Network, out now on Blu-ray and DVD

There’s something wrong with Lucy and Gino’s little boy. Born with what seems to be abnormal strength and an innate hatred of people, he appears to enjoy inflicting injury on others.

Released in 1975 in the wake of the post-Exorcist ‘possessed children’ craze, and just before The Omen refreshed the genre with ‘the devil as a child’ angle, Hammer/Amicus director Peter Sasdy directed this awful British horror movie that wasn’t lacking in talent and yet somehow failed to even be the sum of its parts.

Lucy (Joan Collins, Tales from the Crypt) and Gino Carlesi (Ralph Bates, The Horror of Frankenstein) are the parents of baby Nicky, a cute newborn who somehow has the strength to push his nanny into a lake, and a strong pair of teeth to bite people. We flashback to when Lucy was a dancer at a sleazy club and spurned the advances of little person Hercules, who puts a curse on her.

It’s just so poor, from the dreadful dialogue to Ralph Bates and Eileen Atkins failing miserably to act with credible Italian accents. Why even make them Italian? Donald Pleasance (Halloween) is the surgeon helping to deliver the devil child and genre favourite Caroline Munro is Lucy’s poorly-dubbed stripper friend Mandy, but elsewhere it’s sleazy and risible in every department. It’s not scary and it’s not so bad that it has camp entertainment value.

Network’s releases included a new audio commentary from the Second Features podcast team, the theatrical trailer, the alternative I Don’t Want to be Born titles, image gallery and limited edition booklet written by Adrian Smith.

Verdict: Call it The Monster, I Don’t Want to be Born, The Devil Within Her or Sharon’s Baby(!) – this fine HD remaster from the original film elements cannot disguise the fact that this is a dreadful film. 2/10

Nick Joy