Brooke Adams in The Unborn (1991)

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COMPLETE SPOILER

Here is the formula. Start with Rosemary's Baby; subtract Satan; add a mad doctor; subtract Roman Polanski; add Roger Corman. Voila!

Brooke Adams plays a woman who is unable to conceive. She wants children, and her husband is fertile, so they go into the in vitro fertilization clinic. Well, wouldn't you know it but they are a struggling young couple and they can't afford a real doctor, so they have to go to a mad doctor instead.

It is an inexplicable eccentricity in the rules of the World Market Economy that mad doctors make less than regular doctors, even though evil scientists make more than regular scientists. Can you imagine? In some countries, mad doctors make less money than teachers or utility infielders, despite having to go to school for decades to get those double doctorates in Medicine and World Domination.

The mad doctor implants a genetically altered evil fetus inside of Brooke. At first she doesn't realize it's an evil fetus, although she might have suspected when the doctor's only pre-natal recommendation was some super vitamins and a carton of Luckies.

When she finds out about its evil nature, she tries to get rid of it by having an abortion. Unfortunately for the world, evil fetuses can't really be aborted. After you toss them out, they just climb out of the dumpsters and use their evil ESP powers to call for their mothers and lay a heavy guilt trip on them.

So Brooke drives down to the Medical Waste District, picks up the fetus, and brings him home to nurse. Hubby isn't really pleased with this idea, particularly after the evil fetus rips out one of his eyes, so he uses his other eye to turn on the computer and place an ad to sell the evil fetus on e-bay.

Meanwhile, Brooke is ticked off at the kid for his little evil pranks, like the eye thing and disemboweling the cat, so she gives him a stern talking to and blows him away with a .357 magnum. Then she realizes that it isn't enough to kill one evil fetus. She has to kill them all.

So she takes her Dirty Harry gun down to the Evil Fetus Clinic, and starts blowing away all the fetuses which are growing there in glass bubbles.

As she's driving home, a rogue evil fetus is in the car, and causes an accident. Brooke climbs out of the car, sees the rogue fetus and prepares to blow him away. Then her maternal instinct kicks in, she hugs the little guy, and the movie ends.

It's not a good movie in general. Nothing scary happens for about the entire first half, and we have only the slightest suggestion that something is wrong. (Mostly the lilting Evil Fetus Love Ballad on the musical score, as sung by Nat King Cole. "Evil fetus, evil fetus, men have named you" ..... Or not.). In the second half, we can see that something is wrong, but they didn't have the budget to do much with it.

For a grade-z Corman flick, it has some strengths:

1. The scene in the laboratory, filled with the fetuses in glass bottles, is imaginative, spooky, and eerily beautiful. The red jars are arranged artistically, lambent in a dark room, and Brooke shoots them out with a pistol, in a scene which is quite well designed and executed. Corman's director was new, but he showed some promise, and later directed quite an excellent horror-comedy called Idle Hands, which is well worth a look.

2. Brooke Adams and some of the other performers refused to be pulled down by the quality of the script and the cheesiness of the premise. They tried to develop believable human characters in unbelievable situations, and were successful for the most part.

So the movie isn't a complete loser. The 3.6 at IMDb is too low. The premise is that bad, but the execution is not. On the other hand, it is, after all, a movie about mad doctors and evil fetuses, so I suppose not a lot of you will be rushing to Blockbuster to reserve your copy. Based on this description, this film is a C-.

Nudity Report: Brooke Adams showed one nipple in a breast-feeding scene.

Critics Vote: Maltin 2.5/4

IMDB Summary: 3.6 out of 10

Box Office: It took in $1 million domestically.

DVD Info: No widescreen, but a digitally re-mastered full screen version; minor features (trailer, bios)

Written by: Scoopy …scoopy.net