The Babysitter (1980)

the audience applauded

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

A family is undermined by the cunning manipulation of a beautiful, young woman named Joanna (Stephanie Zimbalist). After insinuating herself into the family, she begins seducing the husband (William Shatner) and emotionally sabotaging the wife (Patty Duke). Knowing nothing of Joanna's extremely dark past, the family is unaware of just how dangerous she is, though the 12 year old daughter (Quinn Cummings) seems wiser than her clueless parents. Will they realize what Joanna is doing, before she causes irreparable damage, even death? Duke is great, and Shatner is less T.J. Kirk than usual. However, this is Zimbalist's movie, and she is the blackened sun at it's center. There's even a LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN moment on the lake! Mostly though, THE BABYSITTER prefigures the future POISON IVY, only in a more "family-friendly", made-for-TV form. Co-stars John Houseman as a doggedly suspicious neighbor...

I love these classic made-for-TV mysteries, and if you're like me, you'll love the Babysitter. 18-year-old Joanna Redwine has been in the foster care system nearly her entire life, and is one day hired by a troubled family to be the babysitter. The husband Jeff is a cheater, his wife Liz an alcoholic, and their 12 year old daughter Tara doesn't go to school, has very little social skills and acts very babyish for her age. Joanna seems like a great influence, and they also meet the next door neighbors, the kindly doctor and his grandson Scotty. Joanna however has killed her foster family at home and wrapped them in plastic, and will kill again if she doesn't get the perfect family she's been dreaming of... One thing very disappointing is that the eerie and beautiful soundtrack for this great movie was never separately released. All the actors/actresses were amazing, the film remained captivating 'till the end and to add even more creepiness to it, the girl Tara, although twelve years old, carries around her imaginary friend, a beaten up old rag-doll with its eyes ripped right out. That doll haunted me as a kid when I first saw this movie. It's really worth watching, you'll be happy you did!

I wonder how many times we've seen this movie in one or another guise. They usually have names like "The Babysitter," "Seduction of the Babysitter," "The Girl Next Door," "The Crush," "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle", or something like that. The plot is generic. A juicy young woman comes into proximity with an utterly bourgeois family, insinuates herself, and befouls the family dynamics. A deletion here, a switch of identities there, a minor substitution -- but the underlying theme remains the same. If Claude Levi-Strauss hadn't wasted his time on Tsimshian myths, he could have done a delightful number on films like this. One can understand why, in this case, the husband might feel a certain attraction for the ever-so-available young woman. Stephanie Zimbalist is a delight to watch. She's not only beautiful, she moves well too. Women, through no fault of their own, generally run as if they were mimicking the most flamboyant kind of homosexual. But Stephanie Zimbalist has real momentum and comes in only slightly behind Emma Peel in "The Avengers." Her bosom is enticingly small which, in this case, only reinforces the impression of sinewy athleticism. These kinds of movies are easy to watch. They go down like pablum. And it's so easy to ignore the finer points of the plot while imagining dandling Stephanie or Alicia or Rebecca on an avuncular knee. And there really is little downside. The nuclear families to begin with are so dull, so unimaginative, so happy with themselves, that a bit of a nudge is in order anyway. It's a male fantasy from beginning to end, and not badly done if one cares for such things.

I bought the TV movie "The Babysitter" because of the director Peter Medak, who directed the "The Changeling", which in my opinion is one of the best horror movies ever made. After I watched "The Babysitter" I said to myself "What a waste of time." It was boring, there isn't any suspense or scares. All it is about is a troubled couple hiring a housesitter, not a babysitter, to clean house and make meals. The only problem is that she has a dark and closely guarded past. The copy that I bought now just sits on the shelf collecting dust. Check out Peter Medak's other film "The Changeling", It's much better.