MY CALL: Well, it’s gross, exploitative and very gory… and it’s about a monstrous blood-drinking fetus. Sooooo… you know if this movie is for you. MORE MOVIES LIKE Baby Blood: For more baby horror, try Seeding of a Ghost (1983), The Suckling (1990), The Unborn (1991), The Unborn II (1994), Grace (2009), The Night Feeder (1988), It’s Alive (1974), It’s Alive II: It Lives Again (1978), It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987), the remake of It’s Alive (2009); and for pregnancy horror go for Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Demon Seed (1977), Inside (2016), Inside (2007), Still/Born (2017) and Good Manners (2017; As Boas Maneiras).
Looking for something different? How about a sleazy, splatterfest of a French horror movie about a monstrous impregnation? Now you’d think this would surely be the lowest caliber of schlock filmmaking. Yet the opening scenes offer a narration by the monster of the movie storytelling of the origins of life on Earth including its own Primordial creation. Say what you want about all the blood and boobs in this movie, but it’s really going for it.
The acting, direction, photography and writing are all at least average when weighed against other horror releases for its time. That’s not to say this is “well-written.” But simply that this is echelons above the adult movie-like drivel that comprised so many releases of the era (e.g., Night Angel, The Haunting of Morella).
A French circus performer in an abusive relationship with her carney boyfriend (ChristianSinniger), Yanka (Emmanuelle Escourrou; Lady Blood, Empire of the Wolves) leads an empty life. After a jaguar explodes into a gory mess, a serpentine monster from within its body finds Yanka asleep and crawls into her… ummm… uterus (via the most readily available throughfare). Like a sexualized spin on The Hidden (1987), Yanka goes on the run to feed the newfound cravings of her ‘baby.’ Her impregnated parasite talks to her with a little feisty demon voice, beckoning her to kill for it so it can grow and be born. In this way, it’s also reminiscent of Brain Damage (1988).
As if playing on Mathilda May’s fanfare from Lifeforce (1985), Yanka is naked quite a bit. Like, very naked. We even see her soaked in blood while in a nude stabbing frenzy. Like I said before, this is a Eurosleaze splatterfest and, at times, it seems to have a sense of humor to its spastic stabby murders.
Yanka grifts from town to town, preying on the sleaziest of men. It’s nice to see that she’s only killing the worst of them, drinking their blood to nourish her parasite. At one point she ends up on a bus of very rape-y hooligans. Don’t worry, they get theirs.
The gore in the film is quite satisfying. The dream sequence birth scene is pretty wild and groaty, with bloody gore-slathered arms emerging from Yanka’s abdomen. At one point, a man is gas-inflated to a bursting death. After Yanka gives birth, the baby eats out a man’s chest cavity and sheds its infant skin like a molting lizard, now leaving a goopy trail of thick mucus wherever it goes. Now in the form of a tentacle monster, the newborn tears the hooligan bus driver’s face apart.
The movie ends, but there is really no ending at all. A bus crashes and the newborn has made its way into the ocean as it intended for its next evolutionary step. I guess this spells doom for mankind. But alas, there was never a sequel to answer this consequence.
There’s nothing sensational or original about this very sleazy, very bloody flick. However, the execution of the premise, the dynamic between Yanka and her fetal parasite, and the manic intensity of the spastic splatter murders make for an interesting horror endeavor. Strongly recommended for fans of schlock and exploitation horror.