It occurs to me that the miniseries of Rosemary's Baby played more like a remake of The Omen. One of the truly botched moments that actually survived from the Levin book and original film, and one of that film's best scenes, is where Rosemary is given the book Hutch left for her. Of course, in this film there IS no Hutch - she just happens to find the book in a secret passageway. Really? Note to screenwriters - you are not better than Ira Levin. In the original Hutch writes "The name is an anagram." Rosemary thinks he means the title of the book, All of Them Witches, but our brilliant new screenwriters just put the name is an anagram right next to the NAME of the person whose name is an anagram. And she figures THAT out in, oh, three seconds. Brilliant. Give these boys an EMMY for being the crassest, stupidest screenwriters EVER. In this version, Rosemary has a best girlfriend who just happens to live in Paris, too. She gets offed at some point (one might say she is the Hutch of this version - but not really), and her death is absolutely disgusting and now NBC gets to air violence like that (if this were a theatrical film it would be an R).
The scene in the original where Mia Farrow literally throws some raw liver in a frying pan, let's it sear for about four seconds and then eats it is shocking because it's fast and subtle and she sees her image reflected in her toaster and it nauseates her. In our new brilliant screenwriters version, she pulls the innards out of a turkey and stuffs just about all of them in her mouth vociferously without any attempt at even searing them - I mean, it's like Night of the Living Dead time. Then she gets ill. The reason the original works is because it is - and I know this is a word these brilliant screenwriters haven't learned yet - PLAUSIBLE. Everything in Levin's book and the film of it is PLAUSIBLE which is why it's so effective and has aged beautifully. NOTHING in the remake is PLAUSIBLE - not one BLOODY thing.
