Apparently Ray Bradbury claimed that he could remember the experience of being born! He uses that claim to fuel the story of "The Small Assassin", one of his most twisted and unique tales I've encountered so far: I mean, there are several films about killer children, but killer babies is a far more limited market; only the "It's Alive!" trilogy (which I haven't seen) comes to my mind. The direction is fairly imaginative for this series, with some nice "baby cam" and some odd shots that do manage to give the impression that the baby we're watching is having evil thoughts, and the ending is open not because Bradbury could not think of a way to wrap it up, but because what he implies will happen cannot be shown! **1/2 out of 4.
6 Reviews
A Deceptive Conclusion, Like In Most Episodes of This Series
claudio_carvalho15 April 2009
Alice (Susan Wooldridge) delivers an unwanted child and her Doctor Jeffers (Cyril Cusack)is apprehensive with the situation. He has a private conversation with her husband David (Leigh Lawson), but he says that Alice will get used to the baby. When the family moves to their manor, Alice is scared, telling that the baby wants to kill her. She swears that she is not being paranoid and asks David to protect her. Further, she says that the baby never cries in his presence, and David says that babies do not do things like that. When Doctor Jeffers pays a visit to the family, he has a dreadful surprise.
"The Small Assassin" is a tense psychological thriller, but like in most episodes of "The Ray Bradbury Theater", it has a deceptive conclusion. The character should have been better developed since the viewer never finds a reasonable explanation for her paranoid behavior. In the end, the story has potential but is completely wasted with the awful ending. My vote is seven.
Title (Brazil): "The Small Assassin"
"The Small Assassin" is a tense psychological thriller, but like in most episodes of "The Ray Bradbury Theater", it has a deceptive conclusion. The character should have been better developed since the viewer never finds a reasonable explanation for her paranoid behavior. In the end, the story has potential but is completely wasted with the awful ending. My vote is seven.
Title (Brazil): "The Small Assassin"
"Well then, you've got a little monster on your hands, don't you?"
classicsoncall19 December 2021
Warning: Spoilers
As a horror story, this one works pretty well, since it deals with a demonic baby that has it out for his mother right from it's birth. At first, one might think that Alice Leiber (Susan Wooldridge) might be having post-partum depression at best, or might be a mental case at the very worst. Because she believes from the very moment her baby is born that it's out to get her, blaming what she perceives as the child's 'memory' of it's birth as it occurred. The only explanation she can offer is her memory of hating the moment of her own birth when she separated from the safety of the womb into the cold and uncomfortable world outside. Even as she makes it sound somewhat plausible, her Doctor Jeffers (Cyril Cusack) isn't buying it, but he comes to the Leiber home prepared to deal with whatever he walks into. I wonder though, why the newborn wouldn't have had some way of dealing with the good doctor as the program fades to black, seeing as how it already dealt unfavorably with Mom and Dad.
Scalpel
Seras111237 December 2021
I wondered if jumping to Season 2 would give us better presentation, and in some ways it did. We get more big name actors and do what they can with their lackluster script.
A TV made "The Omen" a decade too late and without any of the actual suspense of that.
A TV made "The Omen" a decade too late and without any of the actual suspense of that.
Chilling Score!
AndRQ2425 August 2020
Omen light....
joegarbled-794826 July 2023
Warning: Spoilers
This episode of The Ray Bradbury Theatre must rank as one of the best, given the cast and the snappy way the story is told. Think of it as a slight, paper back telling of "The Omen" original and the child here is evil from the very beginning, the doctor (excellently played by Cyril Cusack) only just managing to save the life of the mother (played by the lovely Susan Wooldridge) in what was "a difficult birth".
Leigh Lawson plays the all too content father who disbelieves the mother when she says that their baby is evil and trying to kill her. Bradbury could've had either the husband or doctor suggesting postpartum depression as the "obvious" reason for the mother wishing she'd not had her son, but the opportunity for added realism was missed.
Naturally, the baby is shown crying (only when the mother is alone with him, trying to wear her out) and low camera angles pass for the baby having the ability to move from room to room. The baby must've started smoking early too, going by the laboured breathing!
The baby son's methods of double parricide shows a particularly evil cunning, leaving a teddy bear on the stairs for dad to trip over, and plugging in the electric blanket then shorting out the electrics with the safety pin off his nappy, electrocuting his mother as she slept.
The episode ends with the doctor (who I assume was some kind of family friend) visiting, finding both parents dead and the baby missing from its crib. He doesn't assume a double murder in the course of a robbery, he just knows that everything the mother said about her evil baby was true.
The 25minute running time flies by and typical of Ray Bradbury, we get a hanging finish with the doctor closing the bedroom door and taking out a scalpal from his bag and in the spirit of "I brought you into this world, it's up to me to take you out of it..." leaving it up to the viewer to decide the conclusion.
Leigh Lawson plays the all too content father who disbelieves the mother when she says that their baby is evil and trying to kill her. Bradbury could've had either the husband or doctor suggesting postpartum depression as the "obvious" reason for the mother wishing she'd not had her son, but the opportunity for added realism was missed.
Naturally, the baby is shown crying (only when the mother is alone with him, trying to wear her out) and low camera angles pass for the baby having the ability to move from room to room. The baby must've started smoking early too, going by the laboured breathing!
The baby son's methods of double parricide shows a particularly evil cunning, leaving a teddy bear on the stairs for dad to trip over, and plugging in the electric blanket then shorting out the electrics with the safety pin off his nappy, electrocuting his mother as she slept.
The episode ends with the doctor (who I assume was some kind of family friend) visiting, finding both parents dead and the baby missing from its crib. He doesn't assume a double murder in the course of a robbery, he just knows that everything the mother said about her evil baby was true.
The 25minute running time flies by and typical of Ray Bradbury, we get a hanging finish with the doctor closing the bedroom door and taking out a scalpal from his bag and in the spirit of "I brought you into this world, it's up to me to take you out of it..." leaving it up to the viewer to decide the conclusion.
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