Rainey Dawn This movie is known as 'Sharon's Baby', aka 'The Monster: I Don't Want to Be Born', and aka 'Devil Within Her'. Starring Joan Collins, Ralph Bates, Donald Pleasence and Eileen Atkins. Lucy Carlesi is played by Joan Collins. Lucy's baby is somehow possessed by the dwarf Hercules (George Claydon) that she once worked with. (The lead character is LUCY not Sharon... so why is this film aka 'Sharon's Baby'? Maybe they changed her name from Sharon to Lucy??? At any rate, the film is fairly interesting even though a bit corny.)I liked this film better than I anticipated - I knew it was going to be a bit on the corny side (and it is) but not so cornball that I couldn't enjoy it. The movie grabbed me from the start - I had to suspend my beliefs in order to watch this movie but that is true with quite a few movies.This movie is NOT the quality of Rosemary's Baby but it is entertaining.... kept me interested from start to finish. :D 6.5/10

John Seal A popular (or at least ubiquitous) title on home video, The Devil Within Her (also known as I Don't Want to Be Born and, less commonly, Sharon's Baby) stars Joan Collins as Lucy, a new mother who soon discovers that her sprog is…not normal. In fact, the little devil seems to have been possessed by the spirit of an evil dwarf who once tried to have his way with Mum, and swore vengeance after being spurned by her. Oh, those evil dwarfs. Considering the film was directed by Peter Sasdy (also responsible for superior Hammer chiller Hands of the Ripper, as well as sci-fi classic Doomwatch), this should be a better film than it actually is, but with Collins headlining and Ralph Bates, Caroline Munro, and Donald Pleasence co-starring, horror fans will still want to scope it out. That said, many scenes are unintentionally hilarious, especially when we're asked to believe the film's (shockingly uncredited!) headlining baby is a devious killer possessed by an evil spirit.

James Hitchcock Horror films were a major feature of the British cinema in the sixties and early seventies, largely because such matter could not be seen on television, the broadcasting companies regarding it as being unfit for family viewing. "I Don't Want to Be Born" (aka "The Devil Within Her"), clearly shows the influence of "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Exorcist", although the film to which it bears the greatest resemblance, in terms of its story, is "The Omen". Yet as it came out in 1975, a year earlier than that movie, it clearly cannot be an "Omen" rip-off. Perhaps "The Omen" was an "I Don't Want to be Born" rip-off.Like "The Omen", "I Don't Want to Be Born" involves a devilish child with a symbolically significant name. In "The Omen" he is called Damien, obviously a play on the word "demon". Here he is named Nicholas, presumably a reference to the fact that the Devil is sometimes referred to as "Old Nick". (I often wonder how this usage arose, given that Saint Nicholas, aka Father Christmas, is one of the most beloved saints of the Christian Church).Nicholas is the son of Lucy, a former nightclub stripper, and her husband, a wealthy Italian businessman living in London. (At least Lucy is assumed to be a stripper, although from what we see of her act it does not actually involve taking her clothes off. Joan Collins, at this point in her career, seems to have been rather more coy about nudity than she was to be a couple of years later in films like "The Stud" and "The Bitch"). The title refers to the baby's reluctance to come into this world; having been thrust into this vale of tears against his will has obviously had a deleterious effect on young Nicholas's character, as in the first few weeks of his life he proceeds to slaughter everyone who comes near him, including both his parents, his nanny and the doctor who delivered him. The only person who seems able to control him is his aunt, a nun who flies in from Italy to act as exorcist.I was a teenager in the seventies and recall constantly being told by my elders and betters that my generation were all a bunch of hooligans. Numerous explanations were put forward for this supposed epidemic of juvenile delinquency- boredom, youth unemployment, peer pressure, drugs, alcohol and the permissive society- but the cause of Nicholas's bad behaviour seems to be something more exotic, namely a curse placed upon his mother by a lustful dwarf whose sexual advances she rejected. The said dwarf is employed by the nightclub to prance around on stage while the girls are performing, although it is never explained why the club owner assumed that this bizarre diversion would increase the erotic allure of their performances.Although the film contains some well-known British actors of the period, including Donald Pleasence, Eileen Atkins, Caroline Munro and Ralph Bates, none of them bring much conviction to their roles. (Bates seemed to specialise in horror films- he also acted in "Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde", and this is referred to when in a hospital scene we hear an announcement for a "Dr Jekyll". The family's housekeeper is called Mrs Hyde). Collins looks incredibly glamorous for a woman in her early forties, but nevertheless manages to turn in one of the worst performances of her career, even though she could at times be very effective in horror films like "Tales from the Crypt"."The Exorcist" and "The Omen" may have their faults, but they are technically well-made films, well-acted and at their best genuinely scary. "I Don't Want to Be Born" is none of those things. It is a the sort of trashy low-budget horror flick, thing that the British film industry could churn out by the dozen and which generally showed that industry at its worst. The one good thing about it is that it came towards the end of the British horror boom. The genre declined in importance in the second half of the decade, largely because the broadcasting authorities were becoming more permissive about violence provided it was shown late at night, and in the eighties the industry, freed of its addiction to horror exploitation movies and silly sex comedies, underwent a revival when it returned to making intelligent and watchable films. "I Don't Want to Be Born", however, serves as a reminder of just how bad British cinema could be at its nadir. 2/10

MARIO GAUCI This was shown on local TV as part of a Horror movie season back in the Summer of 1983 when we still owned a black-and-white TV set; other similar screenings included TASTE THE BLOOD OF Dracula (1970; that I caught up with only a few years ago) and LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF (1975; that I did watch back then). Although the film under review has been available on DVD in R2 land for some time now (including from reliable label Network), I shirked from purchasing it for two reasons: its being a bare-bones affair – as opposed to, say, Sasdy's COUNTESS Dracula (1971) from the same label – and its (somewhat undeserved) maligned reputation as being one of the least among British horror films of the 1970s. The theme of a possessed infant, of course, harks back to Roman Polanski's ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) but the medical tests/exorcism bits naturally had the more current THE EXORCIST (1973) as its template. Since the film utilizes the services of several Hammer veterans (Sasdy, Joan Collins, Ralph Bates, Caroline Munro), it can be mistaken for one of their productions; genre regulars Donald Pleasence and John Steiner (in a rare appearance in a non-Italian film) are also featured but the acting honors are stolen from 'newcomer' Eileen Atkins (as the exorcising nun!). The seedy atmosphere of British night-life is well-captured as Collins – playing an ex-stripper who marries Italian businessman Bates(!) – is cursed when she rejects the sexual advances of the dwarf who performs with her in the cabaret shows!!; frankly, it was quite disappointing to find that it was his evil spirit that possessed Collins' child as opposed to Satan (or one of his minions)...especially since the sinful dwarf is still alive at the time! Still, the recurring images of him in the baby's cot (as they appear to the increasingly distressed Collins) are disturbing enough in themselves. Also, the fact that the baby is born during the credits sequence robs the film of much-needed audience empathy with the characters (especially the ineffectual Bates); suffice it to say that the baby is only 'seen' at the very end of the much-longer ROSEMARY'S BABY! For the record, the 'devilish' antics of the baby include: the repeated trashing of his room; spitting at his visitors; scratching bloodiedly (both Collins and Atkins receive this facial treatment); biting fingers (the sullen maid – whose fate should have been much worse given how much she comes to loathe the boy!); slapping potential father Steiner's face; pushing the baby-sitter to her death in a pond; strangling Bates and hiding his body in the sewer!; beheading Pleasence with a shovel!; and fatally stabbing Collins. The baby – or, rather, the dwarf's evil spirit – finally gets his comeuppance when Atkins (Bates' nun sister) performs the exorcism rite (causing the dancing dwarf to expire agonizingly in mid-routine). As a whole, the film proved sufficiently enjoyable if decidedly too preposterous and silly to be taken too seriously and, at the end of the day, Atkins' performance and Ron Grainer's groovy score (that, alternately, reminded me of both Frank Zappa and Pink Floyd!) emerge as its outstanding qualities. While the film's original title, I DON'T WANT TO BE BORN, is the one I am most familiar with, it should be said that the film was released under the totally misleading moniker of THE DEVIL WITHIN HER in the U.S. (which probably got it confused with the recently-released Italian EXORCIST rip-off, CHI SEI? aka BEYOND THE DOOR – which I will be getting to presently) and, more recently, it was released on R2 DVD as the ultra-generic THE MONSTER (despite there already being a totally unrelated Lon Chaney movie from 1925 with that name)!