The Unborn: The Roger Corman Collection

There are numerous films that are guaranteed to make women think again about starting a family, with nightmarish visions of labour, pregnancy and other aspects of parturition. One only needs to consider movies like The Brood, Rosemary's Baby and It's Alive to see the horrific possibilities of childbirth and the trauma of carrying an alien being for nine months.

In The Unborn, wealthy couple Brad and Virginia Marshall have been trying unsuccessfully to have a child for five years and eventually one of Brad's collegues recommends Dr. Richard Meyerling, a doctor whose experimental work in IVF has proved to be very successful. An early scene shows a woman nearing term laid in bed and her contractions starting only to find that the foetus finds an alternative way out, bursting straight out through her stomach and killing her, so you know that things aren't going to go smoothly for Virginia.

Virginia is a little sceptical but goes along with the experimental treatment as she is very keen to have a child. The initial surgery seems innocuous enough, with the physician removing one of her eggs, implanting some of Brad's sperm into it to create a healthy embryo, before inserting it into her womb. The pregnancy is another matter, with Virginia attending a rather quirky set of antenatal classes that exclude men and advocate a strange set of breathing exercises. On top of this, Dr Meyerling advocates a protein drink that anyone who's seen Rosemary's Baby would throw out of the nearest window.

The early months pass without incident but, as the pregnancy progresses, Virginia feels that the foetus is stronger than it should be and is controlling her, this is not turning out to be the dream pregnancy that she had in mind. When one of Meyerling's other patients phones her up and tells her that the he is not a real obstetrician but is in fact a research scientist working on genetic modification. Thanks to this information, Virginia's imagination runs wild and she considers having an abortion.

As one of a number of nightmare pregnancy movies, this shocker by Rodman Flender, stands up pretty well with superb performances by Brooke Adams as Virginia, Jeff Hayenga as Brad. However, every scene is stolen by James Karen who is a wonderfully creepy figure and generally exudes an untrustworthiness. As one of the many films produced by Roger Corman, this looks better than it should and the performances and effects are all very good.

Corman was known for nurturing new talent on both sides of the camera and it's quite funny to see a very young Lisa Kudrow (with long dark hair!) in this as Dr. Meyerling's secretary.

The Disc

The Picture
The full frame picture is clear with no lack of clarity in the darker scenes. There is a slight amount of grain and the odd pop in the corner but the picture is otherwise very good.

The Sound
The Dolby Digital mono soundtrack is nice and clear and the dialogue easy to make out. The score is far from impressive but does a good job of emphasising emotion, tension and atmosphere.


Final Thoughts
The Unborn is an interesting and solid film with fine performances, decent writing and tight direction. I've seen a lot of 'demon child' films recently (with Rosemary's Baby forming part of my MA dissertation) and I really enjoyed this. This makes the lack of extras, or even a menu (the film plays when the disc is inserted) all the greater shame. However, the RRP is fairly low and is probably accurate for this kind of film and DVD.