The Baby is a 1973 B-movie directed by Ted Post. The film is usually classified as horror, but it is actually more of a psychological drama.
Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer) is a social worker whose husband has recently been injured in an accident. She gets assigned to the Wadsworth family which consists of Mrs. Wadsworth (Ruth Roman), her two adult daughters Germaine (Marianna Hill) and Alba (Suzanne Zenor), and "Baby" (David Manzy), a grown man who acts and is treated like a baby. Ann takes on the case because she thinks the Wadsworths have been mistreating Baby, but there is also another reason she is interested in him.
This film provides examples of
- Beware the Nice Ones: Ann is very nice and pleasant, but don't cross her or you'll end up buried beneath her new pool.
- Big Sister Bully: Alba is shown being much meaner to Baby than her sister and mother, most notably in the scene where she's shocking him with a cattle prod while also mocking him."Baby doesn't walk! Baby doesn't talk!"
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Unlike her mother and sister, Germaine keeps up a pleasant facade around others throughout the film, even while kidnapping Ann or molesting her younger brother.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Germaine is heavily implied in one scene to be molesting Baby.
- Covers Always Lie: At first, you'd think this movie was about a giant killer baby, when in actuality, Baby is harmless. It's his family who are the dangerous ones.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Mrs. Wadsworth breaks her legs and is then Buried Alive next to her recently killed daughters.
- Dark Secret: Ann's husband is also a "baby" (he became brain damaged from the car crash).
- Disappeared Dad: Each Wadsworth kid was fathered by a different man, which is probably why their mother Does Not Like Men.
- Disposing of a Body: Mrs. Wadsworth and her daughters are buried in the Gentrys' backyard and a pool is built on top of them!
- Does Not Like Men: Mrs. Wadsworth and her daughters. Ann believes this is the reason they keep Baby, a baby.
- The Ending Changes Everything: All movie long, we've been cheering for the recently-widowed social worker Ann Gentry to liberate the horrifically abused Baby from his tyrannical mother and sisters so that he can finally start to recover. And then she takes him home to her husband, who was reduced to the same level of Manchild by brain damage and is in need of a playmate. This revelation recontextualizes Ann's every action in the film from altruism to unblinking sociopathic selfishness and much, much worse.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Mrs. Wadsworth and Germaine are disgusted with Alba when she suggests they should've sent Baby to the circus.
- Evil Matriarch: Mrs. Wadsworth is the primary antagonist of the film and raised her two daughters to keep Baby down.
- False Widow: Ann. At first, we assume her husband died, but it turns out he survived. He's just brain damaged and acts like a baby.
- Girlish Pigtails: Alba wears them in a couple scenes.
- His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Baby's actual name is, in fact, Baby.
- Hope Spot: When Ann takes Baby away from his family, she tries to get him some help. After learning that there's nothing actually wrong with his brain (by which he has no congenital mental conditions or learning difficulties), she then tries to teach him how to be an adult. For a while it seems to be working, but after Ann kills Baby's mother and sisters, it's revealed that she instead decided to keep Baby as a playmate for her brain damaged husband.
- Infantilization Horror: The movie's about a man forced by his mother and sisters to stay in infancy.
- Mama Bear: Mrs. Wadsworth. Evil Matriarch tendencies aside, she does seem to genuinely care about Baby, as shown when she shocks Alba with a cattle prod for doing the same to Baby and later scolding her for suggesting that he should've been given to a circus.
- Mommy's Little Villain: Germaine and Alba are every bit as evil and sadistic as their mother and are completely devoted to helping her keep Baby emotionally stunted forever.
- Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Downplayed, as none of the Wadsworth women are nice people, but the way they behave towards Baby and around others shows shades of this. Germaine is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who handles most of the interactions with the outside world and keeps her sexual abuse of her brother under wraps. Alba is a sadistic individual who openly enjoys hurting Baby and has no problem with being rude and short-tempered with outsiders. Mrs. Wadsworth does seem to genuinely care about Baby to an extent and often stops Alba from abusing her brother but is far more openly hostile and abusive towards him than Germaine.
- Parent-Induced Extended Childhood: Mrs. Wadsworth and her two daughters have spent years keeping her son from maturing mentally, ensuring he retains the mindset of an infant despite being biologically twenty - to the point that they are more than willing to zap him with a cattle prod if he even tries standing upright. As such, the crux of the film involves a social worker attempting to get Baby away from Mrs. Wadsworth so he can achieve psychological adulthood... except it turns out that she has no intention of doing such a thing at all, instead adopting Baby so he can become a brother to her husband, who has been left in a similar state due to brain damage sustained in a car crash.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Alba definitely shows signs of being this since she's shown bullying Baby while hurling childish insults at him. She also doesn't exactly dress like an adult, either.
- Screen-to-Stage Adaptation: It was performed in Los Angeles in 2013 and Toronto in 2015.
- The Sociopath: Alba shows signs. The look on her face as she shocks Baby with a cattle prod is one of pure sadistic glee, she says that they should've sold Baby to a circus to be a sideshow attraction (which garners a negative response from both Germaine and Mrs. Wadsworth), and she instructs a guy who tries to flirt with her to burn his hand.
- Wham Shot: Ann's husband being shown in a baby room, playing with blocks.