Few productions can boast of being worse than Paul Lynde in a musical trucker sketch with Tim Conway and Roz Kelly, but this nobody-asked-for-but-still-made-for-tv sequel to Polanski's 1969 shocker surely can. In fact, two days before Halloween in 1976, ABC Network rolled out both, as a seasonal double bill. At least Lynde's special had KISS. This scareless, boring mutt had Patty Duke Astin, Ray Milland, Ruth Gordon, Donna Mills, and Tina Louise, all trying to unsuccessfully conjure up safe-for-television holiday scares in successively less and less ominous chapters that start out like this...
"I only enjoy the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights."
In "The Book of Rosemary", the titular Rosemary (now Patty Duke, not Mia Farrow) tries to flee the reach of the coven with her young son Andrew (the Satanists call him Adrian), taking refuge from their black magic in a synagogue, only to lose him to them after he pulls the red eye visuals Satan card on some bullies, forcing them to snap two of the boys' necks in psychokinetic fury. A nearby bewitched mesquite-flavored whore (Tina Louise) snatches the boy after luring Ro' onto a driverless phantom bus to eternity, where she can scream her fool head off in grease paint against the back window forever now, man. "The Book of Adrian" follows, and we see that the boy has grown into an adult (Stephen McHattie) that has yet to realize very much of his dark power, to the chagrin of Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ray Milland and Ruth Gordon), who've done all they can to turn the boy into a devil, Satan knows, why, they keep him in black robed hails, black sports cars, and electric guitars. They've also influenced Guy (now George Maharis, not John Cassavetes) to do their evil bidding, like matter-of-factly electrocuting Adrian's do-goodnik buddy as he tries to interfere with their coming-of-age ceremony, which looks like this...
You need bigger goggles, Granny, I need more phantom-Patty Duke reflection to offset mime rocker-Stephen McHattie in the foreground.
Adrian gets a pancake makeup mime face, and writhes around awkwardly on a slab, before venturing down into the club and grooving on the dance floor with the other patrons, when his surrogate father jolts his pal to death and spoils the Satanic event. "The Book of Andrew" finds Adrian (now Andrew) locked up in a mental institution for killing his friend, since everyone who participated in the party has disappeared and are believed dead, although a sympathetic nurse (Donna Mills) hears his mixed up plight and decides to help him escape. Ray Milland blathers on about new coven (now "tribe"?) plans since Adrian hasn't exactly lived up to sinister expectations, and leaves Guy hanging when Adrian vows to seek him out over the strange events that occurred that fateful night. Andrew lays down with his nurse, who gets hit by a car driven by Guy and meant for Andrew, but survives to give birth to a daughter, who'll clearly be more Satanically-inclined than her father. Roll credits.
"Like it? Ray Milland did it for me while on S.T.P. at the last Satanic orgy..."
An incoherent phoned in tele-mess that matches it's variety/comedy pairing on number of laughs with scares (both are zero), combining for one of the weaker Halloween entertainment servings in my long, often photographic memory. I was a lot easier to please back then, too, seeing how I was eight at the time and hadn't even seen the original yet, and probably had to manage a huge candy haul in my Ben Cooper Batman costume through two or three neighborhoods to effectively negate it a couple of nights later. Scary as a brushburned elbow and evil as a Sonny and Cher episode. One woppo.
That's a rather perky-looking end credits devil-baby.
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