Former stripper Lucy Carlesi (Joan Collins, QUEST FOR LOVE) gives birth to Nicholas, an unusually strong child who scratches the new mother the first time she picks him up. When she and her husband Gino (Ralph Bates, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE) return home, things get worse. The child bites the housekeeper Mrs. Hyde (Hilary Mason, DON'T LOOK NOW) and tries to drown nanny Jill (Janet Key, THE VAMPIRE LOVERS), and demolishes his nursery. Lucy is convinced that the child hates her while Gino confides in the child's doctor Finch (Donald Pleasance, HALLOWEEN) who believes that Lucy is stressed and that Nicholas may possibly have a genetic condition. Since Lucy and Gino have healthy family backgrounds, Lucy suspects that the child may actually have been fathered by strip-club owner Tommy (John Steiner, SALON KITTY) and that the aggression has a supernatural cause since her spurned midget partner Hercules (George Claydon, BERSERK) cursed her to have a child possessed by the devil. When the nanny mysteriously dies, Lucy's nerves are shot and Gino's nun sister Albana (Eileen Atkins, WOLF) convinces him to let the child go into hospital for observation while he takes Lucy on vacation in Italy. When Gino also disappears, Albana breaks out the bible and the crucifix for the obligatory exorcism.

A mishmash of ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE EXORCIST, THE DEVIL WITHIN HER - titled I DON'T WANT TO BE BORN and THE MONSTER in the UK - may be one of the worst seventies British horror films despite an interesting cast (which also includes Caroline Munro [SLAUGHTER HIGH] as Lucy's stripper pal). Without exception, the scenes of horror provoke laughter rather than chills (the baby is kind of creepy, but the flashes of a swaddled Hercules and Lucy's horrified reactions dispel any tension). The awkwardly edited scenes of the baby attacking people are at least worth a laugh. Bates, Atkins, and Claydon are saddled with horrid Italian accents ("possessed by the dayvil!"). Ron Grainer's score is intermittently interesting, and cinematographer Kenneth Talbot renders both the blood and loud, bad-taste decor boldy. The script never quite explains how a strip-club midget could convince the devil to possess an infant (nor does it seem that the pregnancy prior to the film's start was unusual), and - unlike just about any other possession picture (with the exception of BEYOND THE DOOR, itself originally titled THE DEVIL WITHIN HER) - the production design fails to exploit Catholic iconography; even the church in which the baby's failed baptism takes place is visually uninteresting (although for a long time, Catholics made up a very small percentage of the British population). There is some unexpectedly graphic gore in the final reel, but the exorcism seems to take place at this point in the plot simply because it was near the ninety minute mark. Collins performs with conviction, but - like Sasdy - she was probably just happy to be working as the British film industry was experiencing a downturn in the seventies (Collins and Bates had earlier appeared in Jimmy Sangster's classier-if-cliche Hammer thriller FEAR IN THE NIGHT). The film isn't a total loss, but it may find its place in the British horror or Joan Collins (or Katarina's Nightmare Theater) libraries of fans for the sake of completism.