the The Cappuccino Years with Stephen Mangan as Adrian Mole was a right load of old pony) based on the brilliant books by Sue Townsend. As if that wasn't enough Sasdy also did some directing on Minder. The screenplay for I Don't Want to be Born was by Stanley Price. I Don't Want to Be Born was accused of ripping off The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby but the weird thing about the film is the way it anticipates The Omen (which came out a year later). The thing is though that stories and films about spooky children were not exactly original by 1975. You'd had things like The Bad Seed (with the sociopathic eight year-old Rhoda Penmark) and also Village of the Damned.

I Don't Want to be Born might though be the first film about an infant capable of property damage, grievous bodily harm and murder. So credit where it is due. You think of all the great writers before 1975 and not a single one of them came up with the idea of a story about a baby that murders people and shoves their body down the drain. Charles Dickens was a great writer but that idea strangely seemed to elude him in his long and distinguished career. If he'd been around in 1975 and he'd gone to the cinema to watch I Don't Want to Be Born I bet Dickens would have been kicking himself for not coming up with that one himself. The plot of I Don't Want to Be Born begins with Lucy (Joan Collins) working in a grotty strip club. In her dressing room, Lucy spurns a lecherous advance from Hercules (George Claydon), the dwarf who is part of her stage act. Joan Collins is definitely a bit on the posh side to be a believable stripper if you ask me and why is there a dwarf as part of her act? I have no idea. Don't ask me.

Anyway, Hercules is furious when the snooty Lucy gives him the brush off but then becomes amorous with the manager Tommy (John Steiner). It's like the old saying goes. Hell hath no fury like a stripper's dwarf assistant who has been spurned. The furious and jealous Hercules notices Lucy copping off with Tommy and afterwards confronts Lucy with warnings of a curse. "You will have a baby ... a monster! As big as I am small and possessed by the devil himself!" Lucy doesn't take too much notice of this ominous warning. She has no idea what he's blabbering on about. Lucy just presumes that Hercules must have gone didlo - as Terry McCann would say in Minder of someone who appears to have lost their marbles. We now cut to months later. Lucy is no longer a stripper and has gone up in the world. She is married to wealthy Italian businessman Gino Carlesi (Ralph Bates) and lives in a plush gaff in London. She is also pregnant and Lucy and Gino are - after a painful delivery - delighted to welcome a boy into the world.

However, the happiness is short lived because the baby seems to take a dislike to Lucy and is unusually large and strong. A number of strange events occur. The baby demolishes its room, torments the housekeeper Mrs Hyde (Hilary Mason), punches people in the face (from its cot!), tries to drown the nurse Jill Fletcher (Janet Key), and so on. It's going to take a lot more than a couple of Farley's Rusks to put the lid on this baby carnage because this is merely the tip of the infant mayhem iceberg this satanic baby unleashes on poor old Mr and Mrs Carlesi. Soon their very lives are under threat. Will our long suffering heroine Lucy manage to break the curse plaguing this monstrous child? It's safe to say that Lucy must dearly wish she'd never been a stripper with a dwarf assistant. She should have got a job in Sainsburys. I Don't Want to Be Born is a terrible film but it does have its compensations. Quite often when a film is famously bad it turns out to be boring to sit through but I Don't Want to Be Born is one of those bad films which is entertaining and funny by dint of being bad. It doesn't feel like the film is in on the joke though. I Don't Want to be Born takes itself seriously and is trying to be scary.

There is a memorable decapitation scene (which again anticipates The Omen) and also an effective sequence where Gino becomes under threat of being hanged in the garden. Ralph Bates is unwittingly hilarious in this film because he has the worst Italian accent ever put on film. Chico Marx was a more convincing Italian than Ralph Bates is in I Don't Want to Be Born. At the start of the film I thought Ralph's character was supposed to be English but just doing a risible Italian accent as a joke to make his wife laugh. Then the penny dropped that Ralph REALLY is supposed to be Italian and would be lumbered with this preposterous accent for the rest of the film. I suppose him being called Gino really should have tipped me off. This is the sort of thing which encapsulates I Don't Want to Be Born. You hire Ralph Bates and then handcuff him with a comedy accent.

Another highlight of this film is Donald Pleasence as Dr Finch. Donald Pleasence could be sympathetic, he could be a villain, he could be funny, he could be hammy, he could be stark raving bonkers. In this film though he plays his role completely straight and it is perfect because it makes him seem like a real doctor! This is a very stupid film so Pleasence supplies some much needed calmness. I think old Donald was well aware this film was a load of old tosh so played it straight to amuse himself. He doesn't do any hamming. Eileen Atkins plays Gino's sister Albana - who very conveniently for plot purposes happens to be a nun. Eileen Atkins is far too good for this nonsense - as is Hilary Mason as the housekeeper Mrs Hyde. Mason had fairly recently come off her role as the blind psychic Heather in Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. The legendary Hammer and Bond star Caroline Munro is also in the film as Lucy's friend Mandy. It is very obvious though (too obvious in fact) that Caroline Munro's dialogue has all been dubbed by another actress (Liz Fraser apparently). By this stage of her career the penny must have dropped for Caroline that she wasn't being hired for her acting. Why are they dubbing Caroline Munro anyway? She's not THAT bad and it isn't as if the minor part she plays here required flaming Maggie Smith or Meryl Streep.

John Steiner is great in this film as Lucy's sleazy former strip club manager Tommy. Lucy tracks Tommy down because she thinks he might be the baby's father. Tommy gets a punch in the mush from the baby for his trouble when they meet - which amuses Lucy no end. George Claydon, who plays Hercules, was an Oompa Loompa in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and also in Berserk! with Joan Crawford. I'm not sure if you could have an actor with dwarfism as a grotesque villain today. There weren't roles like Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones knocking around in George's day. Look out for Floella Benjamin (now Baroness Floella Benjamin OBE) as a nurse. Her part in this film would have been shortly before she became a presenter on the children's show Play School. Stanley Lebor, best known as Howard in the sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles but in endless stuff from Flash Gordon to Minder, also pops up as a police officer.

I Don't Want to Be Born is one of those films that is so bad it becomes quite entertaining in the end. One of the most ludicrous aspects to the film is that we are constantly told that Lucy's baby is unusually large and giant sized for a baby and yet whenever we see the baby it is clearly just a normal sized average infant. As soon as Gino's nun sister is introduced you JUST know we are going to get a hokey exorcism sequence and sure enough this eventually happens. One thing that is fun about the film is the extensive outdoor location work - so extensive in fact that some of it feels suspiciously designed to pad out the running length of the film. From a modern viewpoint though it's amusing to get these authentic snapshots of London and fashions in 1974/75. I Don't Want to Be Born is laughably awful but builds to an entertaining climax with the murderous baby carnage escalating all the time. Add in an eccentric score by Ron Grainer and you are left with a film that none of the cast were especially happy to have on their CV. I don't think you'd get Joan Collins turning up to a BFI screening of this film - not that the BFI are likely to want to inflict this film on anyone.

I though am happy that I Don't Want to be Born exists. I feel my life is richer for having experienced Ralph Bates doing a comedy Italian accent and Joan Collins wrestling a baby. What they really should have done was turn this into a franchise and had the baby go into space for the fourth one. I would go as far to say, and I don't say this lightly, that I Don't Want to Be Born is one of the best films I have ever seen about a demon baby who murders people because a dwarf put a curse on a stripper. The really exciting news for fans of I Don't Want to be Born is that EON now have the rights and are planning to turn this into an ongoing series to rival Halloween or Friday the 13th. Daniel Craig is going to play the Ralph Bates part and Dame Judi Dench will play his ex-stripper wife. I know Ronnie Corbett was going to play Hercules but sadly he's no longer with us. Barbara Broccoli has promised that the reboot of I Don't Want to Be Born will be gritty and realistic and go back to the original novel written by Trevor Vimto. No news on a director yet but Sam Mendes is said to be in talks and is working with Purvis & Wade on the script.

There are worrying stories though that Amazon have acquired some of the rights to I Don't Want to Be Born and are looking to shove Barbara out of the picture and take full control. I'll keep you updated on this developing story. Barbara must be getting sick of this by now. There was that incident last week when she learned - to her horror - that Amazon actually owned 50% of her garden shed and were planning a hostile takeover to secure the rest of it. Where is she supposed to put her pots and compost? Barbara had only just reached a settlement on that court case over Amazon claiming half-ownership of her toaster. What happened there was that Harry Saltzman had sold his share of the toaster when he left the Bond franchise in the 1970s. In conclusion then, should you watch I Don't Want to Be Born? Yes, you should. This is one of the greatest films of the 1970s and the new expanded five hour version with modern special effects and completely new ending (where the baby now runs over Joan Collins and Ralph Bates in a tank) is a considerable improvement. This new version also restores the deleted subplot where Caroline Munro tries to set off a nuclear bomb in the baby's crib. They really don't make 'em like this anymore. What a time 1975 was to be alive. And now, if you'll please excuse me, I'm off to the shops to get some more Spangles and a big bottle of Bing.

- Luke Quantrill

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