Baby Blood (1990)

"If Frank Henenlotter and Peter Jackson had a French Baby"

Studio Canal are releasing Alain Robak's funny, gory French horror picture in an impressive, crystal clear 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative on UHD and Blu-ray.

A leopard is transported from Africa to a French zoo where it explodes. The creature that was living inside it makes its way to the caravan of Yanka (Emmanuelle Escourrou), where it burrows into her womb and communicates with her telepathically, ordering her to drink human blood to feed it.

Yanka leaves the circus (understandably) and ends up in Paris where she starts killing men as her pregnancy continues to develop. Once she reaches term it's time for even more gory horrors, posing the question: who will survive and what will be left of Yanka?

A gory, funny, over the top piece of French horror that doesn't just channel Frank Henenlotter or early Peter Jackson but also features a sequence that wouldn't be out of place in a Ray Cooney bedroom farce, BABY BLOOD also offers a number of in-jokes for those more familiar with French cinema of the period. French writer and director Jacques Audiard (EMILIA PEREZ) appears in it as a jogger who ends up as one of Yanka's victims, and there's a cameo from BAXTER the bull terrier from Jerome Boivin's 1989 the film of the same name, played by the same dog actor (Chimbot). 

Studio Canal's disc comes with plentiful extras. Kim Newman provides a new 20 minute piece where he talks about the film, its influence, and very helpfully points out even more of the French cinema in-jokes that many likely miss. There are two commentary tracks, the first with director Robak and star Escourrou which is a jolly chat, while the second with Lee Gambin and Jarret Gahan is more laid back but also more academic. A batch of interviews filmed in 2019 include Robak (18 minutes), Escourrou (20 minutes), DP Bernard Dechet (12 minutes), and actors Jean-Francois Gallotte (8 minutes) and Christian Sinniger (6 minutes). The set also comes with four art cards. 

Alain Robak's BABY BLOOD is out from Studio Canal on 4K UHD and Blu-ray on Monday 6th October 2025

Stéphane (2023)

Co-directors Timothée Hochet and Lucas Pastor's quirky found footage French comedy gets an exclusive streaming release on Arrow.

Timothée (Bastien Garcia) is trying to make a short film to enter in a competition. His attempts to make an FBI thriller haven't got very far when he meets Stéphane (Pastor) who wanders into shot one day and, when he realises a film is being made, demonstrates his ability to create explosions. Admiring Timo's equipment, Stéphane convinces Timo to accompany him to a local camera shop to buy something that will allow him to make his own movies in 4K. An altercation between Stéphane and the shop owner results in Timo missing his train home. 

After kicking the railway station bin to pieces, Stéphane offers to drive Timo home himself but they actually end up at Stéphane's boat and, after a drunken night, travel on it to Stéphane's personal island where Stéphane shows Timo around a house that's curiously empty of possessions. Nevertheless, the two of them decide to make a film about the Second World War with Timo also shooting a secret documentary about Stéphane on the side. But are Stéphane's regular outbursts of violence something Timo should be worrying about a bit more than he actually is?

STEPHANE is the kind of comedy that has you constantly wondering if everything is suddenly going to take a turn for the horrific, and I'm not going to spoil it and say whether it does or not, suffice to say that the (real) film-makers do a fine job of keeping you on a knife edge of wondering if what you're seeing is something you can safely laugh at or if there's actual cause for concern. It's not as brilliantly silly as the work of, say, Quentin Dupieux, but as a first feature it shows a great deal of promise and if you're a fan of French black comedy you won't want to miss it. Oh, and make sure you stay until the credits are over. Here's the trailer:

STÉPHANE is currently streaming exclusively on Arrow