Baby Blood

The Details:
Directed by: Alain Robak
AKA: The Evil Within
Runtime: 82 min
Country: France
Language: French
Color: Color
Sound Mix: Dolby
Certification: Argentina:18 / Chile:18 / France:-12 / USA:R / West Germany:18 / Peru:18

The Review:
I feel like I need to take a shower.

In 1990, the year of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie, The Hubble Space Telescope, The Spin Doctors and Public Enemy's legendary "Fear of a Black Planet," a horri-B-ly appealing piece of cinema was released. Its title: Baby Blood.

The story of this French film follows a voluptuous young woman named Yanka. She begins as a lowly performer in some off-key circus, taking all kinds of verbal and physical abuse from her manager. Out of the blue, one of the leopards is found liquidated in its cage. While Yanka is sleeping, a slimy worm-like creature slips its way into her unsuspecting womb. From then on out, the movie basically follows Yanka from point A to to point B, then to point C, D, E F and G for nine months as the new life inside her continues to grow. But this aint yo ordinary fetus...This baby has a direct line to Yanka's brain, and he speaks more eloquently than 95% of America's internet-generation high school graduates!


To make things even more interesting, Yanka's unborn child needs a constant supply of human blood to sustain its development. Hence the spectacular title! Naturally, she's a little hesitant to go around on a mass murdering rampage, so the voice from within constantly has to sweet talk her into slaughtering her victims. She gradually becomes more and more comfortable committing the ultimate sin, and blood begins to fly by the bucket-load!

Yes, despite its peculiarity, the plot line is very straight forward. However, that is also one of the things that makes this flick so great. Every event propels the movie forward, and I was constantly left wondering what would happen next. Unlike most gore films, all of the insane violence in Baby Blood actually drives the story along! There isn't a single death that just happens for its own sake. Even better, almost all of the characters that die are males who are chauvinist pigs, unbearably annoying or all around total assholes. So for all you hardcore feminists out there, this is the movie for you!

The creativity in which the kill scenes are portrayed is truly marvelous. After one viewing, there are at least five scenes in this movie that are permanently ingrained in my twisted little head. And that, my friend, is really saying something! There are several parts of the movie that are shot from a harrowing first person perspective, and every death scene is wonderfully unique. SPOILER WARNING: At one point, when Yanka is stabbing someone with a pair of scissors, the camera LUNGES back and forth at his stomach as if the camera is actually mounted on her makeshift weapon! Another scene that has achieved legendary status in my mind is an unsettling, slow moving Lynch-esque shot that moves into Yanka's mouth, traveling through her body in a super-surreal visual feast. END SPOILERS.

Unfortunately, this movie severely suffers from what darfnader and I like to call "Fortress Syndrome." So what in the hell do I mean by that? Basically, this movie is absolutely top-notch entertainment all the way through, and then out of NOWHERE it turns to total shit in the last minute. Darfnader and I were literally on the edge of our seats for the first 81 minutes. We were gasping in wide-eyed shock, laughing maniacally and cringing in delight...and then the last two shots came in and shattered all our hopes and dreams. It is truly disappointing, and I can't help but wonder how they could let such a bad thing happen to such a great movie...

However, Baby Blood's strong points FAR out weigh its weaknesses. This is one fucked up freakishly fantastic French fetus-flick that had me flipping head over heals!




DREAM SEQUENCE: One of the craziest you'll ever see!
POV SHOTS: Even on a tiny TV you're going to feel sick!
BLOOD!!!: It's gritty, over the top and repulsive...WOOHOO!