Many (most?) great modern horror films operate on two levels . Kubrick's THE SHINING is about alcoholism, Cronenberg's THE FLY is about cocaine and AIDS, THE EXORCIST is about the guilt feelings of working mothers, and so on. ROSEMARY'S BABY is a feminist horror story about society, pregnancy and choice. Everyone wants Rosemary to have her baby. As pregnancy removes more and more of her options she becomes trapped, bound by circumstance to her husband.

Eventually she finds herself reduced to host for an unwanted parasite for the benefit of her husband (John Cassavettes) and symbolic would-be grandparents played by Sidney Blackmer and show-stealing Ruth Gordon in her Oscar-winning role. (Their symbolic role as paternal grandparents is reinforced by their names, the Castavets. I don't recall if that's their name in Ira Levin's original novel, but it's funny that their name is so similar to Cassavettes.)

Rosemary is powerless and her powerlessness all flows from her sex. Most of Rosemary's terrorization comes in the form of "help" from people who know what's best for her, best for her body, best for her child. The devil worshipers are something even worse; they are busy-body custodians of an old social order unfriendly to young women in the city.

Ostensibly produced by William Castle, the 1950s-1960s low budget horror impresario that used to do things like put buzzers in the seats or have skeletons on wires fly out of the screen, but I think Robert Evans was sort of the real producer. (There's a story there, I just can't remember it. Castle must have optioned the book or something.)

What a diverse cast! Starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Elisha Cook Jr. and yes, that is Charles Grodin.

Polanski's acting role is excellent, but the movie belongs to star Sydne Rome, a portrait of cluelessness with riotous blonde curls and a perfect streamlined 1970s figure who looks and acts remarkably like Farrah Fawcett as she wanders (mostly topless) through a host of bizarre situations. She escapes a trio of would-be rapists by seeking refuge in an Italian villa full of reproductions of the best of European erotic painting and a lot of crazy people. Since she doesn't speak Italian it's even more confusing. At times you think it's a bordello, at other times an asylum. Truth be told, there's no telling what this elegant mansion is.

Dream logic rules. Rome's clothes are stolen every time she falls asleep. There are peep-holes in the walls. Helmut Newton style nude amazon sunbathers drift across the veranda without a sound except the distant din from a constant game of ping pong. Mastroianni dons a tiger skin and capers about demanding that Rome whip him. A senile patriarch presides over bizarre dinners where everyone laughs at Rome to her face, though not speaking the language she'll never know why.

In this erotic comedy from famed director Roman Polanski, Sydne Rome stars as a very sexy and quite bewildered young hitchhiker. As the film opens, she has just escaped the clutches of three would be rapists only to find her way to a seaside villa. Things are, as she discovers, very strange at the villa. She is given a room and, within moments of undressing she is under the peeping eye of a hedonistic pervert, played with bravado by Marcello Mastroianni. She soon encounters the rest of the occupants of the mansion, all are completely anomalous and each tries to persuade into a sexual encounter. Throughout her entire erotic adventure, she carries a diary under her arm and writes curiously impersonal and un-erotic entries. This is the least discussed of Polanski's films, but on some levels it may be his most revealing.

Nineteen year-old Nastassja Kinski had achieved only trivial noteriety in silly European sexploitation and horror movies before Polanski fixated upon her. TESS seems to be born of the best aspect of Polanski's traumatized late-1970s emotional flight to whatever refuge he thought could be found in the beauty of teenage girls (the worst aspects are amply documented in California court records)

"First time on DVD! Academy Award®- winning timeless adaptation of Thomas Hardy's classic romance about a rural clergyman in 19th-century England who tells a simple farmer that he may be descended from the illustrious d'Urberville family. The farmer sends his daughter Tess to check on a family named d'Uberville living in a manor house less than a day's carriage ride away. However, her so-called cousin purchased his ancestral name and coat of arms. Tess plays her own game of illusion when she finds, loses, and finds again her true love. Starring: Nastassia Kinski, Peter Firth."

In an unspecified South American country after the recent fall of the dictatorship Gerardo (Stuart Wilson), a respected lawyer, has just been appointed to head a commission on human rights violations under the old regime. His wife, former political activist and torture victim Paulina Escobar (Sigourney Weaver), suffering from severe psychological trauma ever since her arrest, decries his investigation as a sham. One stormy night the couple receives an unexpected visitor when an affable stranger, Dr. Miranda (Ben Kingsley), experiences car trouble while dropping off Gerardo at the Escobars' isolated house. When Paulina hears the visitor speak she becomes convinced his is the voice of the doctor who supervised her torture and raped her on several occasions while she was blindfolded and strapped to a table. Determined to get a taped confession from him she appears with a gun and, over her husband's objections, she binds and interrogates the man.