Director/Producer – Rodman Flender, Screenplay – Henry Dominic [John Brancato & Michael Ferris], Photography – Wally Pfister, Music – Gary Numan & Michael R. Smith, Makeup Effects/Baby Designed/Created by Joe Podnar, Production Design – Gary Randall. Production Company – Concorde-New Horizons.
Cast
Brooke Adams (Virginia Marshall), Jeff Hayenga (Brad Marshall), James Karen (Dr Richard Meyerling), K. Callan (Martha Wellington), Jane Cameron (Beth Sanders), Kathy Griffin (Connie Chicago), Wendy Kamenoff (Gloria Starchild), Matt Roe (Jeff DeWitt), Janice Kent (Cindy DeWitt), Laura Stockman (Janet Robinson), Jonathan Emerson (Mark Robinson), Jessica Zingali (Alicia DeWitt)
Plot
Husband and wife Brad and Virginia Marshall have been unable to conceive. On the recommendation of Brad’s co-worker, they attend fertility specialist Dr Richard Meyerling. Following his treatment, Virginia duly becomes pregnant. However, the health regimen that Meyerling places her on causes Virginia to become ill. She then learns that horrible things have happened to other mothers that have been through the treatment, including the children emerging as psychopathic, and is warned to stop taking the treatments. As Virginia becomes increasingly more mentally unwell and paranoid, she comes to believe that Meyerling has been conducting unauthorised genetic experiments on the babies.
The Unborn was the directorial for Rodman Flender. Flender had been working assorted roles at Roger Corman’s Concorde-New Horizons and was then given the director’s chair here. Though a Concorde-New Horizons production, Corman’s name surprisingly does not appear on the credits. The Unborn also appears to have been given a better budget than usual for Corman’s films so perhaps the thinking was that the film was seeking to dissociate itself with Corman’s B-budget name. Flender subsequently went on to a modest directorial career (see below).
The Unborn is essentially a version of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) updated for the era of the 1980s Makeup Effects Vehicle. Like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, Brooke Adams becomes pregnant only to find something sinister going on, while being prescribed treatments that make her ill by a doctor who it appears is increasingly up to no good. Rosemary’s Baby ended just after the birth of the baby, whereas this goes on to show the creatures being born (some so-so baby effects). At this point, the film heads in the direction of It’s Alive (1974), a Rosemary’s Baby-influenced film about a father dealing with murderous mutant babies. The final shot of Brooke Adams crawling away to embrace the baby makes the It’s Alive homage direct.
Unlike Rosemary’s Baby, which concerned itself with giving birth to The Devil’s child, The Unborn ties in more to a Genetic Engineering angle. The scheme that James Karen is involved in is not exactly clear – some tinkering to create superior children. The one child we do meet – the DeWitt’s daughter (Jessica Zingali) – is show to be cold, smiling and psychopathic.
Brooke Adams and genetically engineered foetuses
One of the more amusing things is the way the film demonises The Human Genome Project, which launched in 1990 and would have been in the news around the time the film was shooting. The Human Genome Project was simply an effort by scientists to map all the genes that make up human DNA and see what they do. By contrast, the film sees this as something sinister – there is the amusing editing montage where assorted newspaper headlines are run together and ‘Human Genome Project Cracking DNA Code’ sits alongside others saying ‘Baby is Found Dead at Church’ and ‘Woman Dies in Freakish Birth’ by which you get the impression you are meant to draw some association.
Rodman Flender’s direction is unexceptional for the most part and there is nothing in the first half that does not feel like a standard tv movie. Things become somewhat more interesting in the second half where there is undeniable amusement to watching Brooke Adams losing her marbles and wrecking the house, even killing the cat without realising it. And in the subsequent scenes, the makeup effects people take over and do their thing.
In the lead role is Brooke Adams, probably best known here for roles in films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and The Dead Zone (1983). Although given that Adams was aged 42 at the time the film came out, it is perhaps no surprise that her character is experiencing problems conceiving. Perhaps the most interesting name to spot in the cast is an unknown Lisa Kudrow, a couple of years before going on to the huge hit of tv’s Friends (1994-2004), who has a small appearance as James Karen’s assistant who takes husband Jeff Hayenga away to collect a sperm sample. There is also K. Callan, a couple of years before being cast as Martha Kent in tv’s Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-7).
James Karen as sinister fertility specialist Dr Richard Meyerling
The Unborn 2 (1994) was a sequel. The Unborn is not related to nor should not be confused with David S. Goyer’s subsequent possession film The Unborn (2009).
Rodman Flender went onto make Leprechaun 2 (1994) and the possession comedy Idle Hands (1999), as well as wrote the script for the Corman-produced Dracula Rising (1993). Most of Flender’s work since has been in directing television with the documentaries Let Them Eat Rock (2004) and Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop (2011) and the occasional film such as the werewolf comedy Nature of the Beast (2007) and the zombie romance Eat Brains Love (2019).
Henry Dominic was a pseudonym for the screenwriting team of John Brancato and Michael Ferris. They wrote several B-budget films including the Corman-produced Watchers II (1990) and others such as Mindwarp (1992) and Severed Ties (1992) under the Henry Dominic name. They then moved to A-budget films under their own names with The Net (1995), wherein Sandra Bullock’s life is turned upside down by an elaborate conspiracy of shadowy computer hackers; the David Fincher directed The Game (1997); The Others (2000), a short-lived tv series about a team of psychics; Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003); the much ridiculed Catwoman (2004); the killer crocodile film Primeval (2007); the SF film Surrogates (2009); and Terminator Salvation (2009).
