Hello all! This week's VHS Friday hits right before my yearly pilgrimage to Montreal for the
Fantasia Film Festival. I had recently noticed that I had two babysitter-centric tapes in the pile so I figured I would knock them off together. I have a fascination with the concept of the babysitter. I wager it is from the horror trope, and not any real experience since my brother was seven years older and the time we actually had one was very narrow (she was a family friend that I remember vaguely; her name was Dorothy). However, the idea of leaving a young non-family member with your children alone obviously stuck for me to
make my own rendition in 2013. But, I digress. Our first title is the 1980 teleplay
The Babysitter.
The Benedict's (Bill Shatner & Patty Duke) hire a live-in babysitter named Joanna (Stephanie Zimbalist) for their daughter Tara (Quinn Cummings) but are unfortunately unaware of her nefarious intentions.
As I stated, this was a TV movie, but off-the-hop you could be forgiven for thinking this was an Italian thriller based on the score and how the opening was shot. Imdb says some stock music was used so I wouldn't be surprised if the theme was lifted from a 70's giallo I can't quite place.
 |
| Will Shatner & Stephanie Zimbalist in The Babysitter. |
Directed by Peter Medak, The Babysitter was made right around the time he did the far superior The Changeling, but the former is still quite watchable and riddled with recognizable character actors. Set in Washington, but almost surely shot north in BC, the locale is pretty, with no shortage of exorbitant mansions to plot your employer's demise.
Zimbalist (doing the ever popular exercise of playing a teen in their mid-twenties) carries herself well, projecting a certain unpredictability that made we wonder at times what her actual endgame was. I mean, ultimately I knew because this is a story I've seen many time before (The Hand That Rocks The Cradle comes to mind) so sadly I was waiting at least a half-hour for John Houseman to go find her previous family dead in their bed. It's funny, I could see the image in my head like a crystal ball. It was still a hoot, after watching many episodes of Remmington Steele as a kid, to see her in a role like this.
Moving on, I checked out my tape of the 1975 film Wanted: Babysitter.
A young woman (Maria Schneider) doing babysitting jobs to make ends meet in Rome finds herself kidnapped with her charge in a ransom plot.
It's funny that The Babysitter was an American movie that I first thought was Italian, and Wanted: Babysitter is an Italian film that I assumed was American. I didn't know babysitting was even a thing in Europe, I mean, admittedly I don't know why I figured it was confined to North America. I just would've expected a more appropriate title like The Babysitter Wore Red, or The Babysitter Knocked Twice.
 |
| John Whittington & Maria Schneider in Wanted: Babysitter. |
The final picture directed by journeyman René Clément, Wanted: Babysitter isn't really a horror film, it's more of a Euro-crime thriller with some character actors from outside of Italy like Vic Morrow and Robert Vaughn (damn, he looks young in this, maybe it was the eye make-up) sprinkled in. Also, I didn't realize until I looked her up after, but Schneider was the actress in that infamous scene in Last Tango In Paris. It now makes more sense why she went for the jam during the breakfast sequence here.
This movie is a serviceable thriller, though I have to admit I was confused about the kidnap plot for the first half-hour or so. I didn't catch that the boy (who is inexplicably named Boots?!) had been moved to a new location so my geography and how Schneider found herself involved was disorienting. It could've been that my tape's quality rapidly declined as it went on to the point I could barely make out the bathtub scene towards the end. It definitely has that Italian feel, right down to the comic relief subplot with the boyfriend (Renato Pozzetto) who I'm certain improvised most of his dialogue.
A nice little find after all, and a counterbalance to The Babysitter, where the title character was protagonist instead of antagonist. That's it for the babysitting two-fer. Hey, does that mean I get paid double time??
